Boston to Toronto, a couple 80s WWF CLASSICS (maybe)

Hulk Hogan v Randy Savage (WWF, 5/24/86)

Without being the old man yelling at clouds, I don't know if there's anything in 2026 pro wrestling that could replicate this. A pair of characters - larger than life, as large as they come - like these two, an environment in a place in time like the Boston Garden in the middle of 1986. It's almost impossible to me that there could be something with this much raw energy, charisma, personality. They make physical contact maybe three times in the first few minutes; it's all stalling and heat-building and the place is absolutely off its chops. Hogan annihilates Savage with a shoulder tackle and mimics Savage's pose where he draws a circle in the air, and of course Savage is apoplectic. Hogan wants a piece of him and Savage keeps ducking out the ring, jawing with fans, trying to compose himself despite being a man who has never looked composed for one single second, not tonight, maybe not ever. Savage will literally throw himself over the top rope to get away, spit on Hogan, slink out the ring as the place is bursting at the seams for Hogan to ragdoll him. Just sublime WORKING~, the sort of thing your Meltzers of the world would scoff at because no actual moves were performed, missing the whole point as usual. Hogan spitting on Savage is worth a hunner space flying tiger drops. Savage's frustration tactics finally turn the tide when he uses Elizabeth as a shield, Hogan picking her up - with the tenderness of a man but half his size - and placing her out of dodge, chasing Savage around ringside before getting caught with an elbow sliding back in. Savage is a maniac hitting double axe handles from everywhere, inside the ring, outside the ring, inside the ring TO outside the ring; is it any wonder his knees exploded? The real wonder is how it took over a decade of him doing this for it to happen. Savage never did learn not to use the flying elbow as it only wakens Hogan from his slumber, but I guess they wanted to save going right into the big boot/legdrop finish for the grandaddy of them all and the match keeps going after the Hulk Up. Hogan clobbers the ref' with a clothesline and Savage nails him with the title belt, yet again jumping off the turnbuckle to the floor outside. Hogan's choice of white ring attire pays dividends as his trunks are covered in blood pretty quickly for an amazing visual. You can also buy that Savage thought a count out would win him the belt. There's no way a man so ADHD-riddled would be paying attention to the pre-match instructions. The post-match is amazing too, with Hogan carrying Savage back to the ring over his shoulder, the crowd ready for him to take his pound of flesh, Savage managing to escape, Hogan posing anyway, the crowd leaving satisfied. This might be their best match.

The Islanders & Bobby Heenan v British Bulldogs & Koko B. Ware (WWF, 4/24/88)

There was no way this wouldn't be a hoot. Unless of course you ran it in Trump Plaza in front of a buncha CORPORATES, I guess. But this is the Maple Leaf Gardens and no such corporates were present. I assume. It started with the tease of Koko v Heenan which is a dream match if ever one existed, but of course it's merely a ruse as Heenan does not want any part of the bird man. So instead we get Koko v Tama which is right up there as the DREAMIEST of Whiskey & Wrestling dream matches. Tama is a shit-talking menace in this, telling a fan "shut your fuckin' mouth, sucker!" then suggesting that Koko's hard head is nothing compared to the strength of a Samoan cranium. They trade a couple headbutts, a contest that crowns no victor, so Koko pops him with some Koko Ware punches and we all surmise that the Mega Powers really should've exploded in the midcard and Tama v Koko B. Ware should've headlined Wrestlemania 5. Tama is a great apron-worker, so expressive and always engaged, jumping around in celebration when his team have the advantage, frantic and agitated when the shoe is on the other foot. I liked Dynamite hitting a falling headbutt on Haku then selling his own head realising a mistake was made. Dynamite had obviously wrestled enough Samoans to know that headbutting one is foolish. There was no need for him to do it other than the fact he's the Dynamite Kid and it's what he does. You can lead a horse to water but as Hemingway would always say, some horses prefer piss. Dynamite really is the progenitor of the Wall Osrepay line. Koko in peril rocks and Heenan goes to choke him with the rope hidden in his singlet, goads Dynamite into the ring because if anybody can be goaded into rash decisions it's the Dynamite Kid, then Heenan and the Islanders put the boots to Koko behind the ref's back. Gorilla was incensed, naturally. Eventually Koko comes back and chases Heenan out of town, which turns the match into a regular 2v2 for a while. I loved Haku's triple backbreaker on Dynamite, and even if he's dumb as rocks Dynamite is a pretty great face in peril. Heenan coming back out to once again be a thorn in Koko's side was inevitable, for he is the Brain and of course he's going to leave his mark. Surely they ran that as a singles match on the house show circuit somewhere. Surely they ran Koko v Tama one night when the Bulldogs showed up unfit for purpose. This was a blast. 

Lawler & Bam Bam v Rich & Idol!

Jerry Lawler & Bam Bam Bigelow v Austin Idol & Tommy Rich (No DQ) (Memphis, 3/9/87) 

This was a newly unearthed piece of insanity that appeared a couple years ago and gave us another installment of one of the best US feuds of the 80s. It comes off the back of Rich and Idol yanking Lawler into the ring post by the legs, putting Lawler on the shelf for a bit with a ruptured testicle. I guess Lawler then recruited the biggest lunatic he could find in pursuit of revenge, and for the next few weeks the feud is built around both teams trying to volley each other's balls through their ribcage. They waste no time getting to the craziness early on, Rich pulling a Toby Klein or perhaps simply a Tommy Rich and bleeding everywhere after maybe 90 seconds? He was an amazing bump machine for Bigelow, who for his part looked phenomenal tearing up furniture, throwing punches and people alike all over the place, a real force of nature. He hardly went on to have a nothing career, but he's also someone who might never have looked as good as they did in their rookie year. It might've been an ARTISTIC choice on his part, maybe a product of Memphis using him differently than other places, but he definitely never came across as this much of a beast anywhere else. While this is going on Lawler and Idol pair off and fight their way up the aisle, slamming each other into the back wall. It was chaos from the jump and nobody does chaos like Memphis. We get a nice lucha-ish rudo comeback with Rich hitting a flying clothesline on Lawler while Idol catches Bam Bam low, the sort of thing that was sudden yet emphatic enough to tell you the tide had swung. Idol goes back to the well that brought them here by trying to yank Lawler's privates into the post again and I love the fight Lawler puts up to avoid it, really milking the struggle before finally kicking Idol back and into the barricade. Obviously Lawler's punches don't need to be mentioned but it's still worth talking about his running punch as Tommy Rich lay halfway out the ring. Lawler even bit him which is something you didn't tend to see very often, not least because you get the sense Rich was a little too old for him. The finish is amazing and the only time I remember seeing Lawler hit a top rope fist drop TO THE WILLY, then the madness continues after the bell as Bigelow goes flying through one of those big thick blue Mid-South Coliseum ringside tables trying to splash Rich. Idol repeatedly stabs Lawler in the head with a spike and these were maybe the nastiest spike shots this side of Jimmy Jacobs. 

