The Destroyer v Rikidozan (JWA, 12/2/63)
I need to figure out what to do with The Destroyer. I think I've watched two Destroyer matches in the last 15 years and given how good he is you wish we had 300 matches of his out there. Just about all of the AWA stuff is clipped up yet he was having amazing matches in Japan from around the same time that we have in full. It's like if we had all of Murdoch's work from Japan but only clips from Mid-South or Houston. Boy that would suck. He'd been wrestling for nearly a decade by this point so hardly a rookie, but only about a year as Destroyer. You could see he was already a fully-fleshed out character, though. Always animated, always engaged. He was a rampant cheating prick in this and even during the referee checks he was talking shit. If you asked Destroyer, everything Rikidozan did was below the belt. No hold could've possibly been applied cleanly, there was always some mask-pulling or something or other going on and Beyer never shut up about it. Just from a hold-working perspective he was as good as I remembered. He'll never sit idle whether he's working from above or below. If I've watched two Destroyer matches in 15 years it's probably been 20 since I watched one of Rikidozan. He was serviceable enough here but pretty much a blank canvas off of which Destroyer could work. At one point I thought of the Eddie/Jericho Fall Brawl '97 match, where you had Guerrero at the peak of his powers working through what turned out to be an awesome match against an opponent that really could've been anybody. Upon reflection that's probably a touch unfair to Rikidozan because obviously this isn't watched by a bajillion people on TV without him and there's an atmosphere in the building that comes with that. There are things he does that would clearly resonate differently coming from someone else. The first time he breaks decorum and stoops to Destroyer's level - raking Destroyer's face with the soles of his boots - gets a massive reaction. The chop he throws to win the second fall was a cannon and clearly something built up as a death strike. But outside of that this was a Destroyer show and if anything it made me excited to watch him against Baba again for the first time in forever.
The Destroyer v Stan Hansen (All Japan, 10/30/75)
Fun veteran v young bully shithouse. I don't think Hansen's a person who's ever fallen into that "out of sight, out of mind" category but it still always surprises me seeing young Stan Hansen with the surfer hair. He hadn't even been wrestling three years himself here, and even if he wasn't the wrecking ball he'd become you could see he maybe possibly had something about him. He might've been watching '63 Destroyer because he wouldn't shut up here either, always yapping about phantom hair pulls, loudly denying yanking on Destroyer's mask, just constant noise. It was pretty awesome. The holds they worked in and out of weren't particularly fancy, but they did everything with a real snap and it's always a little surprising how quickly Hansen goes flying into those headlock takeovers. That is not a LITHE individual but I'll be fucked if you wouldn't confuse him for a Rey Misterio Jr. (prolly). He goes over sharply for a sunset flip and it will never not be jarring to see Hansen have his shoulders counted clean as a whistle in under 12 minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment