RINGS Maelstrom: 3rd - Russian Battle Mission (5/25/96)

Tsuyoshi Kohsaka v Mikhail Ilioukhine

Ilioukhine started this like a devil - not too unusual for him tbf - and almost immediately picked Kohsaka up in an airplane spin before dumping him. It felt like Kohsaka spent the bulk of this being reactive, just because of how proactive Ilioukhine was. The latter was constantly forcing the issue. Great example of this where Ilioukhine keeps pressing and pressing, finally dropping Kohsaka with a flurry of palm strikes. When Kohsaka gets back up Ilioukhine goes right after him again, but this time Kohsaka dodges the palm strike at warp speed and whips Ilioukhine over with a near German suplex. Ilioukhine is persistent the whole way and Kohsaka uses up all of his points, clinging on. But he is nothing if not resourceful and manages to lock in the rear naked choke with a final gambit. Maybe he knew Ilioukhine would come at him swinging to put a fork in things. Maybe he knew HE needed to be proactive or he was toast. 

Mitsuya Nagai v Yuri Bekichev 

This was a fun little dumb little five minutes. Bekichev is an entertaining watch whenever he shows up (not often) and he was out throwing wild kicks and being hyperactive straight out the gate. Nagai merely laughed at one axe kick attempt and then took Bekichev down with relative ease, at which point the latter reached for the ropes like a man might reach for a waterskin after spending five days and nights in the desert. Bekichev is down to his last two points and gets even funkier with the strike attempts and none of them really connected but the place sure responded for Nagai dropping to the mat as if they had. The rolling kick at the end didn't hit super clean but I'm guessing Nagai got a nice paycheque for doing the honours. 

Dick Vrij v Vladimir Kuramenchev

This is the first time I've seen our boy Kuramenchev. Vrij punched him in the head and got himself a yellow card for it and at that point I figured he was for taking the DIVE on the night but also leaving there with SOMEthing, as Denzel would say. They went about four minutes and emptied a goodly amount of the clip so you won't see me complaining! Even if the finish was a wee bit less than spectacular, which we might complain about somewhat. 

Volk Han v Hans Nyman 

Nyman isn't really a great opponent for Han. They've matches up before and it was one of Han's least fun bouts and this was only about five minutes anyway, but it wasn't a slobberknocker like Ikeda/Ono or a FRACAS like Dick Vrij v Vladimir Kuramenchev. Nyman's strikes never really land well and Han was going down for glancing blows more easily than you'd think. Don't let the desire for dramatic expression supersede the need for realism, as my great grandmother would always tell me. The post-match scene is WILD though, with Vrij coming in after Han holds onto the finishing submission a little too long and trying to punt his head through the roof. The mini-riot with the crowd throwing stuff at the ring was probably better than the fight itself, tbh. 

Andrei Kopylov v Bart Vale

This Russian crowd sure does love them some of their unassuming dad bod Target cashier who in reality is a complete badass, our man Andrei Kopylov. It's been what you would call several hot minutes since I last saw Bart Vale and I'm actually sort of shocked he's still going in 1996. I wonder if the crowd expected a kickboxer in American flag trunks going into a questionable crane stance at the bell to be able to handle himself on the mat. He didn't look nearly as comfortable as Kopylov but he's fought Fujiwara and Ishikawa and Naoki Sano so you can assume he picked up a thing or two. There was one part where he kind of partially perhaps maybe grabbed a heel hook and the crowd did not respond like Kopylov was in immediate danger, or really any danger at all. Kopylov did not respond like he was in immediate danger either and quickly, almost derisively, reversed it into a heel hook of his own that Vale had to rope break out of. To be fair though, Vale at least showed some composure when going for the ropes rather than frantically scrambling to them as you may expect of a kickboxer wearing American flag trunks going into questionable crane stances. Vale will also illegally kick his way out of a submission if the situation requires it. When Kopylov worked for the cross armbreaker and the camera went to the bird's eye view I thought for sure the end was near, but Vale just booted Kopylov in the head to get out of it (a warning is better than a defeat, as my great grandfather was wont to tell me). The one time Vale forced Kopylov to the ropes he seemed almost surprised at what had occurred. "Oh you're standing us up because he grabbed it and we didn't just roll too close to them? Cool, cool." Kopylov decided he'd had enough shortly after that and the armbar to finish things looked pretty sick. 

Yoshihisa Yamamoto v Ramazi Buzariashvili 

Really fun styles clash. Buzariashvili is someone who will pop up on one of these shows and immediately try to fling his opponent around the ring. He did it in his first RINGS appearance against Maeda and if you're going to do that against the Ace then we have no reason to expect he won't do it against Yamamoto, who by 1996 was truly coming into his own but was not Akira Maeda by any stretch. Sure enough Buzariashvili straight away picked up Yamamoto and chucked him with a body slam. And he attempted to slam Yamamoto about five more times after that. A couple of those attempts didn't land quite as intended, Yamamoto maybe having to slow down and leave himself open a little, but the rest were matters in which Yamamoto had little say and they looked pretty spectacular. Buzariashvili was brute force, basically. Yamamoto was skill and technique and never once did he seem flustered even in the face of being chucked around the place. Part of that might be him not always being interested in any pro wrestling nonsense in front of a crowd full of Russians who actively wanted to see him lose. He threw Buzariashvili a bone or two but this is still supposed to look like an actual fight. Whenever Buzariashvili picked him up you could see Yamamoto wriggling to escape, or if not outright escape then severely limit Buzariashvili's follow-up options. It meant that just about every slam led into Yamamoto quickly grabbing a limb and forcing Buzariashvili to either step back in retreat or use up a rope break. Each time that happened our large Georgian fellow become a little more disheartened, thus progressively more hesitant in following up. Or perhaps he was just gassed, which might be a probability more than a possibility given how much wind he was sucking at several points. Then there was a bit of afters in the corner as the ref' tried to break them up and it looked like that started a scuffle in the crowd, so Yamamoto swiftly decided he'd be choking someone out before the situation deteriorated into something WORRYING. I liked this a lot. 

Nikolai Zouev v Willie Williams

Hot damn Willie Williams! When he showed up on the RINGS card a month before this I was shocked he was still kicking a ball, as we would say in Scotland. "Fuck sake, Willie Williams is still kickin' a baw??" I thought that appearance had to have been a one off but no, apparently it was nothing of the sort and here he is, in Russia, still kicking a ball, still fighting the good fight. And well, this wasn't a good fight but for as rough and sloppy as it was it still had some excitement about it. Pretty quickly they go into a sort of extended Flair/Steamboat bridge sequence if Flair and Steamboat were too gassed to actually get up out of it so instead they both just refused to let go and rolled around on the mat for a while. Both guys were drained within a couple minutes and the fight or perhaps TUSSLE over a heel hook was not remotely pretty but clearly exhausting and so the ref' just decided to stand them up. However the crowd were HOT for their national hero slapping a cross armbreaker on a large American man. 

Flair v Windham!

Ric Flair v Barry Windham (World Wide Wrestling, 1/24/87)

I wouldn't say this fell flat for me. Not by any stretch really, and if anything it was 30 minutes that flew by. But it also never rocked me like it did back whenever I last watched it, which to be honest was probably about 18 years ago now. The FIRST time I saw it was on the Ric Flair WWE DVD release back in like 2005, at which point I was pretty much just starting to venture into 80s territory footage. The Race and Dusty matches on that set didn't really do a ton for me, but this one felt like the embodiment of everything people had said about peak Flair. When I watched it a second time I'd become a big Windham fan dived deep down the territory rabbit hole and it stood out as one of the best matches of the era. The first 10 minutes were really awesome and I was all in on Windham being one step quicker than Flair, constantly going back to the headlock and eventually the headscissors. Dusty never shut up on commentary - I say with affection - but his point about Barry trying to squeeze Flair's head into a state of dizziness is a cool one to make, maybe even an ASTUTE one, although should we really be surprised that the Dream knows the ins and outs of wrestling a World Title match? Windham is also a really good opponent for Flair because his engine matches Flair's every step and he tends to read those cues well where Flair begs off but really wants the opponent to keep pressing forward. Windham has plenty of crisp and relatively varied offence as well so he won't quickly run out of ideas working from above. He's also elite tier when it comes to going flying through or over the ropes and crashing onto the ring apron or into the barricade and he did that several times here. His bumps have a real rubbery, reckless quality to them where it looks like he has no control over where he's going. I thought the match escalated well too, where they went from brief exchanges of strikes, usually instigated by Flair and his growing frustration, to laying into each other as it went on and Windham in particular was trying to close the match out before the bell. Flair working the arm aggressively after the first transition was good stuff but as always I wish we got a little more of it. I'm not at all a "the limbwork went nowhere!" guy at this stage of the game but it did feel a wee bit like filler to me on this occasion, even if Windham had some really great bits of selling. At one point Flair had him in an armbar and punched him in the nose as he tried to escape, and Windham going down selling both the arm and his face was a great touch. The final third was breezy and they did plenty of neat stuff. Flair pouncing on Windham to apply the figure-4 rather than soak in the moment or do it methodically put over the situation pretty well, then Windham reversed the second attempt into a cradle like we probably knew and then put on his own figure-4 like we DEFINITELY knew and the place went wild so there's nothing wrong with knowing what the payoff's going to be before it happens, I guess. If we're talking Flair vs anyone in a "sporting" contest then Windham is probably neck and neck with Steamboat for his best opponent. I do prefer Flair working Morton or Garvin or Funk where they try to rip the skin off each other now, though. A very good wrestling match and perhaps the best of a few very good wrestling matches these two had together. 