Jerry Lawler & Bam Bam Bigelow v Austin Idol & Tommy Rich (Double Jeopardy Match) (Memphis, 3/16/87)

These four could've wrestled 50 times and it wouldn't have been enough. This has two separate rings, basically a 1v1 match going on in each, but it still held to some of the norms of a traditional tag match, albeit with relaxed rules. Rather than your regular tags in and out you get switches of partners between rings, though both teammates are only allowed to be in the ring at the same time for 60 seconds. Rich waits marginally longer than the last match before tasting the blade and his first bit of offence is kneeing Bigelow in the balls out of a collar and elbow. Bigelow really sells the hell out of every ball shot in this feud, his true kryptonite as he can mostly brick wall everything else the heels throw at him and look like a monster doing it. Those two at least made half an attempt at a wrestling hold to start whereas Lawler and Idol just went right to punching each other in the face. It was of course very glorious, as Lawler and Idol punching each other in the face tended to be. The camera spent most of its time on Bigelow though, and for good reason. He was a fucking maniac again, picking Rich up overhead and dropping him across the announce desk, Rich's tailbone meeting nothing but the unforgiving wood. Everyone gets creative with the double teams and Bigelow hitting a falling headbutt to Idol's balls as Lawler holds him spread-eagle was amazing. Idol selling it was pretty much a thing of beauty, then Bigelow kicks him out the ring like a trash bag and does the same falling headbutt to Rich. The heels eventually take over when Idol cracks Lawler in the head with the microphone, then he breaks off a table leg to use as a weapon. He sticks the jagged end in Lawler's head and throws it to Rich who I guess stabs Bigelow in the willy. There were probably half a dozen low blow variations in this and they were all incredible. The best of all might've been after Idol and Rich tried to post Lawler again, only for Lawler to reverse it, tie Idol in the ropes, lift his legs and punt him low. The match gets thrown out when Idol and Rich handcuff Bigelow to the ropes and try to kill Lawler with a noose, several babyfaces coming to their aid only to get punched in the neck or hit in the head with a bin lid by feral Tommy Rich. Bigelow is IRATE in the post-match and it's a pretty spectacular scene, fans scattering in terror as he flings barricades and chairs everywhere, Lawler scrambling and failing to restrain him before Jerry Jarrett has a gargantuan lawsuit on his hands. 

GWE 2026: The Whiskey & Wrestling Top 100

Here we go again. The nerds love their wee lists. 

I imagine if you've somehow stumbled onto this blog of stupidity then you're familiar with the PWO Greatest Wrestler Ever project. It started as the SmarksChoice Greatest Wrestler Ever project way back in 2006, then in 2016 it was adopted by PWO and that's where its home has been ever since. 

Basically a bunch of wrestling hardcores got together and decided to rank all of the wrestlers of forever and now every 10 years a bunch of people vote for their top 100. Folk on twitter and the likes sent in lists as well and Dave Meltzer and some other old pricks got mad about stuff online. 

I never voted in 2006 because Scotland had only just got the internet and besides that my pro wrestling horizons had not quite broadened enough for me to think I could tackle it properly. I posted my 2016 list here and I was happy with it at the time, and to be honest I'm still fine with it a decade down the line. 2026 me has 10 years of footage-watching on 2016 me so obviously this one I'm happier with, but either way I sort of look at each list as decennial stops on my JOURNEY as a stupid pro wrestling fan. Representations of my tastes over the past 10 years. 

There were about 150 names I wanted to vote for and if I remade the list in a month some of the 50 that didn't make it today would probably make it then. Honestly, that 70-100 range is a crap shoot. Some people who made my list in 2016 never made it this time and a big part of why is really because I haven't watched them since the last vote. Mark Henry and Tajiri and Jose Lothario don't suck because I left them off the list this time around. I probably just haven't watched more than two matches of any of those guys since 2016. I've watched a whole bunch of Masa Kurisu and Magnum TA, though! 

10 years ago I said I wanted to do a blog entry for every wrestler I voted for, talk about why I did, write about a match of theirs, whatever. I did that for approximately zero of those wrestlers, but really, if you're remotely arsed about why I voted for any of the people I did then throw their name in the search bar and it'll pull at least a couple results. I've written SOMETHING about everyone on this list and for the majority of them I've written about many somethings. The world is your oyster. 

Here's to 2036.

1. Negro Casas

2. Genichiro Tenryu

3. Yoshiaki Fujiwara

4. Terry Funk

5. Kiyoshi Tamura

6. Shinya Hashimoto

7. El Hijo del Santo

8. Jerry Lawler

9. El Satanico

10. Mariko Yoshida

11. Stan Hansen

12. Shinobu Kandori

13. Yuki Ishikawa

14. El Dandy

15. Mitsuharu Misawa

16. Buddy Rose

17. Daisuke Ikeda

18. Nick Bockwinkel

19. Eddie Guerrero

20. Takeshi Ono

21. Tully Blanchard

22. Roddy Piper

23. Dick Murdoch

24. Volk Han

25. Tatsumi Fujinami

26. Blue Panther

27. Bryan Danielson

28. Virus

29. Sangre Chicana

30. Rey Mysterio

31. Ricky Morton

32. Pirata Morgan

33. Randy Savage

34. Riki Choshu

35. Aja Kong

36. Naoki Sano

37. Ricky Steamboat

38. Fuerza Guerrera

39. Arn Anderson

40. Ric Flair

41. Jushin Liger

42. Akira Hokuto

43. Barry Windham

44. Bill Dundee

45. Kenta Kobashi

46. Vader

47. Butch Reed

48. Akira Maeda

49. Meiko Satomura

50. Rick Martel

51. LA Park

52. Toshiaki Kawada

53. Bobby Eaton

54. Alexander Otsuka

55. Yoji Anjoh

56. Jumbo Tsuruta

57. Andre the Giant

58. Devil Masami

59. Shawn Michaels

60. Akira Taue

61. Jim Duggan

62. Sgt. Slaughter

63. Steve Austin

64. Black Terry

65. Greg Valentine

66. Kazunari Murakami

67. Bret Hart

68. Hechicero

69. Buzz Sawyer

70. Low Ki

71. Fit Finlay

72. MS-1

73. Emilio Charles Jr.

74. Dick Togo

75. Dustin Rhodes

76. Jerry Estrada

77. Rick Rude

78. Hector Guerrero

79. Invader I

80. Jerry Blackwell

81. Magnum TA

82. Tito Santana

83. Necro Butcher

84. Samoa Joe

85. Koko Ware

86. William Regal

87. Tonga Kid

88. Tarzan Goto

89. Masa Kurisu

90. Yoshihiro Takayama

91. Negro Navarro

92. Austin Aries

93. Atlantis

94. Michael Hayes

95. Mocho Cota

96. Shinjiro Ohtani

97. La Fiera

98. Le Petit Prince

99. Yoshihisa Yamamoto

100. Yumi Ikeshita

Darby v Ospreay!

