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Fuke made sure Yamada wasn't getting out of that submission hold Taira and Kakihara take it to the limit Sano gets that vital win he was looking for Shamrock is devastating with his suplexes Onita gets the win and Ogawa is pissed Malenko gives Tatsumi a real test, but Tatsumi passes Maeda's back on the winning track after defeating a game Kopylov Fujiwara edges pass Han That was one hell of a main event. Sayama retains with under a minute left. Just as important, he earns Backlund's respect. Excellent write ups and match descriptions. Great job!

This was weak compared to Orton/Foley. There wasn't a single part of the match that did anything for me.

just tuned in, looks like i made it just in time

Let's call it "higher" rather than "high."

Opener was ok. Not great, not terrible. Old guys got their stuff in. Janai Kai vs. HIMAWARI up next.

Anyone watching? Show just started. Six Man Tag Team Match Atlantis, Atlantis Jr. & Star Jr. vs. Barbaro Cavernario, Magnus & Ultimo Guerrero

That whole hour of TV is must-see. It's incredibly bold and visionary. Its also a bit of a train wreck. By this point had they come upon the idea that the nWo would get it's own show? It kind of seems like it. I really wish they had skipped Vincent BTW.

Macho pulls this off really well. Not that it does him any good later in the show.

Super fun midcard match ion Nitro for sure. Jericho s the "take a licking and keep on ticking" babyface is fine. But it definitely does not stand out on Nitro.

This was the third in the series of the Big Daddy Vs Spoiler (with Doctor Monika) feud. The first, Daddy and Andy Blair Vs the all masked tag team of The Spoiler and King Kendo saw the Spoiler have his mask pulled off to reveal some tights over his head underneath. The second, of which this is a rematch saw the Spoiler unmasked and revealed as Drew. Now he risks losing the next layer. I dealt with the French December 1967 hair match, so here is the other one. It was set up when Drew McDonald came out after Daddy and Marty Jones's win over the Barbarians Karl and Wolf Kramer waving an open pair of scissors about and giving Health and Safety KITTENS at the thought of the bad example to children watching. In a promo before the match not included in the YouTube clip (but that's a screengrab of both promos at the start) Drew McDonald ripped off a line from Jesse Ventura's WM3 commentary when he says "there'll be one of us going home tonight looking like Humpty Dumpty." As a devout Glam .Rocker I rather envy Daddy's purple sequin jacket in this - his top hat here matches. He seems to still be suffering the effects of the stroke he had around this time. Monika has ditched her SS Fraud uniform for a nice sundress and red hat . The villains have El Diablo in their corner in a nice new maroon/silver mask (he usually wore red/blue). He gives away that he's Tony The Brain/Weasel Francis by wearing the exact same white leisure suit he wears as a manager. Gordon Prior is a very shouty hectoring MC. You wonder if he's a strict school teacher during the week. He reminds me of Rumble's Steve Barker nowadays. (Steve if you're reading this I'm sure you'll take that as a compliment.). Daddy takes that beautiful jacket off and swings it round and round which can't have done it much good. The kiddy Daddy fans besiege the ring apron provoking concern from Kent Walton and a cry of "SITTHEBLUDDYMOKEYSBACKONTHEIR SIIIIITS!!!" from Monika. Female heel managers don't mince words. Daddy clears out the heels and Singh takes over The twice future European Welterweight Champion gets a headscissor throw (not quite a toupee) on Rasputin who takes quite a bump. Mostly the villains just use dirty wrestling. Daddy gets a public warning for a two on two sequence where receives into the whole pile of wrestlers in the corner. The villains each get a Public Warning (Rasputin for illegal punches, Drew for double teaming) and Kashmir gets a nice opening fall over Drew with a folding press after recovering from a backdrop. Rev. Michael Brooks is at Ringside. Drew gets a Second And Final Public Warning for repeated guillotine elbowsmashes on the floored Singh. He gets the equalising submission with a backbreaker and Daddy hits Drew with the plastic bucket. The heels are 1-1 and Daddy and Drew are 2-2:for Public Warnings. Drew thinks he has the winner with another Boston Crab but in fact he has tagged Daddy who gets the win with a splash despite Drew's pleas for mercy. And so commences a shouting match between Monika and Prior, she claiming Drew kicked out , he shouting "YOU KNEW THE RULES! YOUR HAIR COMES OFF NOW!" at Drew over and over again even after he has sat down on a stool and a rather nervous female hairdresser who obviously thinks Monika is going to attack her snips off tiny bits of Drew's split ends with nail scissors.And there we leave them. As I've said elsewhere, I suspect that after the cameras cut, Drew got up and strode off, leaving the Lucha de apuestas to be redone every night on tour while the REAL head shaving took place in Drew's bathroom at home. He did thereafter appear bald but the special stipulations stopped here after three layers, two mask and one hair. - thankfully no Loser has Scalp Skin Surgically Cut Out match. Quality? Well the Singh opening folding press is good and so was the headscissor throw a minute or so earlier. The rest is what you get from a Daddy tag. I'm sure there was something good on the undercard that it subsidised.