GWE 2026 Legwork: The Destroyer (#3)

The Destroyer v Horst Hoffmann (All Japan, 12/17/85)

Horst Hoffmann is another guy I should watch every match of. There's only about a dozen of them and I've probably watched half by now so it wouldn't be the tallest of tasks. These two are awesome together and I imagine 30 minutes between them would take a lot of the good stuff here - well it was all good stuff - and ramp it up. The matwork was always going to have a nice mix of grit and beauty and watching them work around a headlock and headscissors for a few minutes was a treat. They escalated that nicely as well and I like how Destroyer would go for the figure-4 only to get clubbed in the face. They made it clear that Hoffmann wanted nothing to do with that hold and every time he struck his way free of it he followed up with a knee between the shoulder blades or across the chest. When Destroyer grabbed Hoffmann's standing leg Hoffmann did a one-handed cartwheel out of it, which Destroyer took a second to register and as he did so Hoffmann yanked him into another hold. They ran through some WHIMSICAL Euro stuff with the seesaw pin and built to a cool rope-running sequence where Destroyer got to remind us that he's ath-o-lete with his nifty kip up.  Destroyer pretty much behaved himself the whole time so things never quite got surly, but they did start trading some forearms and uppercuts towards the end and that's another thing you can add to the list of stuff Destroyer did remarkably well. 

The Battlarts Boys on a Sunday

Yuki Ishikawa, Alexander Otsuka & Naohiro Hoshikawa v Viktor Kruger, Takeshi Ono, Shoichi Funaki (Battlarts, 5/25/97)

The Viktor Kruger show! I don't know how many diehard Viktor Kruger fans there are among us but we may have found the perfect match for that particular demographic. This might be the most menacing he's ever looked. I mean he usually looks menacing anyway given his size, but I don't remember him USING that size the way he did here, looking as imposing as he did and honestly just deciding to thump the daylights out of people. He was throwing folk around and drilling them with kicks, one or two that caught Otsuka flush in the sternum like a sledgehammer. His team were like a Battlarts Kaientai doing lots of rope-running triple teams where Funaki and Ono would do a quick elbow drop and Kruger would come steaming in with a legdrop, or Kruger would grab a camel clutch and lean all the way into it while Ono and Funaki would hit a running dropkick to the face. Otsuka was the recipient of much of this, come to think of it. He did give as good as he got though and his giant swing on Kruger was really cool. The big man paying him in kind later was pretty great because at the end of the day when you're that much bigger than everyone else why wouldn't you swing them around by the legs? Ono was blitzing people with kicks and had one incredible burst on the mat with Otsuka. It was quick, sudden, and made you realise those two are a match made in heaven. An extended heat segment would've made this even better overall but what we did get was good stuff.  

Yuki Ishikawa & Tekeshi Ono v Katsumi Usuda & Naohiro Hoshikawa (Battlarts, 6/27/97)

Well here's another file for that Takeshi Ono all-time top 30 case. As a match this wasn't anything mindblowingly special or whatever, but Ono was tremendous as a skinny violent dickhead being a plague upon Usuda and Hoshikawa. Ishikawa and Usuda start out clean, yet as soon as their exchange nears Ono's corner you can see what sort of mood he's in. He grabs Usuda from the apron and starts choking him over the ropes so Ishikawa tags him because I guess he couldn't be bothered trying to rein him in on the night. Sometimes you can just tell when you're about to be chasing rainbows and I don't think Ishikawa could be bothered. As soon as Ono comes in he's winging kicks and punches and really that was what he did the whole match, regardless of whether he was the legal man or not. If someone got near him there's a good chance they were getting hit. Ishikawa and Usuda had a gorgeous exchange later where Usuda rolled through on a full nelson into a kneebar, and Ishikawa didn't look to be in immediate danger but Ono came in and volleyed Usuda in the head either way. Hoshikawa rolls out the ring selling his leg and Ono instantly jumps off the apron, kicks the shit out of him and throws him over about seven rows of chairs. Hoshikawa was well within his rights to punt Ono in the face later to break up a submission. In the end it maybe wouldn't have mattered if Ono had been less of a cheating prick but I'm sure Usuda took great pleasure in tapping him out. He got what he deserved, it must be said.

200 Miles Just Feels too Damn Far, Tenryu's Wearing Thin Like the Tires on His Car

Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara v Great Kabuki & Hiroshi Wajima (All Japan, 1/28/88) - GREAT 

This is joined in progress by a few minutes, which ordinarily would be annoying, but we are perhaps ASSUAGED somewhat by being dropped in right at the point where Tenryu and Hara take it upon themselves to try and crack open Hiroshi Wajima's skull. I've got no idea why those two were especially ornery on the night. I've seen both of them match up against our former sumo a number of times and don't recall either of them dishing out this sort of punishment. Maybe they'd been reading the dirtsheets around this time and decided to make an example of Wajima on behalf of Big Davey Meltz. They split Wajima open and I love when Tenryu wallops someone so hard with a folding chair he almost sends himself flying over the barricade. Hara even whomps him with the ring bell but in fairness that probably would've hurt less than the headbutts, of which a goodly amount were thrown and Hara really does have some of the best headbutts in wrestling. You can tell the falling headbutt off the middle rope connected sweetly as it left a bloody smear across Hara's own forehead. The Tenryu/Hara double lariat where they each hit opposite ropes can be an ugly thing, often brutal, rarely pretty, the sort of move execution-junkies would scoff at and now and then rough enough that even those on the other side of the fence might look at and think "perhaps that didn't land as cleanly as they intended." It looked like they'd gotten the timing of it all wrong here and maybe actually had, but in the end they just switched it up and decided to club Wajima in the head and face - simultaneously, with venom - instead. Despite being older than Tenryu and nearly as old as his gruesome menace of a partner, Wajima shows his wrestling inexperience when Tenryu misses a top rope elbow and Wajima, rather than tag in his fresh partner, tries to apply a figure-4 leglock. Hara stomping him in the head was a lesson hard learned but a necessary one all the same. Kabuki was an absolute fucking demon here and honest to god these might've been the best thrust kicks of his career. He ruled coming in off the hot tag - the SCORCHING tag, more like - and the place was nuclear for him. There was an amazing moment where Tenryu hit the ropes like he was about to uncork a lariat only for Kabuki to annihilate him with a kick under the chin. He legitimately might be one of the best ever at reeling off those shots just as it looks like he's about to take a bullet, where you think there's no way he won't get hit this time and then sure enough he draws his own shotgun from nowhere. There's such a deflation from the crowd when it looks like he actually has Tenryu pinned only for Hara to come in and casually drop a leg across his neck. I loved the part as well where he tells Wajima to go and exact some by god revenge so Wajima chucks Tenryu to the floor and pays him back for those chair shots earlier. The finish is so good. Hara charges Kabuki in the corner and once again Kabuki halts him with a kick, but as he then goes to flip Hara over into a pin Tenryu seizes his moment and hoists him into a powerbomb. In the end Tenryu and Hara are inevitable. This is the way of things. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

Flair v Funk, the '81 Edition

Ric Flair v Terry Funk (All Japan, 10/7/81)