Darby Allin v Will Ospreay (AEW Dynamite, 12/18/24)

I am not a Will Ospreay guy. I have no animosity towards him personally - I'm not online enough to know anything about him outside of wrestling, don't know if he's mates with any sex offenders, don't know if he's a danger to society, might be the soundest fella in a sea full of deviants. Never met him, never interacted with him, almost certainly never will. Bell to bell he's a maximalist and my stylistic preferences lean towards the other end of that particular spectrum, THUS, we at Whiskey & Wrestling Towers (I am the only one here) spend our time (the time is mine alone) watching other things. But look, now and then a bit of excess will do the trick. And honestly, I didn't find this anywhere near as big and BOMBASTIC and whatever as I half expected. I figured they'd start with a parity exchange, a trading of counters and reversals that all look extremely impressive and well coordinated, a stand-off where they lock eyes and the crowd can register that they're seeing something very special and cool. We sort of got that and I didn't think it was stupid or too corny, though I can't quite tell you why and that is not a truth I wish to confront this day. It settled pretty soon into a story of Darby going for broke, putting his body on the line like he always does, crashing and burning on the apron Coffin Drop with a ludicrous bump. I've watched a lot of Darby Allin recently so I've seen a lot of ludicrous Darby Allin bumps recently, and this one was up there. For the next while Ospreay worked him over, drove his knee into the spine while yanking hard on a chinlock, Darby fighting back where he could but never being able to capitalise fully. I don't love the extended reversal sequences that Ospreay is very fond of (and very good at?), but they absolutely got me with the one that had Darby hit the Code Red. They even broke it up with Ospreay hitting a killer Hidden Blade, then when Darby caught him I thought he might actually get the win. Ospreay kicked out right at the death too and it was pretty much a prefect nearfall. They went even bigger after that, but there was no point where I felt like it was too much for me. The selling stayed strong the whole way and even in the strike exchange it felt like there was enough trace of hierarchy there that it stayed rooted. Darby is broken but he's defiant. Ospreay is maybe the heir apparent and confident enough that he has no problem being hit if it means he has an excuse to hit back harder. He's stubborn that way, I guess. For every three Darby forearms Ospreay could respond with one chop. It was fine. Then Darby went to take another significant risk, Ospreay caught him, and decided to put it beyond doubt. The Styles Clash off the apron looked gnarly and I liked that they gave themselves an out by having Will sell the leg. It meant he couldn't keep pushing right away and then they milked the 10-count all the way to 9.5, Darby barely hanging on. They had one last counter sequence that bled into Darby hitting the Scorpion Deathdrop, then his persistence paid off as he finally got to hit two Coffin Drops, which was just enough to keep Ospreay down. It was a good wrestling match. I enjoyed it, as I'm sure many others did. I mostly liked Will Ospreay's performance in it and in the future I mayhap, if the universe allows it, watch more Will Ospreay matches, enjoy them, and write about them on this very nonsense of a blog. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #45

Necro Butcher & Toby Klein v The H8 Club (CZW, 6/11/05)

What a grimy unhinged madness of a thing. This took place about five hours after Necro v Joe on the IWA-MS card. THAT Necro v Joe. Basically Necro got the living shit beat out of him, went backstage, got taped up, maybe rolled the dice on being able to wake up from a CTR nap, put on some Air Maxes and a shirt and rolled back out for a tag match in the same building for a different company. Necro and Klein are a pair of homeless drifters, Gage and Pain are Semtex dealers living out of an abandoned church, there was only one way this was going to go. Klein is bleeding profusely after about 20 seconds, before Necro has even clothed himself and walked out from the locker room. I would not voluntarily be taking a chair shot from Nick Gage under any circumstances but Klein takes several here and they all look horrific. I've never seen anyone get thrown into a metal shutter the way Gage gets thrown into one here. Justice Pain getting flung off a balcony and going feet-first through a table is one of the more ludicrous things I've seen in a long time and then Necro, for the second time in several hours, takes a putrid flat back bump off the apron to concrete from a double suplex. Necro and Gage doing the meth head strike exchange where they sit and trade punches is the dumbest thing but also entirely believable given what we know about them and every one of these punches were revolting. Necro instigates a hailstorm of folding chairs on top of Nick Gage and hits a somersault senton into the aftermath, Gage himself underneath it all. Yet in the end, Necro can only be beaten about the head so many times before even his imperviousness to brain damage wilts. What goes around comes around, the poets tell us. What was this match if not poetry? 

Into the Modern CMLL: Zandokan Jr! Difunto! More Soberano Jr!

Soberano Jr. & Zandokan Jr. v Mascara Dorada & Templario (CMLL, 2/14/25)

Every Soberano Jr. entrance is an experience and this time he came out in the SWANK red and pink attire with his arms and torso covered in lipstick kisses. I don't think Rick Rude even did that. Michaels for sure would've floated the idea past Vince but I guess it got left on the cutting room floor. During the early lock-up he fish hooks Templario by the mask and I can't say Templario has done anything for me as I go through this stuff, but it did make me want to see him punch Soberano in the face. The rudos lose the primera in about three minutes, tease throwing hands at each other on the floor, then hug it out to a chorus of boos. The first caida and a half was pretty much those two getting the full runaround. It was quality stuff because these are two rudos who will eat major shit on anything and everything. You know they'll seize their moment eventually though, and Soberano has a real knack for countering a springboard or a moonsault by kicking someone in the sternum while they're midair. Mascara Dorada isn't always the cleanest, which maybe isn't all that surprising for someone who attempts as much of the spectacular as he does. He was also a mere 23 years of age here and his spectacular looks SPECTACULAR so we can make do. The tenico comeback in the tercera was capped with a DOUBLE double tope and the camera angles on  both made them look phenomenal, especially Dorada's that nearly put Zandokan through the barrier. 

Mascara Dorada, Neon & Star Jr. v Zandokan Jr., Barboza & Difunto (CMLL, 3/28/25)

