Loss

Ric Flair and Ricky Morton -- two of the most symbolic figures in wrestling -- voluntarily toss reputations aside to prove their mettle. Jim Crockett Promotions NWA Great American Bash July 5, 1986 Charlotte, North Carolina NWA World Heavyweight Title Cage Match 9.5 I don't know if I'd go as far as to say he's taken a beating among hardcore wrestling fans over the last decade, but it's fair to say that a lot of wrestling fans no longer see Ric Flair as infallible. Based on years of debates and discussion at Pro Wrestling Only, I've probably written more and thought more about my own views on Flair than just about anyone alive. I've been pretty convinced that he is the greatest wrestler I've ever seen for a long time, but believe me, I have tripped over the holes in his work as much as anyone. Like anything else, some of the general points used to critique him probably have merit and some are probably off the mark. For years, Flair was regarded as the Greatest Wrestler Ever. (He was surprisingly voted as such a couple of years ago by PWO members.) It only becomes harder for anyone to maintain that type of reputation over time no matter who they are or what they've done. We saw it in wrestling before Flair, when Lou Thesz presumably transformed from professional wrestler to black-and-white museum painting, even while still alive. For Flair, that process has been slowed by continued relevance -- both in and out of wrestling -- as his best wrestling days became a smaller part of the rearview mirror. However, if you are someone whose prime was three decades ago and most fans started watching when you were already -- at a minimum -- in your 40s, it's a battle that is destined to end in loss. For at least a generation, Ric Flair was the wrestler nearly everyone in the business talked about both in out of WWE canon as the guy against whom they had their greatest matches. He was the consummate champion; in fact, I think it's arguable that the simple gesture of allies and announcers calling him "champ" regardless of his title status went a long way in preserving his legacy. He became memorialized as the greatest world champion ever -- the model heel, the greatest at portraying greatness in others, and the guy who had unrivaled stamina. Like being champion of two companies at the same, it's difficult to be considered the greatest both in myth and in actual personal discoveries, which hits on the difference between being the greatest and being the best. Still, being the guy who had the greatest body of in-ring work, the best interviews, and the most charisma meant Flair owned every superlative in wrestling folklore. Watch his classics with Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk, we'd both say and hear, to see wrestling at its finest. Much of what can be said about Flair can also be said about Ricky Morton, although on a smaller scale. Morton has had tenured standing as the greatest tag team wrestler of all time. Poke around long enough and it's unlikely that you won't see Morton called the greatest tag team wrestler of all time, the greatest babyface of all time, the most sympathetic wrestler of all time, and plenty of other labels. When wrestlers are isolated in tag team matches to build to a hot tag, they're "playing Ricky Morton". Ric Flair fans found Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, Jumbo Tsuruta, Kenta Kobashi, Jushin Liger, Toshiaki Kawada, El Hijo del Santo, Negro Casas, and Mitsuharu Misawa (and in more recent years, Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi) and Flair wasn't as peerless anymore. It became easier to point to criticisms of how he wrestled. He was overly reliant on a formula. He didn't have the range of offense of Kobashi. He didn't work his signature spots into the match as logically as Bret. He didn't age as gracefully or adapt to new opponents as well as Jumbo. Likewise, Morton fans found Tommy Rogers and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi. They sold extremely well too, and they had cooler looking moves to boot. In my mind, those were valid reasons Flair shouldn't be regarded as the best wrestler -- meaning on the merits, the best at the mechanics, actions, and reactions of being a pro wrestler -- than they are that he shouldn't be the greatest wrestler -- meaning, the people who add excellence in skill and style to importance in wrestling and go on to carry the torch -- but those distinctions have only faded with time. This blurred distinction was never more the case than when there was even an argument with brief momentum