Things like this make me think this ridiculous hobby of ours will never get old. Like I know this has been available for a while now, but it's still Terry Funk wrestling Ric Flair, captured on a handheld video camera in 1981, showing up on the internet for all of us obsessed lunatics to marvel at. And sure enough these two knock it towards the back end of the park, if maybe not fully out the park like they would eight years later. The roles being reversed is very cool and while the majority of the first fall was more about the low key matwork and tension-building, it went up a level when Funk did his own Flair Flip out to the floor and Flair went out to bury him. As soon as they got back in Flair submitted him to the figure-4, which was incredibly jarring at first because I never realised it was 2/3 falls, and then Flair smelled blood in the water and we got the very best Ric Flair, which is vicious maniac Flair who'll just press his knees across your shoulders and punch you repeatedly in the face like a rabid animal. Therse mounted punches looked brutal and at the risk of once again beating a long-dead horse I wish we got that version of Flair a lot more than we did. Even in the 45-year old slightly blurry camcorder footage we can see every emotion from Terry Funk. His selling and body language jumps off every page, his writhing in the figure-4, his wobbly-legged selling, the desperation in his comeback, everything. The comeback obviously ruled because it started with him throwing headbutts, first as he sort of reared up from the mat and then with a couple more from his knees. Flair even took a sort of delayed reaction Flop off the first one. The longer it went the more ASSURED you were in there being a less than decisive finish, but they bring us one and all back around as they pummel each other with punches even after the bell. Give me everything these two ever did together, I guess. 

Winter Face, Ice Cold, Lock Your Windows, Still Tenryu Comes in when the Wind Blows

Genichiro Tenryu & Jumbo Tsuruta v Yoshiaki Yatsu & Shinichi Nakano (All Japan, 1/17/87) - GOOD

This is a pretty easy formula to nail. Yatsu and Nakano are severely outmatched, but Yatsu tries hard and Nakano tries harder and who knows, maybe that'll be enough. Maybe Jumbo or Tenryu or even both are having an off-night. Maybe a quick roll-up or cradle is there to be had, a bulldog that lands right on the money, a surprise suplex that keeps one of them down for three. Nakano was intent on proving a point from the start and cleaned out Jumbo with a scorcher of a dropkick, then later dragged Tenryu to the floor and tried to kick him over the barricade. Tenryu was actually pretty forgiving even in the face of such disrespect, but Jumbo was very not and tried to take Nakano's head off more than once. In fact he and Tenryu hit a double lariat that basically landed straight across Nakano's face. When Nakano hit his second dropkick Jumbo was practically unfazed, taking it like it was a mere gust of wind, so on Nakano's third attempt he went up and hit it off the top rope. It caught Jumbo on the button, even busting his lip open. It sent Jumbo off the fucking rails and he absolutely wiped the floor with the wee fella. It's pretty hard to go wrong with something like this. 

Genichiro Tenryu v Yutaka Yoshie (New Japan, 8/9/04) - GOOD

Tenryu working five-minute G1 Climax matches in the early-mid 2000s is always going to be a treat. The five-minute match in general is something I appreciate a lot more the older and more restless I get. You could tell Tenryu was in the mood from the bell, intimating that while Yoshie may be a big portly boy it was Tenryu who'd been the sumo wrestler. Tenryu wasn't necessarily in full prick mode here, but Yoshie started using some of that portliness to his advantage and from there Tenryu realised the power of pro wrestling would see him through, not his sumo past. And by that I mean he started punching Yoshie in the jaw and fucking melted him with a kick to the face and of course it was fantastic. Yoshie would not be deterred, however, and I guess Tenryu never accounted for the fact that he may end up getting back-handered in the face multiple times. I also did not expect the match to end like it did but I'll be fucked if that top rope splash didn't look devastating. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu 

GWE 2026 Legwork: Devil Masami

Devil Masami v Chigusa Nagayo (AJW, 8/22/85)

A hell of a wrestling match. If you've been unfortunate enough to have read more than a few posts on this here blog then it probably won't be a shock when I tell you that I sort of balk at the thought of sitting down for a 40-minute wrestling match. The biggest compliment I can pay this is that it did not feel like 40 minutes and by the end I easily could've taken another 10. I don't even remember what I thought about it whenever I last watched it but this time I came away thinking it was as good as it gets for a match that's pretty much back and forth the whole way. If you're going to work primarily back and forth then you really need to capture a sense of struggle and everything - really, it was EVERYthing - here felt like a struggle. The early grappling was a bit UWF 1.0, or like a sped up version of a match between those UWF guys in a New Japan ring. Momentum bounced around often but any time one of them took that momentum it felt earned. Part of that is in how they sold everything, the toll of it all and the fight over every move. The other part is how Chigusa's strikes were so well established by now that everyone bought them swinging the tide. She could hit them from anywhere too and Devil sold all of them like shotgun blasts. Honestly, I don't love 80s Chigusa. I actually prefer old 90s beefy den mother to her GAEA students Chigusa, but there are things she does in her prime that I'd say are pretty undeniable as far as greatness goes. Bits of selling here, a transition there, the way she'll reel off a suplex at the perfect moment. It obviously doesn't hurt that her crowd connection is quite frankly stupid as fuck and maybe unlike any in history. This struck me as the complete babyface Chigusa performance though; maybe the complete babyface performance, period. She was assured and tried to work on the front foot the whole way, but she never let you forget that she was in there with Devil Masami, who might just be a peak too high to climb on the right night. And really, as good as Chigusa was I thought Devil was even better. She may not live on the same side of the tracks as your Dump Matsumotos of the world anymore, but she doesn't quite live on the same side as Chigusa. Even if she doesn't lead the life she once did, she hasn't forgotten it entirely, or IT hasn't forgotten HER. While she wasn't outright cheating at any point in this she was hyper aggressive and a few times it crept right up to the line of taking liberties. When she planted Chigusa with a ganso bomb - a ridiculous thing for 1985 - it looked like she might finally go on an extended run of offence. The crowd, which in reality was Chigusa's crowd, sensed it too and immediately rallied behind Chigusa. Devil's response was pretty subtle but you could tell something of her old ways kicked in, because she initially went to press the advantage with a DDT before pausing, taking in the crowd's reaction, and instead punching Chigusa in the kidneys. It backfired because pretty quickly Chigusa caught her flush with a wheel kick and Devil's advantage was gone. Later on Devil managed to put Chigusa in a figure-4, and as Chigusa forced the rope break Devil dragged her outside and gave her a shinbreaker on the announce table. It never led to a sustained run of offence necessarily, she never worked over the leg specifically, but it was another example of her embracing frustration in a way Chigusa never would have. Then maybe my favourite part of the match. They both end up on the floor and after they're separated Chigusa gets back in the ring to continue having a wrestling match. Devil instead grabs her trusty kendo stick and stares a hole in Chigusa from the floor. A few years ago she wouldn't have thought twice about walloping Chigusa with it but this time she thought twice, thrice, then got up on the apron with it and even took one step in the ring. If you've read one word about Devil Masami's facial expressions then you've read a thousand but you could see every emotion plain as day here and the struggle for her not to submit to her baser instincts was amazing. She dropped the thing and gave Chigusa the respect of continuing a fair contest and she might even have won over a few of those Chigusa diehards in the process. That they were so exhausted and drained by the end that they both decided to go full Necro Butcher and punch each other in the face is the substantial cherry on top. Once again, a hell of a wrestling match. 