Two pirates and an evil clown against three bonkers high flyers. It doesn't need to be all that complicated, brothers and sisters. To some extent this was like having ice cream for dinner then ice cream for dessert, then more ice cream right after you wake up in the middle of the night vomiting. It was a match of excess, but it was great ice cream and by the end they had me swept up like the rest and I didn't even care if my teeth fell out. Actually forget the end, they had me pretty well hooked from the start when the rudos jumped Star Jr. and El Sky Team hit tandem moonsaults off the balcony, followed by a running senton off the stage. Dorada is mesmerising when he gets airborne but our boy Neon is not to be undersold. He's another tecnico capable of some mind-boggling shit and he bounces off the ropes as gracefully as anyone, no hands on his springboard front flip, twisting into headscissor takeovers like no one else. The primera lasted no time at all but that and a chunk of the segunda was an absolute showcase for the flyers. Then the tecnicos get too cute - a plague, as we all know, upon many such youths capable of bouncing around the ring with effortless aplomb - going for stereo moonsaults, so the rudos capitalise as a well-oiled machine is wont to and simply chuck all three off the top turnbuckles. The whole rudo unit were tremendous thugs on the night but Difunto was a fucking hoot, bouncing off ropes and jumping feet-first into people in his ridiculous Slipknot mask and torn up cheap Halloween costume jumpsuit. Zandokan will chop the life out of you but he's not remotely shy about looking foolish, perhaps the heir apparent to Jerry Estrada before our very eyes. The finish to the segunda had him hit a dive from outside the ring to the middle of it where he almost slipped on the way in. The crowd gave him some grief for it so after he took the fall he got up on the turnbuckles to give some back and almost fell twice. I'm pretty sure the initial slip was an accident, but he absolutely played into the rest, again like a Fuerza or Jerry Estrada would. The tercera was long, possibly too long for some, loaded front to back with crazy shit and at a certain point I kind of knew it needed to be over soon, while at the same time I didn't really want it to be. There were several sequences with one or two moments I'd legitimately never seen before, including Neon hitting this ridiculous springboard into a crucifix bomb where he was facing the wrong way, followed by him getting caught by Zandokan with a front flip DDT nonsense of a thing. Your Canadian Destroyer derivatives are played out beyond belief these days, but if you're going to do it then I guess do it like Star Jr. and come flying into it at a hunner miles an hour springboarding off the top rope. Difunto again moves too beautifully for a hideous clown that's been run over with a lawnmower and maybe I should consider the Complete & Accurate Difunto. Literally every dive in the back third was incredible - every single one and there were about 30 - and Neon's double springboard where he starts on the ramp, bounces across two sets of ropes as Dorada perches perfectly on that corner's ring post, ending with them hitting moonsaults at the exact same time, was fucking nuts and one of the most impressive things I've seen in ages. Barboza then channels the true spirit of lucha libre by hitting a tope suicida and landing with both of his legs in the second row. There was an absurd amount of stuff going on here, definitely some requiring elaborate setups that you ordinarily can't really be arsed with, but on occasion it hits like it's supposed to and this hit like a truck. A hell of a trios bonanza. Bonanza, I say. 

Fujiwara. Murdoch. The Pro Wrestling.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v Dick Murdoch (New Japan, 4/27/87)

This was a match between two old masters, who at this point in time weren't really that old. Murdoch was 40, Fujiwara 38. But they worked it as a pair of guys who'd been around the block and seen all the tricks. Which I guess they were, really. Fujiwara had been wrestling for 15 years, although we still only have about half of that on tape. By 1987 Murdoch was a 21-year pro. So they WERE old masters, just maybe not truly OLD. In fact you could make a real strong argument that both were at their absolute peaks. I've watched probably 90% of the Murdoch footage we have from 1985-1987 and he might be one of the top three wrestlers in the world over that stretch. I've watched even more Fujiwara from that period and 1986-1987 Fujiwara is DEFINITELY top three in the world and I can tell you he's not two or three. '87 Fujiwara is as good as any wrestler I've ever seen, one of the greatest to ever do it at his very best. So we have two old masters who know all the tricks, many of them they invented, at the peak of their powers. I mean, shit, obviously it fucking ruled. It wasn't what I'd call tetchy, if anything it was pretty sporting, mostly clean as a whistle, but there was a hesitancy here and it's probably because they each knew the other would take a mile if you gave them an inch. You think Murdoch wouldn't still rabbit punch you in the cheek even if he was playing nice? Would you be at all shocked if Fujiwara headbutted you in the face while shaking your hand? Fuck no you wouldn't. Murdoch lifted Fujiwara up out of a headlock and sat him on the top turnbuckles, then a minute later Fujiwara did the exact same. Murdoch was impressed enough to applaud it and even asked the crowd to show their own appreciation. Part of me wondered if it wasn't him being condescending or he was trying to lure Fujiwara into thinking this would be a gentleman's contest, but over the course of the match he proved that no, it wasn't bullshit and maybe he really did just respect our boy Fujiwara. The first 10 minutes were largely built around Fujiwara trying to apply the Fujiwara armbar and Murdoch finding ways to avoid it, each escape a touch more desperate than the last. Well really the match as a whole was built around that but the first 10 minutes had most of the grappling. I struggle to watch anything these days for half an hour but I could watch these two work in and out of holds for half an hour no problem at all. The first time Fujiwara went for the armbar Murdoch immediately dipped out the ring like he knew he needed no part of it. He knew what the armbar meant. Murdoch was 100% pro wrestling and sometimes against the UWF guys, or a few years later against the Russians, he'd still react to and sell some of the shoot holds like they were pro wrestling holds. Now and then he'd sell a cross armbreaker like it was a hammerlock, wriggling to the ropes for the break rather than scrambling like his arm was about to snap. When Fujiwara grabbed the armbar he was URGENT and the crowd picked up on it right away. He even wagged a finger at Fujiwara like no thank you my good man I will not be throwing beer cans at street signs with my OTHER arm tonight. Of course Murdoch's big weapon is the brainbuster and Fujiwara is pretty much built to counter that, which he almost does a couple times. Murdoch kipping up out of a wristlock is always great because you maybe sometimes forget how much of a proper athlete Captain Redneck is, then Fujiwara nearly rips him into another armbar you almost fall out the bed. As things did start to get a bit niggly I loved Murdoch blocking all of Fujiwara's headbutt attempts with his forearms. That he had Fujiwara scouted the way he did was another little sign of how much he respected him, and that the early applause really was genuine. When Fujiwara finally sneaks one through the guard Murdoch flops through the ropes and out to the floor like only he can. Overall this didn't feel like a match with the highest of stakes, but every single thing they did was earned through struggle and their considerable personalities shone through with every movement, clear as day even on handheld video footage nearly 40 years old. 

Darby Allin is crazy! And wrestles PAC! And Samoa Joe!

Darby Allin v PAC (AEW Dynamite, 1/14/26)

Another one for the Darby Allin is a Certifiable Maniac highlight reel. Everyone's seen the clip where he gets suplexed into the steps. It was all over the social medias and even a couple of my friends who don't follow wrestling but know I'm the sort of idiot who does sent me it, so I guess it was crazy enough that it permeated the meme zeitgeist populated by people in their mid-30s who work in construction sites and scroll through twitter during their lunch break. Probably. Anyhow the bump is sheer lunacy and really the only person who'd consider taking it is Darby, but everything in the match around it is really good too. Darby's tope at the start was amazing and nobody hits an out-of-nowhere tope like Darby. Every time I see PAC he's roided up even more than before. Sometimes it shocks me that he's able to fit so much muscle into such a tiny body and still manage to move the way he does. Darby was all over him early and when PAC decided to bring the steps into it, it felt like a move from a man who wanted to be entirely rid of Allin. PAC does also look like a very unpleasant little man so him trying to break someone in two with an overhead suplex on steel steps feels on brand. Darby's selling was pretty tremendous the rest of the way and there was yet more gnarly shit to be had, including PAC slingshotting Darby's face into the middle rope. I liked PAC tweaking his previously-injured ankle stepping down off the ropes, giving Darby a lifeline that he HUNGRILY accepted and then sandwiched said lifeline in a folding chair and jumped on it. 