that the whole idea of Ricky Morton being attacked to build to a hot tag was a facade, based on skewed footage samplings that circulated in the pre-YouTube days where Robert Gibson happened to be playing Ricky Morton for a night. If Flair became a name on a list of other great wrestlers -- ironically, the same way he portrayed his predecessors like Harley Race, Gene Kiniski, and Jack Brisco in interviews -- Morton became something worse: he became someone who didn't actually have the run we thought he did. We just imagined that he did. One of the biggest problems with high praise is that at a certain point, there's nowhere to go but down. Flair's untouchable matches with Steamboat from their '89 series could suddenly not only be touched, but also be poked and prodded. In some circles, people would watch those matches and be underwhelmed, think based on praise that's out there that the match has to be the best American wrestling has to offer because of how it's been talked about, and start seeking out matches from Japan and Mexico that they hope will prove a little more exciting. Most of the time, they would fulfill the prophecy they set for themselves, and hey, in the days when wrestling bootlegs cost $20 a pop, can you blame them? The second problem with overwhelming praise comes when people praise the wrong matches. The Flair-Steamboat matches are awesome in my mind and fully deserving of their status, but for someone trying to find wrestling they really enjoy who's still discovering new styles, it's not the most daring recommendation one could make. There's a time for watching epic matches, and I love epic matches myself. I think this is true for most wrestling fans. However, I think we would all get bored if all matches attempted to be epics. It again goes back to that distinction between best matches, the matches that most effectively combine performance elements to create something enjoyable to watch, and the greatest matches, those that do a serviceably great job of this but do it with great storyline development, over performers, and strong card positioning. Imagine the best matches as cars that start at 10mph or 20mph and go to 70mph, while the greatest matches start at 60mph and go to 90mph. Flair and Steamboat probably didn't have the best matches of time, even if they're in the conversation, but it's a more convincing argument that as respected NWA champs working at a really high level, they had the greatest matches of all time. There's really no reason for anyone to see Flair-Steamboat from Wrestle War '89 if they haven't seen the video set to Europe's "The Final Countdown" that preceded it. There's really no reason for anyone to see a Ric Flair-Terry Funk match if they haven't seen Flair swing a branding iron and put Funk in the hospital, or Funk suffocate Flair with a plastic bag and bring out a jobber dressed like him in a cheap robe with a yellow stripe down his back. If you don't feel it and see it, these matches will be a bit hollow, which should go without saying, but based on the length of time I'm taking just to set up this review, doesn't. This match and the Barry Windham match from Worldwide that was on the first Flair DVD set back in 2000 are probably the two matches I'm most proud of WWE for putting out there. It shows that there is more than Flair-Steamboat and Flair-Funk and that it is worth digging a little deeper to find them. I'd go as far to say that Flair looks as good as or better than I've ever seen him here. This is a world title match that is about revenge, as opposed to being a stoic encounter between two respected legends. Ric Flair rubbed Ricky Morton's face into a concrete floor until blood was smearing all over the floor, and he broke his nose. Morton was wearing a face guard here. He came in full of piss and vinegar, attempting to give Flair a dose of his own medicine. He tried to break Flair's nose and smear his face on the mat as a form of retribution. He leveled him with some tremendous punches. He had Flair begging off. Yes, Ricky Morton came into the match so angry and possessed that he managed to scare Ric Flair. Flair begs off a lot, because he always tries to bring his opponent to his level. Sadly, sometimes instead of his opponent coming up a notch, he falls down a notch. That didn't happen with Morton. When he begged off, it felt more organic because it was believable. He wasn't working with a Sting or Lex Luger that he had to get over before they could even really take the rivalry anywhere. Morton was already a red hot challenger. When Flair takes