GWE 2026 Legwork: The Destroyer (#2)

The Destroyer v The Spirit (All Japan, 7/25/75)

Lovable asshole vs hatable asshole is a pretty damn fun concept and this was a pretty damn fun version of it. I think this is actually the first time I've seen our man Karl Kox as the Spirit and naturally I wouldn't be opposed to seeing more. With two men of such questionable character in there you knew there would be some SHENANIGANS at some point, but before they got to that I liked the fight over the extended hammerlock, how they both tried to wrench on that thing and use leverage, both of them contorted while maneuvering themselves awkwardly in order to make it doubly so for the other guy. Neither refused to give the thing up for several minutes and you could see the struggle in it, the precariousness of their positions, where relenting to reset might as easily lead to the other seizing an advantage. When it does lead to a stalemate it's Destroyer who dabbles in the shithousery first, kneeling on Spirit's throat while protesting with the ref' about something or other. It's also Destroyer who throws nasty punches and body shots first. So you can maybe understand why the Spirit decided to load up the mask and start throwing headbutts. You can't give someone like the Destroyer an inch because you know fine well they'll take a mile. Destroyer bleeding through the white mask will always be a cool visual and I love the way he sold how rocked he was, stumbling forward while trying and failing to grab the ropes, that blood stain blooming with every shot. I also love how the crowd knew immediately that he was getting ready to fight fire with fire in that second fall. Spirit never should've let him duck out the ring to recuperate. A young Jumbo Tsuruta as Fuerza Guerrera facilitating all of Destroyer's chicanery ruled and in an alternate universe it was Beyer who took Jumbo under his wing rather than Baba and King's Road became a wonderful amalgamation of Monterrey and Memphis. The third fall being about who can use a hidden object in the meanest way without being caught was pretty great. Many an exceptional headbutt was thrown. And Jumbo acting as the world's greatest Harvey Wippleman is a fun way to finish. I guess where brawn doesn't work, brains will. 

GWE 2026 Legwork: LA Park (#2)

La Parka v Jerry Estrada (AAA, 2/17/95)

The purists may suggest that this has a bit too much horse shit for a title match. I don't think I've ever considered myself a purist of anything in any context but I do know what I like in my lucha title matches. It did have a pretty sizable chunk of horse shit, it must be said. But these are two of wrestling's great horse shit merchants so overall an extremely fun time was had by all, or at least by me which is really all I care about. I loved the primera and honestly, if it followed that track for the remainder then I might've found myself calling this one of the top AAA title matches of the 90s. I can watch Estrada and Parka rile a crowd up all day and before they'd even laid a finger on each other everyone was whipped into a nice frenzy. Estrada wanted the crowd's admiration and got none of it, kicking the ropes in frustration. So he slapped Parka hard enough to drop him and celebrated like it was victory unto itself. 20 years later Parka would've responded with as much violence as you could imagine and probably more to boot, but here he was composed and merely flipped Estrada the bird an inch from his face. Estrada lashed out again, kicking the turnbuckle rather than the ropes, hurting himself in the process. If they'd worked the next five minutes like that I'd have been happy enough, but instead they got to actually wrestling and that was pretty great too. Even if nothing was mind-blowingly fancy or intricate it was cool as a reminder that both guys can work holds. There was a nice sense of struggle; a few sequences where you figured you knew what was about to follow only for Estrada to not budge on something or Parka to drop to his back rather than give up an arm, little things that I thought were really cool. Most of the Parka I've watched recently is fun WCW midcard Parka or later career blood-soaked maniac Parka. I couldn't even tell you the last time I watched title match Parka. Estrada is a favourite of mine anyway and I always like title match Jerry Estrada. The Lizmark match was far closer to what you'd call a traditional title match, at least in that he behaved himself and chose to work the thing clean, and while he most certainly veered in another direction the longer this went he was more straight-laced in the opening fall. He'd only been wrestling a few years longer than Parka but it was El Puma who felt like the veteran here. The crowd undoubtedly got to him, but their scorn never truly shackled him and he got over it quickly enough. Even if he WANTED their approval it was obvious he didn't NEED it (and after a few minutes I think he stopped even wanting it). Parka played to them in a way where it was obvious he cared and maybe more than he should've, even for a top drawer showman. At one point he spent too long pissing about dancing and Estrada took his head off. The ending to the primera was spectacular, as it looked like Parka learned his lesson and realised maybe the key to the fans' heart was winning, choosing NOT to celebrate after sending Estrada to the floor and instead following up with a bullet tope. He flew into this thing a little higher than normal, almost horizontal above Estrada's head, and it about bent him backwards over the railing. Then they throw the curveball, with Parka trying to follow up in the corner and Estrada casually moving, Parka flying into the ring post. You could see Estrada drew him into it and it was one of those moments that showed his edge in experience. The segunda and tercera never really followed suit and there was a whole bunch of interference from the cornermen, particularly Estrada's, Misterioso. You'd think it was Parka who'd won the first fall the way Estrada and his second went to the cheating because they were choking Parka almost immediately. Volador over in Parka's corner was losing the plot and of course Tirantes was getting pulled all over the place. I was worried it might get a wee bit long in the tooth so I guess I am a title match purist after all because I wanted some more of the wrestling from the primera. They won me around with the finish to the fall, though. If Parka learned a lesson earlier about not playing as much to the crowd then here he went further and took a page out of whatever book Estrada was reading when he drew Parka in before. Parka knew Misterioso was going to grab his legs as he hit the ropes, so he jumped to avoid it, spun around to call Misterioso on it, and when Estrada tried to capitalise Parka knew it was coming. Estrada wound up cleaning out his second and from there Parka pressed home the advantage to tie it up. The tercera leaned even further into the shenanigans and by the end both men saw their surest route to victory as the one that convinced Tirantes they'd been kicked in the balls. Neither had of course, but Parka was very convincing and I'll say one thing, the crowd fucking loved it. That first caida is the sort of cool look at these two in a title match if you want to highlight their versatility. The rest of the match might be the sort of thing that those who think both men were too reliant on bullshit would point to as evidence. I'm personally of a mind that, generally speaking, their reliance on bullshit was perfectly fine, but I'd also be lying if I said I wished they didn't pare away some of it here. I really did like that opening fall.

GWE 2026 Legwork: LA Park

Park is not someone I'm on the fence about. He made my 2016 and he'll make my 2026 list, only quite a bit higher. He was my #60 then and he'll be top 50 this time with room to spare. I need to check out some more of the stuff he's done in the last 10 years, but the Rush feud alone fires him up the list and onto the list of all-time great brawlers while we're at it (if he wasn't on that even before 2016). I also want to revisit some of his 90s WCW stuff - because it's always fun - and there's the stuff from Panama that dropped a while back. He could be top 30, you know. 

La Parka & Psychosis v Rey Misterio Jr & Juventud Guerrera (WCW Nitro, 12/15/97)

Pretty much exactly what you want. Parka is wearing the SWANK black and gold and he and Psychosis are an exceptional pair of bases here. Right away they get to the shithousing and try to bully Juvi with their weight advantage. All four of these could probably work miscommunication spots together in their sleep and several times the rudos bumped into each other while throwing their weight around. Rey and Juvi were obviously hitting some spectacular stuff, some assisted, some flying solo. At various points they ran Parka and Psychosis around or into or over the top of each other and followed it up by jumping with their full bodyweight onto both of them. Parka acting like an idiot on the apron just to get caught with an amazing hurricanrana to the floor ruled. Psychosis tries to hit a top rope body slam on Juventud - while they're both standing up there on the top turnbuckle - and in mid air Juvi somehow reverses it into a fucking Juvi Driver. I've genuinely never seen that before and it was insane. Even Schiavone was flabbergasted. The 450 at the end is a thing of beauty into the bargain. An awesome eight minutes. 

La Parka v Super Calo (WCW Nitro, 9/28/98)

This was Parka in full shithead mode and another really fun performance. He was over like crazy when he strutted and did his thing at the bell, stopping Calo with a hand as the latter tried to get down to the business of a wrestling match. Calo then tried to vault over Park in the corner and Park tried to mule kick him in the balls while Calo was in the air, missed three attempts, so turned around and punted him instead. A man of persistence. They were both fairly laying it in and Park threw one vicious chop that Calo must've wished he had his chest covered for. Calo shows his unsavoury side at the end by walloping the chairman of WCW with his own folding chair. A terrible loser. 

Stone Cold and The Hitman

Bret Hart v Steve Austin (WWF Survivor Series, 11/17/96)

I've always liked this more than the Wrestlemania match and on another re-watch I still do. I've probably watched it every year for the last seven years, always with the intention of writing about it for some project or another, and every year it holds up and every year I write zero words about it. Every year the same things stand out as being great and every year there'll be at least one new cool thing I hadn't picked up on before. I've participated in several best WWF matches ever polls over the many years I've been talking about wrestling on the internet and this match is always near the very top of those lists. No matter how my tastes shift, no matter what I look for in the wrestling I watch, this match always gives me what I want. 