Darby Allin v Samoa Joe (No Holds Barred) (AEW Dynamite, 2/1/23)

There can't be many match-ups in wrestling history as obviously perfect as this one. Darby will do insane shit and Joe will murder him; on the most basic of levels how could that not work a treat? It started as wildly as you'd expect a Samoa Joe/Darby Allin no holds barred match to start, with Allin flying into Joe while wearing a thumbtack-studded shirt before Joe plucked him out the air and squashed him. A lot of the match was built around Darby having to capitalise on glimmers of hope, usually by doing something that could land himself in hospital, while Joe could swing the tide with brute force and rage and surliness. Once again - Darby's tope might be the best in wrestling and this one looked tremendous, the way he zipped into that table and smashed the metal framing into Joe's face. It opened a mean cut above Joe's eye and the visual of that itself is badass enough, but it gave Joe's savagery an even sharper edge. There were several moments where he flew off the handle and literally chucked Darby away. First he did it on the stairwell where he dumped Allin headfirst on the steps, then later he launched him clean out the ring by the armpits. Darby is really an all-timer at finding creative openings and I loved him pulling powder from who knows where to avoid getting splattered with a powerbomb. He also, to the surprise of nobody, took some truly vile bumps. The suplex on the chair backs was clearly ludicrous but being smothered with the thumbtack shirt was sort of low key disgusting as well. But for all the crazy bumps it's Darby's selling of damage and how uphill his struggles are that sets him apart. He looked completely fucked at points (possibly/probably was?) and very few do it like he does. The thumbtack shirt Coffin Drop was an awesome desperation move and him digging his thumbs in Joe's eyes to break the choke was super nasty. He bet the farm on his final play, but Joe had the counter for it and if you don't wince at a Muscle Buster on an exposed wooden ring board then you've probably seen too much wrestling. You know this was great. 

Mistico v Soberano Jr - The Old(ish) World Meets the New World

Mistico v Soberano Jr. (CMLL, 12/12/25)

It's a new world. It's not 1990 anymore and these big CMLL title matches don't start with eight minutes of matwork. You might get two if you're lucky, five if it's Hechicero, but by and large it seems to be a thing of the past. It's a world I need to adjust to when watching modern CMLL title matches. It'll never be the old world because the old world is dead. 

The old world is not Soberano Jr's world and he cares little for that world. 

Mistico is not of the old world. He debuted in 1998 and a 1998 lucha title match is a lot closer to my ideal than a 2026 one, but Mistico's FIRST peak was not 1998 and I don't really have any interest in revisiting those 2007 matches against Averno. I don't know who's primarily responsible for shaping the new world, if there's even anyone or any thing you can point to specifically. One thing is for certain though - Mistico is not only OF the new world, he IS the new world. He might be the biggest star in all of wrestling and Arena Mexico is his palace.   

Soberano Jr does not give a shit. 

He has no interest in a handshake, one thing at the start of a title match that was a given in any world. Instead he pulls his mask to the side and snot rockets Mistico. Mistico is borderline affronted but also maybe not terribly shocked. He raises his arms and looks to the crowd like "really?" while gesturing to his waist as if to signify that a title match should have a little more decorum. Even Jerry Estrada would check himself for the pre-match photographs. Fuerza could at least behave himself until he got shown up after five minutes. If it was an 8pm show, Chicana would've stopped drinking at 4. Soberano just walks around blowing snot rockets. 

If Mistico is someone who commands respect, and you could argue that if anyone in wrestling does right now it's him, then Soberano was determined to give him nothing of the sort. Maybe he wanted to prove that he's every bit the star, every bit the wrestler, Mistico is. It's Soberano Jr, why would we expect anything else? Anything Mistico can do, Soberano can. The early parity stand-off didn't feel perfunctory here, wasn't just there to pop the crowd. Soberano nods his head, maybe partly in acknowledgment, partly because he's confirmed what he already knew, that he's an equal. Mistico walks away from it, back turned, acknowledging nothing. It must've pissed Soberano off because he asked for a knucklelock after that, then drew attention to the height difference by raising his hand higher than could be reached. Mistico just stomped on his toes and that brought Soberano down to size. 

I've said this every time I've watched a Soberano Jr match but it bears repeating - he is a wonderful, natural shithead. When he survives the early Mistico dive and takes over with one of his own, he revels in it like only the most obnoxious among us could. Shadowboxing in front of the camera, holding Mistico in place so Euforia can put the boots in, motioning for the crowd to stay calm as they get more and more agitated, asking a woman front row for a kiss (and getting it), really top tier shithousery. He does some amazing stuff; the sort of stuff that might endear you to an audience under normal circumstances, but he always follows up by letting you know that YOU could not do the same. It's hard to cheer for someone like that, when they're making the explicit point that they, in their mind, operate on a higher plane than the rest of us. He has no interest in being relatable or redeemable and how could we relate to someone like that anyway? His self-assuredness DRIPS and then he'll throw someone into the barricade hard enough to nearly put them through the thing. When he tries to untie Mistico's mask he knows full well why it's met with outrage, but of course he'll feign otherwise and then does the Christiano Ronaldo "Siuuu!" celebration just to really knock it out the park. 

The big finishing run was my least favourite stretch of the match and for the most part will never really be for me, but as we've established I am from the old world and that world is no more. This was still good, though, and a big lucha finishing run with lots of back and forth will probably be more enjoyable to me than it will in any other setting in the year 2026. All of the dives were appropriately breathtaking and Soberano's Fosbury Flop moonsault is a thing of beauty. Even the most loathsome sorts will do something now and then where you can't help but begrudgingly tip your cap. Some of the transitions might've been a wee bit ropey, but Soberano first doing La Mistica and then reversing Mistico's into a sit-out tombstone actually had me biting that he was winning for a second there, which is kind of ridiculous. 

In the end, Soberano didn't quite have enough to dethrone the king. In future he might. That he even shook Mistico's hand as a show of respect was sort of astonishing. You'd imagine his time will come and I look forward to seeing what that looks like, but for now this is still Mistico's world and the rest of us merely live in it. 

Hechicero v Briscoe! We're watching the 2026 pro wrestling!

Hechicero v Mark Briscoe (AEW Collision, 1/10/26)

It's been a long while since I last watched a match involving a Briscoe. It must've been 2021 (going by the search function at Whiskey & Wrestling Towers), and even then what I watched was from 2004, a Low Ki v Mark Briscoe match on an ROH undercard, practically a lifetime ago. 22 years on and Mark is a little grayer around the temples, looking almost like the lovable rogue who I'd see in the pub every night when I'd go back to Scotland for the off-season. Both have maybe five teeth between them and definitely fell off a roof one time and both have mastered several of the martial arts, particularly the art of kung-fu. Mark is an enigma and even if Hechicero is a genius in the ring, early on he couldn't solve the Briscoe problem. Hechicero would try to wrangle him up, tie him in however many knots, but Briscoe would slip away or flip out of a snapmare, raise his arms in that redneck karate pose and Hechicero had no choice but to fall back, frustrated, maybe even FLUMMOXED! And who could blame him? He had his plan though, and sooner or later it would bear fruit. You wonder if Hechicero almost baited Mark in when he stopped him from hitting the Sabu dropkick, knew he'd still fly off the apron but in a way that carried a little less risk for Hechicero himself, and sure enough Hechicero caught him off the elbow drop and tried to snap his arm. There's a raw authenticity about Mark Briscoe that is kind of hard to explain but also maybe not if you actually look at the guy or listen to him talk for five seconds. Everything he does, I believe Mark Briscoe would do. Every reaction, I believe it to be a genuine one, or at least a genuine approximation of what his reaction would really be if someone was trying to twist his arm off. Mark Briscoe is in a fight and his right arm is useless? 100% I believe he would bite the other guy in the face or throw backhands with the left or boot them in the head. Absolutely I buy him going back to the well and jumping off that chair, even if he knows it might end even more badly than before. And there isn't a chance in hell he won't still go for the Jay Driller, even if that first attempt might fail when the arm gives out. Hechicero torturing a guy is always a good time but maybe you feel guilty about marveling at his ability to do so here because Mark Briscoe garners the most sympathy that a man who would throw a live chicken at you from the side of the road could possibly garner. When Hechicero hoists him up for the Jay Driller himself you wonder if he hasn't gone too far. When he decides against hitting the move the way Jay or now Mark would, instead turning it into another submission on that arm, you hope Mark escapes and makes him pay for it. If this were 1986 you would buy a ticket to the arena next Friday night. In 2026 you merely ask that these two get to wrestle each other four dozen times. 