This bout hasn't been reviewed yet on here but I did mention it as having been broadcast in December 1967 on 2eme Chaine and therefore the earliest known surviving B/W bout which might be restorable to Colour using Chroma Dot Recovery (Channel 2 went colour in October but the only bouts between then and this are a set screened in October on Channel 1 including Peter Maivia.) Actually there are one or two bits where a few frames are missing, possibly from repairs to film damage, including during the MCs announcement of the equalising fall. However there had been quite a few off screen - Steve Young as preparation for becoming the UK Skull Murphy, the same .Kashmir Singh losing his long Sikh hair in battle in a way that would not upset family and friends. Possibly Black Jack Mulligan at some point (I mentioned him on the German thread - the lconnection to this post. This is 21 years before Big Daddy and Kashmir Singh beat Drew McDonald and Rasputin in a match ending with Dr Monika Kaiser screaming her lungs out as a lady hairdresser snipped off tiny bits of Drew's hair before the cameras cut and I suspect Drew stormed out and repeated the finish around Britain before finally doing the REAL headshave at home in the bathroom mirror., ready to appear bald at a TV battle royal a month or two later. It's 19.25 years before Piper vs Adonis at WM3 inspired Ed Leslie to ritually humiliate jobbers and a few name heels. Before Jimmy Valiant and Paul Jones made "bald headed geek" a slogan. Twenty years in the other direction it was a humiliation for women who had slept with Nazis "la collaboration hoizontale". Couderc in his glasses reminds me a bit of Steve Allen backstage at WM6. Apparently whoever takes the fall gets the shave. Batman is introduced as American (he was Brit Dave Larsen) and starts, flinging the Black Jackets about and cartwheeling out of their armbars. Le Duc pulls off a nice flying headscissors early (appropriate for a hair match). The heels are a lot more Manchetteux and it becomes more of a striking contest when they take over. They get the first fall on LeDuc with a folding press after a double team. A dolly bird at ringside looks all fornlorn about it. I think she was one of Gilbert's many girlfriends, or something like that according to Roger C. If either Bon loses the next fall they will be the one shaved. The heels have big moustaches, the badge of a villain in mid C20th France, the sort of heads found on criminal gang members, later pictured in the press mounted on a prison mantlepiece. Batman gets quite a hot tag in the middle fall with a flurry of dropkicks and a bulldog/flying headscissors one on two combo to the opposition. It goes quieter down . A Blouson gets an armhank on LeDuc and he goes into his corkscrew Toupee, the one he usually uses to escape headscissors, to roll up his hanked arm. As LeDuc tries to headstant in the arm hank (and topples over a few times first) Couderc makes a real eye rolling joke in fake English, quoting Shakespeare - "Toupee Or Not Toupee? - zat is ze question." When LeDuc finally pulls off the escape, Couderc shouts "Toupeeeeee!" with childish glee. When LeDuc does his attacking headscissor throw toupee, Couderc stans singing Bingo Bang Bang. Gilbert also gets into a ringside brawl with both BNs, still unthinkable on ITV a decade later. The equaliser is gained with one Blouson trapped in the ropes by Batman while LeDuc slingshots the other into the first to soften the latter for a splash and pin. The Bloussons' individual names are Claude Gissinn and Marcel Manueveau. (Sp both) . I had trouble keeping track of who was who when I last reviewed a bout of theirs. It's Manueveau who gets pinned after Claude trips in the ropes like the future Barber (see how these things connect up) at WM2 in the process of losing the WWF World tag belts. And it's Manueveau who gets the new bald look. He's actually quite brave about it, roaring at Les Bons to stand back before slamming himself down on the chair and letting Le Coiffeur (a cross between Duranton's poor manservant Firmin and Michael Palin as Arthur Pewty in the Monty Python Marriage Guidance Councillor sketch) do his work. Unlike the blond hairdresser from the British hair match, this guy has an actual pair of shears and gets the job reasonably done. Mannuveau still has a few clumps left.Anyway, the crowd give the result a polite clap before both heels scurry off. Anyway, maybe some day we shall see this in colour.

Also it appears that folks don't want to be programmed with Charlotte since she has a tendency to steamroll everyone she's paired up with which was an interesting development.

Charlotte legit lets the fans get to her as well. She was on some talk show this past week complaining about how hard she has it because she got divorced again and how the fans wouldn’t let her tell her comeback story. She is definitely one of those people that doesn’t seem to realize how unlikeable she comes across.

I've checked and they're both the same video (same tracking shot across from one side to the other as the two wrestlers are announced.) Was the Richard Land copy a high generation version of the same?