The assertion that this is the closest the WWF ever came to a classic NWA World Title match feels pretty dead on. The first few minutes especially feel like a window into another world where Bret was 10 years younger and worked Jack Brisco in the Omni. I've always loved how they thread elements of escalation through it as well though, to the point where it has an almost 90s All Japan-ish quality. It's pretty much a perfect example of "anything you can do, I can do better", which obviously fits with the theme of Austin being obsessed with bettering Bret 'The Hitman' Hart. They also work in paybacks and revenge spots in really clever, interesting and believable ways (with JR hitting every point on commentary, in what might be his best WWF call ever). They have the early work around armbars and hammerlocks, first with Austin working everything like you'd expect, mean-spirited and venomous, before Bret takes over and shows him how to really do it, wrenching violently on arm-wringers and even mouthing off on Austin at one point. That early hold-working was some of my favourite stuff in the match and it's because they made it feel important, like the sort of thing that could make a difference the longer the match goes, nothing perfunctory about it whatsoever. When they have their first punch exchange Austin wins it pretty handily because he's fuckin Stone Cold Steve Austin and Bret hasn't stepped foot in a ring in nine months, though even if he had it wasn't to throw punches with Stone Cold Steve Austin. When they go back to that later it's Bret who wins the exchange and it feels like he's scaled a mountain, even as bruised and beaten as he was. The hotshot allows Austin to take over for his first run of offence and it leads to some awesome work around Bret's chest and throat, then later once Bret manages to make a sustained comeback he hits his own hotshot, which in turn feels like a genuine momentum-swinger. Austin tries to hit a suplex from the top early and Bret drops him face-first off the ropes (and follows up with a killer TOP rope falling elbow drop), but Austin one-ups him later by going back to it and hitting a monster superplex. Bret comes out on top of an exchange on the floor in the first half by smashing Austin into the barricade, then towards the end Austin pays him back by slingshotting Bret across the announce table. It was a theme that ran through everything and it was always great. 

Austin was also a machine from start to finish. It's one of his best performances and every time I watch this match I'm sort of taken aback by how good he is in it. I thought Bret was great too, a man who'd been out of action for months, at points almost struggling to keep his head above water, but Austin was mesmerising as a man determined to drown him. That stretch of work after the hotshot was tremendous in how laser focused he was on trying to crush Bret's trachea. By the end that had morphed into him basically working over Bret's entire upper body and my favourite spot of the match might've been the Texas Cloverleaf --> whip to the buckles --> Bret's leg giving out leading to him crashing into the post and about wrapping himself around the thing. And of course Austin immediately goes after Bret's lower back with the bow and arrow. Tonnes of really neat little touches throughout as well, which is hardly surprising given the participants. Things like Austin hitting the Stunner but taking an extra second to pull Bret away from the ropes, allowing Bret to kick out and leaving the possibility dangling there about what if he'd covered him right away, which naturally sets up moments in future matches. The Cloverleaf and bow and arrow are great in a broader sense because they're not moves he ever really used, so you can tell he's having to go above and beyond for the occasion. Then he digs ALL the way into his pockets for something he might've otherwise left in the past...only for Bret to call on a counter from his own history. Austin was right on the cusp of being at the top table, but Bret wasn't about to give up his own seat there just yet. A fantastic match and maybe the best either of them ever had. 

GWE 2026 Legwork: The Destroyer

The Destroyer v Rikidozan (JWA, 12/2/63)

I need to figure out what to do with The Destroyer. I think I've watched two Destroyer matches in the last 15 years and given how good he is you wish we had 300 matches of his out there. Just about all of the AWA stuff is clipped up yet he was having amazing matches in Japan from around the same time that we have in full. It's like if we had all of Murdoch's work from Japan but only clips from Mid-South or Houston. Boy that would suck. He'd been wrestling for nearly a decade by this point so hardly a rookie, but only about a year as Destroyer. You could see he was already a fully-fleshed out character, though. Always animated, always engaged. He was a rampant cheating prick in this and even during the referee checks he was talking shit. If you asked Destroyer, everything Rikidozan did was below the belt. No hold could've possibly been applied cleanly, there was always some mask-pulling or something or other going on and Beyer never shut up about it. Just from a hold-working perspective he was as good as I remembered. He'll never sit idle whether he's working from above or below. If I've watched two Destroyer matches in 15 years it's probably been 20 since I watched one of Rikidozan. He was serviceable enough here but pretty much a blank canvas off of which Destroyer could work. At one point I thought of the Eddie/Jericho Fall Brawl '97 match, where you had Guerrero at the peak of his powers working through what turned out to be an awesome match against an opponent that really could've been anybody. Upon reflection that's probably a touch unfair to Rikidozan because obviously this isn't watched by a bajillion people on TV without him and there's an atmosphere in the building that comes with that. There are things he does that would clearly resonate differently coming from someone else. The first time he breaks decorum and stoops to Destroyer's level - raking Destroyer's face with the soles of his boots - gets a massive reaction. The chop he throws to win the second fall was a cannon and clearly something built up as a death strike. But outside of that this was a Destroyer show and if anything it made me excited to watch him against Baba again for the first time in forever. 

The Destroyer v Stan Hansen (All Japan, 10/30/75)

Fun veteran v young bully shithouse. I don't think Hansen's a person who's ever fallen into that "out of sight, out of mind" category but it still always surprises me seeing young Stan Hansen with the surfer hair. He hadn't even been wrestling three years himself here, and even if he wasn't the wrecking ball he'd become you could see he maybe possibly had something about him. He might've been watching '63 Destroyer because he wouldn't shut up here either, always yapping about phantom hair pulls, loudly denying yanking on Destroyer's mask, just constant noise. It was pretty awesome. The holds they worked in and out of weren't particularly fancy, but they did everything with a real snap and it's always a little surprising how quickly Hansen goes flying into those headlock takeovers. That is not a LITHE individual but I'll be fucked if you wouldn't confuse him for a Rey Misterio Jr. (prolly). He goes over sharply for a sunset flip and it will never not be jarring to see Hansen have his shoulders counted clean as a whistle in under 12 minutes. 

GWE 2026 Legwork: MS-1 (#2)

MS-1, Satanico & El Dandy v Alfonso Dantes, Atlantis & Rayo de Jalisco Jr. (EMLL, 3/27/87)

I've watched a chunk of Infernales stuff over the last few months - whenever I've actually had time TO watch anything - and the Satanico/MS-1/Pirata Morgan trio really is about as good as it gets. This was during the period where Morgan had left to form Los Bucaneros and I'm not sure where Masakre was on this particular night, but a 24-year-old El Dandy was a fine stand-in. He might've actually been my favourite guy in the match - a PRECOCIOUS young rudo who did his best to hang with the OGs. Satanico was even announced as the #1 rudo in Mexico and I'm not sure there's ever been a point where he came across as anything BUT that. I can't tell you the last time I watched an Alfonso Dantes match. He was barely a couple years shy of retirement here but El Tanque still commanded some by god respect and I love how it took Satanico and MS-1 twisting and biting his arms and fingers at the same time to get him to his knees. Satanico applying a top wristlock and headbutting the hand is just one of those things that separates him from 99% of wrestlers in history. Dandy and Atlantis had some absolutely killer exchanges and you sort of forget how much of a bump freak skinny Roberto Gutierrez was. He got monkey flipped damn near fully across the ring three times and then took a fucking absurd corner bump to the floor, fittingly at the hands of Atlantis. He went up almost vertically as Atlantis propelled him over, then landed fully horizontal with a ridiculous splat. Dandy was also throwing some of those world class punches and there was one incredible moment where Rayo tried to go at him, MS-1 came in to double up, but Dandy cleaned Rayo's clock with a string of hooks and MS-1 threw a hand up like "well I guess the wee fella's got this one!" The tecnico comeback starts immediately into the segunda and I loved MS-1's sell of being rammed into the ring apron, catching the edge of that advertising board right at the top of his glute and hobbling away from an advancing Rayo. Atlantis and Dandy had some stellar moments around this point as well, including a rapid fast quebradora on the floor where Dandy almost got spun out his boots. Then he went flying into the ring board like a mad man just as Rayo punched MS-1 all the way up the aisle. The tercera wasn't long but it was super heated and the last 30 seconds were perfect, with Rayo crushing MS-1 with a placha and both Satanico and Dandy getting their comeuppance via the Tapatia and Atlantida respectively. A total blast. 