Zandokan Jr v Judas el Traidor!

Zandokan Jr v Judas el Traidor (Lucha Memes, 7/19/25)

I've watched a solid handful of grubby lucha indy brawls recently and this was another mental bastard of a thing. The ring looks like it's covered with a plastic tarp and pretty soon you realise why because Judas el Traidor is bleeding profusely within - I shit you not - 15 seconds. This happened because Zandokan absolutely wellied him over the head with what looked like a busted old VCR and I have no idea how or why he had it in the first place. Zandokan was a proper ghoul prying open the wound, squeezing Judas' head like he was trying to juice a grapefruit, biting the cut, all the real sicko shit. It turned into a bit of a walk and brawl through the crowd affair for a spell, but they were both hammering each other with overhand chops and there was no "let me put my arm around you and gently usher you over here while you have to sell like you couldn't stop me" nonsense. If Zandokan wanted Judas close to a wall so he could throw him into it, he was having to drag him there kicking if not screaming. When Judas fights back he fucking whomps Zandokan over the head with a snare drum and gleefully tears at his mask, blood streaming down his own face from a cut bang in the middle of his hairless pate. Some of the chop exchanges were brutal but they didn't last long. It's hard to leave yourself open for shots like this and I like how they both threw a couple rockets before deciding there are better ways to inflict punishment. Still, none of the chops had anything on the headbutts. The kneeling double headbutt was truly revolting; about as CTE-inducingly stupid as any I can remember seeing. 

Lucha in the DIRT might be the purest of all lucha

Demus v Hijo de Fishman (Zona 23, 3/9/25)

What is pro wrestling if not two psychopaths trying to kill each other in a scrapyard? The uncultured sorts, the uncouth philistines, may argue that two psychopaths trying to kill each other in a scrapyard is NOT pro wrestling. Pro wrestling is a spectacle for the arenas and bright lights, not some savage freak show to be contested in the dirt. I don't wish to be dismissive, but I would dismiss those claims as nonsense; gibberish words from people who can safely be ignored. This was a bonkers brawl, as nasty and filthy as it gets, blood-soaked, piss-drenched. Hijo de Fishman must be the single most unpleasant bastard this side of Kurisu, a stocky unit bursting out of his shirt, head almost too big for his mask, a man unsatisfied with his lot in life and willing to take it out on everyone else. This barely goes a minute before he's jabbing Demus with a broken bottle and smashing a crate over his head. While he's doing the forehead-stabbing one woman cowers by the man next to her, clutching his arm, trying to give herself as wide a berth from the mauling going on not but one foot away, appalled that this, of all places, is where her companion chose to bring her on the one night in two weeks they've been able to get out the house. Another man, presumably not an associate of the aforementioned couple, with half his face tattooed, records Demus' forehead being carved up on his phone and hands Fishman a bottle to be used as a weapon. Many people hand many bottles. Fishman instead picks up a whole crate of beer, seems to pause for a second considering if throwing a whole crate of beer is in fact a good idea, then throws the whole crate of beer. I don't even know what it was but he finds a huge metal drum, struggles plainly to lift the thing, and drops it full on Demus' leg as Demus writhes and convulses like he's going into shock. The package piledriver on the hood of a rusted out car was frankly absurd and then Demus about shattered his tailbone getting backdropped off it. Fishman slams someone in the dirt for getting too close to him and the beauty is that it could've been a fan, the ref', the priest, who knows. He tries to pick up a beer cooler, obviously to be used as a projectile, and four separate people - the owners of the beer cooler? - immediately have to restrain him and I'm honestly shocked he never headbutted one or all of them. Demus is a man of the people and after making his comeback he's also handed a beer bottle, from which he drinks deeply before smashing it over Fishman's head and using the broken end to rip his mask and stab him in the head. This legitimately might be the only time I've ever seen someone put on a motorbike helmet and use it to hit a running headbutt on someone sitting slumped over in a chair. Both of them slam a detached car door over the other's head and when Demus kicks out Fishmn volleys the referee in the balls. The trading of wooden crate shots to the head must be the Mexican junkyard indy version of the clean and pristine forearm exchange and I know which one resonated with me the most. Both of the bumps into glass panes were insane, first with Demus taking a death valley driver as the glass shatters into a million pieces and front row spectators are left picking shards out of their skin for a week, then Fishman takes a backdrop through a second pane and lands on his neck and shoulders like only a man made of concrete and acrimony would. Demus also wrestled for several minutes with a handful of wooden spikes sticking out of his head. Pretty much a masterpiece. 

Virus is Just a Stubborn Kind of Fellow with a Head Like a Brick, and Just Because He Drinks the Eight, They Say that He's Hopeless

Virus v Dr Cerebro (Chilanga Mask, 8/16/15) - EPIC

The beautiful lucha libre. This is the sort of match where there isn't a lot for me to say because eventually, if I was to say everything I WANTED to say, it would turn into a full minute-by-minute play-by-play. In fact I'm not sure I could even manage that. I'm not much of a penman and nothing I can write would be as FULFILLING to you, the half-dozen gentle readers of Whiskey & Wrestling, as watching the thing with your own eyes would be. I could not explain half of this matwork on my best day, brothers and sisters. Virus is one of the all-time great mat wrestlers and maybe at some point over the last 15 years I forgot that Dr Cerebro probably is too. Lucha can be a fickle mistress sometimes though, so you look at a match that has this much potential on paper and there's a part of you that wonders if it won't end up being six minutes long and merely a backdrop for the cornermen to further a feud with a bent referee. Thankfully there was none of that and this was two masters doing what they're great at for about 16 minutes. I don't think a single strike was thrown until 12 minutes in. Maybe three strikes total were thrown the entire match and none of them were thrown in the midst of a chop battle. The ropes were run maybe two times? And one of those times led to someone getting hammered into the barricade with a tope, which is really the best outcome of a wrestler running the ropes. The first eight minutes was one long exchange where it started on the feet before moving to the ground and I don't think they broke contact once until they stood up. There's probably no other type of wrestling that lets me just sit back and lose myself in it the way this sort of lucha grappling does. I'm not sure there's a better example of it in the 2010s.