Not the bout from Eurosport New Catch with Paula in 1990. This is a couple of years later. Zrno's technical work has shit up in quality in this match since that one, he is obviously keeping up with the Wrights. Even Finlay does a few clever escapes just to remind the world he can. It ends with Finlay DQd after he starts going all hardcore at ringside, after which Zrno ward him off with a chair to which he cuts a promo. This is a high quality copy and was filmed in good quality multicam and the camera crew have access to ringside and the aisle to follow wrestlers about. The prefab looking building can hold about 500 and appears to be the German equivalent of a Town .Hall or Civic Theatre wrestling venue in Britain. Still not quite broadcast quality like the big Otto fights.

Yep, it's the Fuji match, with a big VQ upgrade.

I think I've already posted that video on the French thread to illustrate how he visited all three Stronghold Euro territories, but this is it: Also there's this. Just occurred to me this is only a month after he and Quinn were at Wembley Arena, losing to Big Daddy and Wayne Bridges (blue-eye reunion of old 1974 heel tag team of Bridges & the Battling Guardsman)

Meltzer kind of implied they had Wade Barrett be the moderator in that segment in case shit got real, as it seems that Tiffy was out there doing her damndedst trying to keep Charlotte from steamrolling her like in their last segment and Charlotte was getting flustered over it.

Someone on Richard's Patreon believes it's Yasu Fuji.

Luger and Pillman seem to be on good terms...for now Things are getting heated between Tully and JJ. I'm excited to see where this is going I like the pushes the Diamond Stud and Skyscrapers are getting. I think there's only room in WCW for either Garvin or Martel. Love the Widowmaker's look. I think Wahoo can build Tatanka back up. Nikita and Muta get things done. Looking forward to the anticipated showdown between Luger and Muta, but it seems Muta was caught off guard by Chono.

Haha I was going to write back and angrily insist that that WAS Kauroff - even the ring announcer says so. Apart from him and the two French "Russians" I posted, the only other one in wrestling in Europe at that time I can think of was the vastly lighter (and previously hairier on top) Larry "Black Jack Mulligan (No Relation to Bob Windham" Coulter. Also about how how Stone Cold and Goldberg have popularised that whole Nikita Koloff look among toxic macho male type like that scumbag Andrew Tate. Which is a reason why I don't like the Stone Cold character. But that's all vastly OT. Tried reviewing the Katuroff-Saturski bout but the bad picture quality and the brawly content defeated me. Maybe OJ would like it if not for the picture. Quite the other end of the spectrum from Wright Vs St Clair in 1986 Bremen. Amusing to see Kauroff cheekily offer a handshake at the end and Saturski refuse it after such dirty wrestling. He's a loveable rogue, old Klaus. No wonder he became a babyface in the 90s. And it was nice to hear the DJ play a favourite of mine. Funkytown by Lipps Inc, which had only come out four months earlier. According to Kent Walton in 1985, Saturski (the son of Wolfgang Stark) was at (or around) this time the current European Welterweight Champion - a title last seen two years earlier in 1978 when Dynamite Kid handed back both the belt and the British belt too to Max Crabtree before departing for Calgary. Saturski allegedly lost the title the following year to Jorg Chenok - the next confirmed sighting of the title was when Chenok came out to drop it to Danny Collins at the FA Cup Final TV taping. just like Jean Corne had done for Dynamite 7 years earlier. I've looked for a Saturski Harris bout on YouTube but no luck. This is what he looked like at the time:

PCO is proving to be a solid ally for Austin Oh yea, one of my favorite teams Iron and Steel have got to be considered favorites for the upcoming tournament Cornette has his young guns ready for battle Douglas is ready to have a major breakthrough Scotty gets a scare and might want to get focused Vancouver Damn good win for the FOJ Lee's sending strong messages to Windham Wow, the Thrillseekers score a major upset Big things ahead for Barr. I'm sure Piper was watching Dibiase overcomes a serious obstacle in Severn Kev and AD already mentioned what I was thinking. Those fans were lucky to witness that dream match Kelowna Spinebuster Slam=Game Over The Money Train are rapidly rising the tag ranks It's one thing to defeat Adams, but it's impressive to make him submit. Big moment for Blackman Looks like Bigelow has relit the fire in Tenryu Condrey keeps raking up title defenses Coast to Coast was onto something when they brought the Monster in

In the file from Richard Land, it's Saturski against a guy in a sky-blue leotard and long tights. Black hair and a beard. It might be Judd Harris as I watch the match more closely. Yeah, it's obviously a date discrepancy because that's Kauroff in the match above, but this match is shot from a different angle, elevated and farther back and from the corner of the ring as opposed to ringside.

Do you mean this? I'll have to watch it more thoroughly. It looked like Kauroff at the start. Not tall enough for Le Grand Vladimir. Possibly Ivan Strogoff?

Will have a look but the tablet needs charging after writing that last little lot about Wright-StClair Bremen 1986. Cheers.