control of the match, we see him at his most brash and violent. He's talking trash constantly, rubbing Morton's face into the cage in front of the Apter mag photographers, screaming "So you wanna be the world champ?" at him. Flair rips off Morton's face gear and throws it out of the cage so Morton can't even put it back on. He then starts punching him Ricky squarely in the nose as hard as he can. The crowd winces, because they feel Morton's pain. He convincingly beats the shit out of poor Ricky for a long time without giving him any openings at all. Morton finally has enough and tears into Flair yet again. Flair is now scared yet again, and is now getting exactly what he deserves. He's now bleeding just like Morton and he's now on the defensive. With a flying bodypress from the top rope, Morton comes about a half a second away from winning the world title, and the fans appeared to be convinced. The best thing about this nearfall -- and nearfalls of this generation, really -- is that they didn't have to cheapen a finishing move to get the reaction. Nearfalls based on the split-second timing of the kickout are far more compelling than nearfalls based on what move a wrestler has kicked out of. Morton tries covering Flair again, but this time, Morton ends up falling on the ref during Flair's kickout. Sensing that it's now or never and that there's no referee present to tell him he can't, Flair crotches Mortons on the top rope and pins him with his feet on the ropes to escape by the skin of his teeth with the world title. (I'm convinced that he gave him such a strong out with that finish because of the respect he had for him as an opponent.) Ric Flair was rarely about somber gatherings, clean wrestling matches, and handshakes. His usual routine was to enrage fans who were dying to see someone take him down a notch because he wasn't modest and loved to play on class resentment in his promos, pointing to himself as the guy you'd run into from your past only to find that he had more life success, more money, and a bigger house. Flair had dual-layer heat -- beating him was fine, but lots of guys did that so Flair could get them over as worthy challengers. Put him on TV to gloat in a Hugo Boss sports coat the next day and it was like he won. The real heat was in taking the title from him, which the best moments of this match made clear were the source of real intrigue. That they pulled that off with an undersized tag team wrestler, even a great one, explains why they had the reputations they had in the first place. What makes this particular outing so noteworthy is not that they continued to expand on their reputations as the greatest, even if they did; but rather, that they made a case for being the best.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

La Parka and La Parka Classic fight over the rights to the name in a real yawner. July 4, 2010 AAA Lucha Libre Worldwide Sin Limite Merida, Mexico 4.0 This was a bit hard to follow much of the time, mostly because they were dressed so similarly. I've seen Super Parka wear the yellow skeleton gimmick and Undertaker-Underfaker at least had purple and gray gloves to distinguish the two of them. It's even harder to follow when Konnan shows up and the RUN-INS commence. I don't even know if Konnan was booking, but I've decided to blame him anyway since I groaned when he showed up, knowing this was about to become the Over The Edge '98 main event of lucha libre. Don't waste your time.

Based on personalities alone, you might think Suzuki and Murakami could have a delightfully entertaining match. That theory was put to the test here when that was about all we got -- personalities alone. Minoru Suzuki vs Kazunari Murakami July 4, 2004 New Japan Pro Wrestling Summer Struggle Tokyo, Japan 5.9 The words are barely there because the inspiration is barely there. This match intrigued me on paper because Minoru Suzuki is a bonafide legend and Kazunari Murakami is the greatest Little Snot of his generation. I could watch Shinya Hashimoto kick him away at the Tokyo Dome all day and still want to see it again. Neither seemed particularly inspired here, which could have been a case of time constraints or it could have been a lack of genuine motivation. I would have even been happy with the two of the standing around making funny faces at each other since they're both so great at it, but they managed the virtually impossible here in creative a bland, grave disappointment.

Guys, I don’t know where to constructively suggest this conversation go but can it take a different turn? Please?