Complete & Accurate Virus

Into the Modern CMLL: Soberano Jr. v Atlantis Jr! Mano a Mano!

A couple weeks ago I subscribed to the CMLL youtube channel. I'd been watching a lot of Hechicero (clearly) and that turned me onto the 2025 Blue Panther match, from there I wanted to see more late-career resurgence Panther. That got me watching a couple Panther/Atlantis tags from last year, which got me checking out Atlantis' kid while forcing me to confront my own mortality, then before you knew it I was scouring the CMLL youtube for 2020s Valiente midcard lightning matches. I'll move onto something else in a couple weeks and probably keep paying the nine dollars a month for the next year until I remember to cancel but there are worse things I've wasted money on. I assume. 

Atlantis Jr. v Soberano Jr. (CMLL, 12/22/23)

This is the best of the stuff I've watched so far. It wasn't a blood and guts mano a mano but it had plenty of personality and you could tell these two aren't exactly fond of one another. Soberano has been an absolute hoot every time I've watched him - all of four, five times? - and this was my favourite of all his performances. He was at the bullshit right away, asking for a handshake he knew full well wouldn't be received, smirking when his hand is slapped away just as expected. Atlantis had no interest in the niceties and everybody in the arena knew Soberano didn't either. The collar and elbow tie-up to start had no daylight and both guys really tried to grind their forearms across the other's ears, then within about 90 seconds Soberano is on the floor and Atlantis rockets him kidneys-first into the barricade with a tope. So many of these CMLL singles matches seem to have an early tope and it's taking some time for me to get used to that, but if nothing else they basically all look amazing. Some of these young tecnicos are bonkers, btw. He goes and tries it again like a proper lunatic, but this time Soberano counters with a high kick as Atlantis is halfway through the ropes. Soberano was pretty much awesome the whole rest of the way, whether he was working aggressively from above or backpedaling and showing ass as Atlantis had steam coming out his ears. His riling up of the crowd was 1997 Shawn Michaels obnoxious and that is a stupendously high bar for acting like a prick. He really heaves Atlantis into the barricades and stops to ask a woman in the front row for a kiss, just to reinforce that you will never be him. The finish to the fall ruled, with Soberano hitting another kick through the ropes and following up with the springboard moonsault as Atlantis was dangling between the top and middle rope. Soberano waves and blows kisses to the adoring public as the ref' counts three and being a rudo might just be the most fun job in the world, unless people actually try and stab you and to be fair it looked like a decent number wanted to do that here. The segunda starts with Soberano trying to throw Atlantis through the barricades, motioning for the fans to remain calm with the same amount of smugness as Christiano Ronaldo and if you're channelling Shawn Michaels AND Christiano Ronaldo then you've practically reached Shithead Hall of Fame territory. Soberano lifts Atlantis' head off the mat during a pin attempt, once again asking the crowd for a little decorum and you would never tire of slapping the mask off the man. He has truly captured the spirit of pro wrestling if you ask me. When the crowd do not in fact respond with calm he tries to unlace Atlantis' mask, then throws some brutal forearms to the back of the head while Atlantis is face-first in the corner and I honestly thought the referee was going to strike him. Soberano has every physical gift you could want but deep down he's driven by cruelty, which really makes him doubly dangerous. Of course you know the grandstanding will come back to haunt him and it surely does when Atlantis levels the falls. The tercera was BIG, perhaps a little TOO BIG for my own tastes, but for a modern day mano a mano bout it's hard to conclude they never knocked it out the park all the same. We got the revenge mask-tearing - or mask-unlacing, rather - and Soberano was an unbelievable craven, running into the crowd, assuring Atlantis that they could settle things within the confines of the ring, ducking back out of it again, asking the crowd for some chill because matters are well in hand. Just breathe, he says. Why are we getting so uppity all of a sudden? Zbyszko would be proud at the stalling and milking of the count here, the begging off, the general shithousery. There's an amazing moment where he was on his knees on the ramp, hands behind his back pleading innocence, even turning his head to the side offering up Atlantis a free shot. He obviously thought Atlantis would be above taking it but he absolutely wasn't, and Soberano backs up affronted, embarrassed enough to finally resume the fight. The exhaustion selling down the stretch was good and I thought they mostly nailed the pacing between the big moments. There were also some cool story points like Soberano being able to use those high kicks to get him out of trouble. By the end his proverbial mask had slipped even if his literal one hadn't and he was flipping off fans for even looking at him. After the match he slunk in the corner while Atlantis gave him a piece of his mind, then as the latter turned to leave Soberano flipped him off too. Maybe he's top 5 in the world. 

Hechicero against the legends! (pt. 3)

Hechicero v Negro Casas (Monterrey, 4/24/16)

These Hechicero v legends matches have the annoying habit of starting off with five minutes of phenomenal matwork. It's annoying because you want it for 20 and you imagine - nay DREAM OF - a world in which we get it. People who think Negro Casas isn't an excellent mat worker are out to fucking lunch. They can stay there as well, as far as I'm concerned. Stay out in the rain and enjoy your wee sandwich, the rest of us will bask in the warmth from the fire of Negro Casas rolling through three times on a neck crank to maintain a leg grapevine. He was a matador in this and used every bit of his guile and experience to avoid the bull that is Hechicero. It's one of my favourite old man Casas performances, though old man Casas is a different animal from old man everyone else as his deal with the devil allows him to never really look like an old man. There was a moment in the primera where Hechicero came flying at him to grab a leg and Casas lithely sidestepped it, wound up with Hechicero's wrist in his hand, flipped him over and walked away with a shit-eating grin. A Hechicero determined to dislocate one of your appendages is not to be trifled with and eventually he grabs an ankle lock, rolling around like a crocodile with an antelope between its jaws. It was like something roid rage gum shield era Kurt Angle would've done. Casas caught him with an upkick and Hechicero clotheslined him like a man who'd already had enough. When Hechicero runs the ropes Casas follows him in to sneak behind him, but Hechicero is ahead of it and turns to catch him with the Conjuro; a wonderful fall of wrestling that established the strengths of both guys and had enough breathing room to let the gigantic personalities be as gigantic as you'd want them to be. 

The segunda starts with Casas yanking Hechicero over into a wrist lock and tying him up with a seated ab stretch, waving to the camera and smoothing out his hair just to show how in control of the situation he really is. Hechicero reverses it into a Backlund style deadlift slam that might've killed poor Casas, who immediately rolls out the ring because sometimes you need to know your limitations. When Hechicero gets annoyed enough to go out after him, you, if you've seen enough Negro Casas and are familiar enough with the man himself, soon realise this was the plan all along, because he scoots back in the ring and thumps Hechicero in the chest with a kick as he tries to follow. Even in his physical prime Casas was never a bruiser - he was a technician then and he had to be even more of one against Hechicero, who could be bruiser and technician in equal measure, all while being in HIS physical prime. Even in 2016 Casas could still boot you in the face though, and if he squinted hard enough he could convince himself Hechiero's mask was Santo silver, so it gave him a little extra juice behind those kicks. He uses them to pretty good effect, first with a high boot in the corner, then a double boot, then a missile dropkick, and they ultimately set him up to even the falls. 