NWA Classics 24/7 #30

Jose Lothario & Al Madril v Dick Murdoch & Killer Brooks (Houston Wrestling, 2/10/78)

How about Dickie Murdoch and the Supersock for a dream match! Murdoch's boots were the swankest you've ever laid eyes on but you would be a FOOL to think he wasn't about to punch people in the nose here all the same. Brooks is absolute top tier scuzz, the sort of dirtbag who sits in the corner of a bar drinking the same beer for three hours, people-watching a bunch of people fully aware of his presence yet equally hesitant to acknowledge it. You don't turn your gaze to that corner booth. Of course Lothario and Madril encounter those sorts on the regular. The best way to deal with a wretch like Tim Brooks is crack him in the face. Still, Brooks has been doing this too long not to have a counterstrike up his snot-coated sleeve and you know Murdoch - his cousin, according to Boesch - has a trick or two up his own. They end up spending most of the first fall working over Madril's leg, which they get to initially by smashing him in the kneecap with the edge of a chair. And then just when you think Lothario is about to clean house off the hot tag, Murdoch shuts him down IMMEDIATELY with an uppercut. I almost gasped, firstly because a Dick Murdoch uppercut is one of the greatest things in wrestling, but also because I'd have bet the house on Lothario being the one to throw it. It even leads to the heels taking the first fall and sometimes a cool wrinkle like that makes you want to see that babyface comeback even more. Sure enough the second fall is quick as the babyfaces even it up with a sunset flip, then going into the third Murdoch gets popped in the mouth and his sell of losing a tooth is pretty much exquisite. He asks Bronko Lubich to check for gaps and by this point the crowd want ALL of his teeth to be loosened so the third fall has the sort of heat you just don't see anymore. This ruled. Murdoch v Lothario would easily be nine stars, whether it's on a 1978 curve or a 2028 curve. 

Fiera and Silver King - mano a mano!

La Fiera v Silver King (CMLL, 2/7/97)

Really fun mano a mano match. CMLL was so good in '97, with such an unbelievably stacked roster, that things like this fly under the radar. These two were on the same side of a trios match the week before and I'm not sure what happened to have them at each other's throat, but they wasted no time going for it right away. Well Silver King wasted no time as he jumped Fiera as the latter was taking off his leather jacket. Those sleeves must've been TIGHT because he couldn't get the thing off and Silver King just kept kicking the shit out of him. King hooked him between the middle and bottom ropes and smashed his face into the ring board, Fiera unable to defend himself. Then King gave him a baseball slide dropkick to the back of the head and Fiera, arms still in the straightjacket of his own making, splattered face-first into the floor. It took an elderly gentleman in the front row to help Fiera extricate himself from the jacket but after that he was ready for sweet revenge. Even as he was sort of beginning to wind down - at least by lucha standards and CERTAINLY for a luchador not yet 40 years old - Fiera could throw spin kicks with the best of them. He also wanted to make up for time lost being stuck in his jacket and the ref' had to disqualify him at the end of the primera, intent on pummeling Silver King as he was. There were lots of nasty, uncooperative exchanges here. Both wound up throwing punches on the top turnbuckle and you could see Fiera struggling to balance, but rather than cut bait he just tried to shove Silver King to the floor, and as he did it he went toppling out after him, basically taking a flat back bump from the top buckle to the Arena Coliseo hardwood. Silver King winning two straight with a low blow gave me confidence that it led to a wagers match. Sure enough it did, six weeks later in Arena Mexico, but as is the lucha libre's wont to giveth as much as it taketh away, every match from that show OTHER than this one seems to be available. 

We kick of 2026 with some glorious lucha libre

Los Dandys v Mandibula Jr, Maulee Jr & Arana Negra Jr (Cuernavaca, 2/27/22) 

Look, it's Maulee Jr's world and we're all merely living in it. If you're surprised at that being the case then let me tell you, it would've been news to me not but 20 minutes before I finished watching this. Honestly I had no idea who any of these guys were. I almost certainly never would've stumbled onto this match if it weren't for Rob Viper's Season of Giving entry on Boxing Day just gone by (Charles' Wrestling Playlists truly is the gift that keeps on giving). Don't know which promotion this is from, only that it happened in Cuernavaca, again thanks to Rob's short blurb on the match. And it was full blown awesome from beginning to end. Maulee was a revelation, a skinny classic-style tecnico flier in a cut-off t-shirt zipping all over the place at warp speed, hitting spectacular twisting takeovers and ranas, getting huge height on bumps, landing his big dive in the tercera spectacularly, it was just a tremendous performance from a guy I had no clue existed. In the final fall he and one of Los Dandys got into what initially looked like your standard modern day strike exchange. Maulee threw a chop that did not land particularly hard and asked for his Dandy adversary to return the favour. So the latter obliged and Maulee got crushed with one brutal forearm. There was no strike exchange to be had, Maulee's youthful exuberance (he might be 52 for all I know) got him shut down, but he showed he was wise beyond his years (he could be 63) and never tried that shit again, instead letting his grace and speed do the talking. Los Dandys were a really fun trio of bruiser rudos, basing for everything really well and laying out a beating when the switch was flipped. It's been a few days since I watched this now and I wish I could talk about a few more of the particulars, but either way if you're one of the 12 people who stumble upon this blog and think this sounds interesting, I'd be shocked if you were disappointed. 

NWA Classics 24/7 #29

Jose Lothario v Krusher Kruschev (Houston Wrestling, 8/31/84)

This was all about the punch. Everybody knows Lothario has that killshot in his locker and Kruschev wants nothing to do with it. In the early going he stalls and forces the ref' to step in whenever Lothario cocks that fist. Lothario cocks the fist many times as Kruschev keeps being a shithead and outright cheating. You know what it's all building to and obviously that first haymaker is a doozy. Lothario in Houston is like Lawler in Memphis or Colon in Puerto Rico. It's a special kind of connection that very few wrestlers have ever had; that legendary status in a particular area where the people just live and die with everything they do. There's one old gentleman in a straw hat front row and you can imagine he'd seen Jose work a hundred thousand times. Kruschev engaging in a fist fight was not the surest route to victory and that final uppercut was supreme. 

Adrian Street v Rick McCord (Houston Wrestling, 8/31/84)

Pretty much an Adrian Street show. Considering I haven't watched any Street in a while now I kind of loved it. McCord could've been any old warm body off the side of the road and this would've worked. Street's shtick is a hoot - he prances around, thrusts his pelvis in the direction of the referee during the pre-match checks, plants the lips on McCord and everyone just eats it up. When McCord finally puts him on his arse the pop is such that you know Street could've had them reacting for absolutely anybody. 

GWE 2026 Legwork: MS-1

The 2026 Greatest Wrestler Ever project is a mere five months away, so the true supernerds among us are already thinking about our top 100 list. There are a handful of people I either want to deep dive before ballots are due, or revisit for the first time in a while as a refresher. MS-1 is one of those people. He's a guy who barely missed out on my list in 2016 despite being involved in one of the five greatest matches there's ever been (the Chicana match, obviously), then when I went back and rejigged my list in 2021 I felt like a fool for leaving him off. Now it's a case of seeing how high I can put him rather than whether he'll be there or not. 

Los Infernales v Atlantis, Lizmark & Rayo de Jalisco Jr. (CMLL, 5/15/92)

What a tremendous Infernales show. They were rocking the SWANK purple tights so you knew this was going to be special and sure enough their rudo mugging in the primera caida was an absolute clinic in such things. They didn't mess about for a second and one of the referees almost got caught in the crossfire, squashed as he was between Rayo and the turnbuckles while our boy MS-1 tried to choke the life from him. MS-1 has an awesome choke, getting extra nasty with it by simultaneously driving his knee dangerously low while Rayo is prone in the corner. I'm not sure if it was MS-1 or Satanico who started this, but one of them decided to pull Rayo's fingers apart and ram his hand repeatedly into the top rope. It looked nasty as fuck and whoever did it first is irrelevant because they both did it and reveled in Rayo's misery. The Infernale triple teams to close out the fall were all top drawer and even the celebrations were perfect, Satanico atop Pirata Morgan's shoulders as the latter pins Atlantis, MS-1 flexing the biceps as the ref' counts three. MS-1's top rope splash was a thing of beauty too. It's been a minute since I've watched an Infernales trios match and man was the Satanico/MS-1/Pirata Morgan version of that team sensational. I initially thought the tecnico comeback to start the segunda was a wee bit abrupt, mostly because I was hoping that the rudos would drag it out a bit longer so the eventual comeuppance would land even sweeter. But honestly you forget about that pretty much immediately as this was a great tecnico comeback and the crowd were scorching for all of it. They ran through a thousand sequences and the Infernales were every bit as amazing getting run ragged in this fall as they were running the tecnicos ragged in the previous one. Pirata Morgan took about four ludicrous bumps and got himself hip tossed fifty feet out the ring to the floor. MS-1 flies across the ring with a picture perfect monkey flip bump then frantically points to his winky as if he was fouled. The decisions come in quick succession to end the fall and Atlantis' moonsault/cradle cherry on top was gorgeous. The Infernales weren't about to let the tercera get away from them in the same way and I love how they immediately tried to rip the mask off of Rayo, almost succeeding if not for a stern referee intervention. Rayo getting his revenge by scoring the fall at the end is just good pro wrestling, as your granny would say. Pirata Morgan selling his eye socked after Atlantis kneedrops him in the forehead is also good pro wrestling and why he will be top 40 come voting. 

Hashimoto v Fujiwara!

Shinya Hashimoto v Yoshiaki Fujiwara (New Japan, 6/1/94)

This was Fujiwara, four or five years past his prime, challenging for the IWGP title for the first and only time in his career. In contrast, Hashimoto was bang in the middle of his own prime and a thresher if there ever was one, so Fujiwara had to use all of his considerable guile and aggression, his limitless smarts and dig deep into his bag of tricks. He even had a bum leg, judging by the brace on it. In that situation it makes sense to go for your main weapon as early as possible and if Hashimoto thought he was in a fight with a guy past his sell-by date he probably reconsidered as soon as Fujiwara grabbed the armbar. When Hashimoto opted to kick Fujiwara in the lungs rather than give him a clean break a minute later, you knew the old master had gotten under his skin. The crowd got on Hashimoto's case after that and it's sort of amazing how Fujiwara managed to be a sympathetic figure while simultaneously choking Hashimoto with both hands around his throat. The pacing of this was such that every moment felt big, and these are guys who know how to milk every exchange, every glance, every gesture. When Hashimoto wraps Fujiwara's bandaged up knee around the rope and yanks at it - to another chorus of boos - Fujiwara rasps in clear pain while Hashimoto points to his own shoulder like "we can both be pricks if you want to play it that way." Nobody eats a barrage of roundhouse kicks like Fujiwara and nobody throws a barrage of roundhouse kicks like Hashimoto so the latter trying to kick the former in the lungs was amazing, Fujiwara trying and more or less failing to catch those shots, the majority of them getting through what used to be a world class defence. Although in fairness, maybe not even Maeda could swing like Hashimoto. He sure couldn't drop someone with a DDT like Hashimoto and that first one was absolutely putrid. Fujiwara half kicking out of the second was instinctual but for all intents and purposes he was dead in the water. I guess the ref' agreed. 

Duggan v the One Man Gang! With a chain!

Hacksaw Duggan v One Man Gang (Chain Match) (Houston, 1/9/87)

I thought this was a tremendous match with an awesome Duggan performance. He gets clubbed in the head with a chain-wrapped fist right at the bell and his selling of never quite being fully recovered after that was so good. His timing on hope spots, the way he'll milk each shot, how he sells fatigue and blood-loss and the general WEIGHT (literally and figuratively) of the Gang, his crowd connection, obviously the punches, it was top drawer all across the board. He was bleeding inside about eight seconds. Whenever he tried to fight back he'd rock the Gang, but Gang is gigantic and Duggan is fighting uphill so it would only take one big blow from the OMG to cut him off. I loved how when Duggan could string together more than a single shot Gang would try to just roll out to the floor to get away, wisely opting against getting into more of a brawl than absolutely necessary with a blood-fuelled maniac. When he finally does manage to get away Duggan just rolls out with him and recklessly throws a chair at his head. Everything Duggan does has the crowd going nuts but his big scoop slam - after milking two attempts before that - ruled and his roar after it was incredible. Every time Gang tries to squash Duggan in the corner and he hits the buckles it sounds like the ring is about to break. All of the attempts at touching the four turnbuckles get huge heat and the roof about comes off whenever Duggan can string three together. The struggle over those moments really stands out, the way neither guy is allowed to just walk over and touch the turnbuckles without a fight. The best example might be when Duggan is trying to drag Gang over by the chain to he can touch the buckle, his other hand using the top rope as an anchor, looking like Captain America in that scene where Bucky's trying to fly away in the helicopter. Finish ruled too. Akbar trips Duggan as he's running the ropes (which followed an incredible leaping clothesline to Gang) and as he falls the OMG pulls a length of chain taut, Duggan landing throat-first across it. Gang then follows up with a chain-assisted clothesline and huge splash. Duggan will not relent until he succumbs to sheer exhaustion and the crowd were with him every second he tried to pull the Gang back with that chain. I loved this. 

Magnum v Nikita - for all the marbles!

Magnum TA v Nikita Koloff (JCP, 8/23/86)

Man if this ain't perfect pro wrestling. It's match 7 in the best of 7 series for the US title, and even if some of it is probably me putting things together in my head, seeing things that the wrestlers maybe weren't actively aiming to present, I loved the progression from where the series started seven weeks earlier (even if we only have some clips of match 1 and nothing from matches 2 and 3). Nikita had gone up 3-0 and Magnum needed to fight his way back to level footing. Match 4 at the end of the Bash tour had everyone on edge and Magnum worked it early with a lot more hesitancy than normal, cautious of making even one mistake, refusing to be goaded into anything while Nikita was confident and relaxed with his substantial amount of breathing room. Magnum was on the back foot for most of that match, got bloodied up pretty badly, and Nikita took his time punishing him. Magnum managed to pull it out in the end with a sunset flip without ever looking like the real force he was. After that though he rifled off two more wins (we don't have match 5 but match 6 is tremendous) and he had momentum coming into the decider. There was a tension to this that was palpable, right from the lock up at the start that was as rugged as any lock up you'll see. Obviously the crowd was going to be molten for everything but the wrestlers treated every action with the importance it deserved. The fight over the hammerlock that Magnum turns into a pinning situation, Nikita using his gargantuan neck to bridge out, Magnum trying to roll him over onto his shoulders, it had WEIGHT. They both roll to the floor with the hold still applied and I loved Magnum just throwing Nikita shoulder-first into the post, then perching himself up top before coming off with an axe handle, setting the tone and pushing the pace early like he wasn't a couple matches ago. Confidence can be a hell of a performance-enhancer and Magnum had it in spades. When Nikita takes over he works the back and I know these Crockett crowds were rabid anyway, but watch how Magnum sells and teases comebacks and layers in hope spots and tell me that guy wasn't fucking amazing. The crowd connection he had was truly special. The place erupts when he breaks the bearhug and then the last couple minutes are as good as it gets, from what Magnum and Nikita are doing in the ring to what Ivan is doing on the floor, Tony and David on commentary, the crowd's reactions, even Tommy Young. Magnum responding to Ivan grabbing him by the hair from the floor by rolling out and hitting a piledriver on concrete is one of the most badass things I've ever seen. Magnum stood up after it, paused for a brief second to take in the crowd, and right there everyone in that building would've gone to war with him had he asked them to. Then there's the finish, with Nikita wrapping the chain around his arm and decapitating Magnum while another Russian tries to interfere, Crockett in hysterics as Tommy Young counts the fall, Schiavone repeating "oh, no" in an almost hushed state of shock. That crowd reaction was pure outrage and immediately people were pressing the barricades. I half expected a riot, FULLY expected the ring to be pelted with trash, and sure enough the latter happened while the former was narrowly avoided. "The Russian nightmare has come true." 

Hogan/Steamboat team! Bitta AJW!

Hulk Hogan & Ricky Steamboat v Randy Savage & Honky Tonk Man (WWF, 1/5/87)

Super fun pairings that made for a super fun if sort of low key match. Savage barely made any physical contact with anyone and even still he was a force of nature, constant motion, everywhere at once. The babyfaces couldn't get their hands on him because any time they tried to he'd run away, but he was always ready to jump in and take a cheapshot or jump off the top and Hogan and Steamboat needed to keep their head on a swivel. It was one of the best apron-working performances I've seen in ages. Honky was a stooge for the backest of back rows and got clobbered up and down the place. Steamboat was Steamboat in peril for a few minutes and Hogan was an electric Big Man On Campus. A good time had by all.