The tercera caida is Casas at his very best. It starts with Hechicero seeing red, leaning into his primal side and opening the floor for a strike battle. You maybe question the wisdom of Casas obliging, but he has his pride like any of us and throws caution to the wind. Casas sells his age and weary bones during a strike exchange better than anyone, pausing for a beat to gather himself when the damage registers, falling into the ropes nearly horizontally and using them to propel himself into a big shot, knocking Hechicero down and pumping his fist at the victory of it before stopping to grimace, bent over and grabbing his neck where Hechicero had just clubbed him full force. Casas would always use those kicks when things got sticky and he caught Hechicero with one in the corner, facing away like he had eyes in the back of his head, that was an honest to god 10/10.

There was one amazing sequence that pretty much encapsulated the story of the match. Casas whips Hechicero into the corner and the latter flips up and out onto the apron, arms aloft like it's to be celebrated, a man high on confidence. Casas fakes a big overhand chop and Hechicero reaches up to catch it, exposing the midsection for Casas to spin kick him in the lungs. Casas then reels off another six vicious kicks as Hechicero is buckled over on the apron, but when Casas follows him out he finds himself trading chops with someone we know he'll never out-chop. Casas obviously knows it too so he grabs Hechicero's leg, spins him around and runs him into the ring post, rallies the crowd, feeds off the energy, and crushes Hechicero with a senton off the apron. 

The rest of the match is about Casas trying to capitalise on any openings against a guy who's built like a house and can rip off a spinning muscle buster on a 56-year-old man like it's nothing. Casas sells Hechicero's blows like a sledgehammer, and for every one chop Hechicero lands Casas needs to land four kicks in return. Casas continually finds glimmers of hope by using Hechicero's momentum against him, that matador working the bull again, and then sometimes he'll just follow up by hitting a running dropkick to the face like he's channelling Murakami. There was one point where Hechicero flung him off the ropes with so much force it looked like Casas had zero choice in the matter, then hit a powerslam and pinned him with his hands clasped so tight he could literally roll around the mat in circles like Casas was a life-sized dummy. By the end Casas' only openings come from him literally moving out the way, then if he's lucky he can try and dropkick Hechicero's knees to pieces. The finish is sensational as he almost manages to do both of those things and it sets up La Casita, but Hechicero braces and refuses to budge, Casas hyperextends his knee, and Hechicero jumps him with a ridiculous rolling kneebar/ankle lock monstrosity. 

This was a spectacular Casas performance, a man fighting uphill against a stud, using every one of his smarts but none of the tricks he might've in his saltier days, a masterpiece of little touches and body language and general selling. A tremendous match to boot and another to file in the case of Negro Casas: Greatest to Ever do It.

Hechicero making a late run at the 2026 GWE ballot...

Hechicero v Bandido (CMLL, 10/9/25)

Man Hechicero might be the best wrestler in the world right now. I thought this was another terrific match, in some of the same ways their first match was terrific but also different enough that it stands on its own. This was also like 20 minutes shorter which, look, I tip my hat to you for having a 37-minute-long wrestling match in 2025 that held my attention the whole time but you don't need to do that on the regular if you don't feel like it. Don't do anything stupid on my account, mate. Anyhow it started with more nice matwork and I liked the fight over the surfboard, how they both tried to use ankle control using their own leg to maneuver the other's and turn them onto their front. It led to a stalemate trading holds, which in turn led to a stalemate from trading pin attempts, and that led to a third stalemate after some rope-running exchanges. Perhaps after one match there is nothing left for these two to learn about the other. You can learn a lot in 37 minutes, apparently. You could boil about eight eggs in 37 minutes, one at a time. Or maybe Bandido just underestimated Hechicero's ability to SOAR because the big fella's dive to take over was absolutely spectacular. This was far too graceful for such a bulky individual and he cleared the ropes like a man half his size might. That was also a cool role reversal from their first match when it was Bandido who took the early advantage with a tope. Hechicero is ultra aggressive working from above, smashing shut the ring barricade on Bandido's arm in one of the nastier versions of that I've seen in ages. The arm work for the next few minutes is really good and Bandido sells it all well in the moment, hanging it by his side like those hammerlocks around the ring ropes have pulled it out the socket. I liked him trying to hit the press slam before immediately realising it's a nonsense of an idea. Hechicero tries to legdrop Bandido across the barricade and his bump when Bandido moves is ludicrous. This was all hamstrings and then he splats the back of his head on the floor. Bandido hits a shooting star press off the apron, then follows up with a press slam with full arm extension and a 450 where he uses his arms to generate momentum and we're thinking oh okay that was a nice bit of selling for a minute there but I guess he's fine now. At that point I figured they were done with the arm stuff and that was that. Bandido sold it like it was completely useless and when that happens midway through a match I tend to be skeptical that they can be consistent with it the rest of the way. He went too big too soon. There's too much stuff to be run through and hit cleanly in today's world of excess - GLUTTONY, you might say - for me to think someone would wrestle half a match with only one arm. How are you supposed to hit those suplexes or do those springboards and such? So I made peace with it and they did a bit of stuff around Hechicero having a bad knee, which made sense because I could certainly buy him struggling to walk after that missed legdrop. It prevents him from capitalising on the Conjuro and he hurt himself almost as much as he hurt Bandido with the high knee in the corner. Then Hechicero went back to the arm by trying to snap every ligament in Bandido's shoulder, and fair play to our man Bandido because this time he does work the rest of the match with one arm. The medic comes out to check on him, they really play up the idea that he might not be able to continue, and there was not one second of the finishing run where you forgot that Bandido was operating with only one good arm. Hechicero was a dog going after a bone, hammerlocking the arm with his feet and falling back to yank it at a repulsive angle. Bandido hitting the one-armed GTS thing looked awesome and this genuinely might be the only time I've seen a reverse rana where the guy taking it only used one arm to stop himself landing on his own neck. He couldn't hit his elaborate German suplex finisher thing so in the end he had to improvise with a roll-up, and even then he used his legs and one good arm to keep it held. Would the arm injury have worked even better if they'd kept it a focal point the whole time? I mean probably, yeah. It was inconsistent, sure. Seeing someone go from being maimed one minute to moving about fine the next will always be jarring. Immersion-breaking and all that. When they stopped bothering with it to begin with I never would've expected them to go back to it. But for the last part of the match Bandido sold that arm about as well as I've seen in a long time. If I never knew any better - and really I don't, let's be frank - I'd have said he'd dislocated the thing for real. Bandido as the world's best 2020s Rick Martel is a cool and unexpected twist and I'm absolutely here for it. 

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

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

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

Magnum v Nikita - The Last Stand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hechicero against the legends! (pt. 2)

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

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

Hechicero against the legends! (pt. 1)

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

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

Complete & Accurate Virus

Hechicero v Bandido! For the gold!

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

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

GWE 2026 Legwork: The Destroyer (#4)

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

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

Demolition v Strike Force!

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

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

Tully in God Mode

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

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

More from our favourite Dirty White Boys

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

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