Chigusa Nagayo v Devil Masami (AJW, 1/9/87)

This was really good. I had a decent idea coming in that it was going to a draw but they never telegraphed that and the pacing and STRUGGLE always made it feel like they were actually trying to win. The grappling early had a nice sense of urgency but also felt choppy in a good way, how they'd intersperse bursts of movement with pauses so they could scowl at each other and consider taking things down a saltier path. Devil was the one who folded first in that regard as she ran Chigusa along the apron into the ring post, then after she recovered on the floor Chigusa stared at Devil with pure contempt, which I think Devil took some satisfaction in. From there they moved away from the matwork as Devil went after Chigusa's leg to some big time heat. There was one point where Chigusa was writhing on the mat and Devil just stomped on her ankle. About halfway in, after getting wheel kicked in the face once too often for her liking, Devil went outside and picked up a stick that she very obviously wanted to use as a weapon. So Chigusa grabbed a chair and waited in the ring, both of them at a standstill until Devil finally chose to keep things on the level and get rid of the stick. The final stretch was pretty heated and had enough selling of fatigue that the back and forth nature of it worked for me. Once or twice Chigusa almost caught Devil with a cradle and Devil's expression of surprise and rage without being overly hammy is the sort of thing only a handful of wrestlers have in their locker.

Dump Matsumoto & Bull Nakano v Jumping Bomb Angels (AJW, 1/9/87)

Very different from Chigusa/Devil in that while that match was rough yet ultimately a fair contest, this was sometimes fair - or at least more fair than many a Dump tag - but also had people getting smashed with a stick or clonked on the head with a metal bucket. I like how the JBA were in no mood for Dump and Bull's shit though, not fighting fire with fire necessarily, but instead by dragging things back ON the rails to keep it moving as a wrestling contest. Which was pretty badass. They also tried to kick the shit out of them and that was cool too. Dump will always revert to type and try to cause mayhem and Itsuki Yamazaki was fully at the end of her tether. Her and Dump have history and Yamazaki was in no mood to be dealing with that nonsense again, and I love her making a point of using wrestling moves to put Dump in her place rather than resorting to the weapons. Tateno wasn't quite a whipping girl but she wasn't driven by furious vengeance the same way Yamazaki was and I guess that was borne out by how Dump and Bull could take over by going after her a little easier than they could with Yamazaki. I'm not entirely sure what the finish was all about but it looked like there was some ref' shenanigans and an official sitting ringside taking umbrage so Dump hit him with a stick. As soon as that bell rings at the end, best of luck getting Dump and Bull to agree to a restart. 

Flair v Nikita

Ric Flair v Nikita Koloff (JCP, 1/4/87)

I liked this a lot. I guess it's unfair to look at it this way, but at this point I sort of judge a Flair match based on how fresh it felt as opposed to how good it might actually have been. Or you know, something like that. As an example, I watched the Flair/Windham match from Battle of the Belts '86 a few months ago and I sat there thinking it was good and all but I'd kind of seen it a hundred times before. And look, this match was not something particularly unique. By '87 Flair wasn't really about to have a clean wrestling match where he starts out sporting the way he might've a few years earlier against Butch Reed in Mid-South, and this pretty much followed the broad template of that except Flair was a rampant shithead from the start. He didn't slowly go off the rails and start cheating. He was never on them to begin with and he never even feigned scrupulousness. You could probably call most of the momentum swings and major story beats and yet...it felt different enough overall that it stood out. Maybe the structure just worked for me. You knew Nikita was going to walk tall in the early stages and Flair wanted no part of it. I think he'd begged off twice by the 5-minute call. He got Nikita in the corner and threw a chop, Nikita slowly shook his head to demonstrate his IMPERVIOUSNESS and Flair just dipped out immediately. He did that at several points, another time when Nikita ran through him and pointed at his sickle arm. Eventually Nikita got fed up enough that he went out after him and clotheslined the post. Accidentally, I assume. Flair's work on it was brief but good stuff and I like how he was for using the ropes any chance he got. He had holds applied close to them often enough that I'm thinking they made a point of playing that up, how badly Flair needed whatever advantage he could get against Nikita. I liked Nikita's selling of it as well, letting the arm dangle low as if the shoulder had popped out and using his other hand to hit what was basically a running chokeslam. Nikita making his comeback by just throwing Flair shoulder-first into the turnbuckles was cool and led to some revenge arm work. In the back half Nikita gets busted open and Flair working the cut was another great if brief little segment. When he went for the running kneedrop and Nikita caught his leg I figured they were going for the route of Flair having his own hold put on him a little earlier than usual, but Flair countering it by just clawing Nikita's eyes ruled. Of course Nikita puts it on him eventually but I like that they teased it first, then let Flair get properly frantic after being busted open himself, before Nikita locked it in later. They had me biting on the roll-up in the corner with Flair's feet on the ropes because I was certain that was how they were for ending it, especially after Flair had just narrowly avoided being pinned with the sickle by rolling his foot under the rope. In the end he got DQd for chucking Nikita out the ring and in doing so might've came off tougher than had he won through shenanigans. This was really good, you know. 

Lawler v Bam Bam - a Texas Death Match Classic

Jerry Lawler v Bam Bam Bigelow (Texas Death Match) (Memphis, 9/7/86)

It's been almost 17 years since I last watched this. I guess I forgot just how good it was because I came away from it this time thinking it might be THE Jerry Lawler masterpiece. Maybe not his best MATCH - although a phenomenal one all the same - but his performance in it is about as good as any I've ever seen. It wasn't a carry job by any stretch and I'll talk about Bigelow in a minute, because he was amazing here too. The King was mesmerizing, though. The way he sold all of Bigelow's shots, the way he showed hesitancy and how cautious he was in engaging with Bam Bam, the way he communicated the STRUGGLE of going up against this guy, it was exceptional. Lawler's start was cagey, maybe because he knew deep down that he was indeed a slow starter and if he let Bigelow build up steam early it was over. So he picked his moments and his weapon of choice was the jab. Those shots stung more than anything, certainly not enough to put Bigelow down, but they clearly annoyed him and maybe Lawler was using them to goad the big fella into something. When it goes to the floor Lawler finds himself up against the ring post - perhaps through happenstance, perhaps through strategy - and when Bam Bam throws a punch Lawler ducks and Bigelow cracks the post. When they get back in the ring Lawler offers up a test of strength and I love how Bigelow really wanted to go for it, probably because he knew he'd win it without much trouble, but that's with two hands and he only had one good one at that point. Eventually he bites anyway, shielding that bad hand as long as possible. Then Lawler dotted him with a hook like you and I and probably even Bigelow always figured. And really this was an amazing Bam Bam performance. He'd been wrestling for all of 13 months so it would hardly be unfair to suggest Lawler was leading this, but it wasn't Lawler throwing all of Bigelow's shots for him and it wasn't Lawler bumping around for his own punches. Going through the '86 Crockett footage I've said about a dozen times that Magnum TA looked like the future of the business, but Bigelow looked absolutely spectacular here and there's a universe where he stays in Memphis another few years and Magnum never gets into the car accident and Magnum v Bam Bam for the world title headlines Starrcade '89. After Lawler duped him into the test of strength Bigelow obviously decided he wasn't about to get popped in the mouth again and from there he went to the headbutts. These were like the Ted DiBiase fist drops of falling headbutts, just crushing Lawler's ribcage with every blow. Sometimes he'd jump into them and those ones looked even nastier. His punches to the gut looked awesome too, lifting Lawler fully off the ground like he was trying to punch a hole through him. He never forgot about that bad hand either. Even though he threw body shots with it, punches to the belly are not the same as punches to the skull, and when he lamped Lawler with a haymaker to the jaw late on he immediately sold the hand. Despite losing several falls Lawler won't stay down, and you can see Bigelow start to tire the longer it goes. In the last third of the match he just lay on Lawler with a sleeper hold that was more rear naked choke, really grinding Lawler down with his weight while preserving as much energy as possible for another rally. When Lawler gets cut open Bigelow even applies the Iron Claw and starts biting the cut so that was another awesome thing in this match. Even before Lawler makes the big comeback Bigelow is visibly gassed, throwing his hands up in frustration and sagging against the ropes as Lawler beats yet another 10-count, and then when he does rip the strap down you wonder if getting beaten from pillar to post wasn't part of the plan. Maybe he'd survived long enough for Bigelow to punch himself out. A truly exceptional match and one of the very best of the decade.