Let the War Games, and the story of World Championship Wrestling, prologue and all, begin. July 4, 1987 Jim Crockett Promotions Great American Bash Atlanta, Georgia War Games 9.8 In the Jim Crockett era, there was an outlook on the relationships between wrestlers that wasn't entirely unique, but it was definitely distinct from the WWF's approach. Dusty Rhodes booked a more tribalist wrestling offering than that of the WWF, one where feuds overlapped and the locker room was clearly divided into two warring camps. Each side looked out for its fellow soldiers instead of focusing only on their own issues. If Dusty was attacked by the Four Horsemen, even if they were too little too late, other babyfaces at least attempted to make the save and stop the carnage. If Ric Flair and Ricky Morton ended up in an impromptu brawl, for example, the other Horsemen would quickly be there to put the numbers on Ric's side and aide in an attack. The big pop usually came when other babyfaces finally hit the ring to make the save. One of two things happened at this point -- either the heels immediately retreated or we had a pier-six brawl on our hands, often as the show was going off the air. War Games as a concept was a way to shift the drama from angles and finishes with saves and counter-saves into a match all its own. By a simple coin toss, two heels could beat on one babyface, then the babyface would make the save. Then another heel would do the same, only for the babyface to come in yet again. Suddenly, a match was filled with what would have previously just been a really long hot angle, and 25 minutes had passed. It was the last hurrah for JCP, as War Games led to a summer run of house shows where they were outdrawing the WWF in many of the same markets, and it was probably Dusty Rhodes' last truly transcendent booking idea. Without the time intervals, we'd merely have ourselves a Bunkhouse Stampede, which had many of the same brawling elements but never carried close to the same excitement. Outside of a company that prioritized double and triple-team angles building to a hot babyface save, War Games could never garner the heat it was capable of getting. In a company where all programs exist in their own silos, it's just another match. Like most of wrestling's best ideas, this one was born from necessity. The previous year's Great American Bash tour was defined by Ric Flair's classic title defenses in every major market, but in 1987, Flair had a broken neck. The break wasn't severe to the point that he couldn't work, but he couldn't deliver a long series of world title defenses at the usual Ric Flair Standard, so they had to come up with a different selling point this time around. As hot as JCP was that summer, the WWF never panicked and was already looking ahead to their fall plans. JCP had none, and their own decline escalated rapidly with television ratings tanking when they changed the format of the Saturday evening TBS show (all 30-second squashes and 90-second promos), crowds rejecting Ron Garvin as champion, and the WWF sabotaging Starrcade '87. The continued story of War Games over the next decade is the story of World Championship Wrestling itself. In 1989, they tried a fresher talent mix to recapture the magic of the glory years, and it worked on some level but ultimately fell short. In 1991, Dusty Rhodes was back in the driver's seat as booker and they went back to familiar territory, but it didn't work. By July's War Games at the Meadowlands, Flair was gone from the company and fans didn't respond well to the departure at all. In 1992, they were delivering their best in-ring action ever, but the promotional piece was missing to put it over the top. 1993 was downright embarrassing, but they rebounded briefly in 1994 until Hulk Hogan ruined everything. Suddenly, the NWO was red hot while Flair was being phased down, and 1998's drug-induced ideas were something else altogether. Hang on tight, though, because Vince Russo's ideas were even more out there. It's all there, the key points of WCW's history presented through one match type alone. Cries for WWE to bring back War Games (as they eventually did) failed to consider why the match worked in a specific time and place, as even more traditional wrestling companies didn't nail War Games when they tried it (these matches aren't supposed to have a lot of coming and going, as that's the whole point of the cage), despite the match being great otherwise. The Crockett years of 1985-1988 are heavily romanticized, and rightfully so, because they were arguably the most formidable vision presented to a national American audience of what pro wrestling could be without using the WWF as a compass, something that even late 1990s WCW in all its popularity couldn't truly boast. To put in terms WWE producers might understand, the legacy of this gimmick match truly is a case where it's best to Leave The Memories Alone.

Even if you weren't watching World Class in 1984, it's hard for this type of intense brawling to not make you nostalgic for the brawls of wrestling's past. July 4, 1984 World Class Championship Wrestling Independence Day Star Wars Fort Worth, Texas Badstreet Match 9.2 It's pretty clear what we're getting when a match is billed as a street fight or any type of brawl in modern wrestling. Ultimately, the match will build to a huge spot with someone going through a table, landing on thumbtacks, or being set on fire, the crowd will chant, "Holy shit!", and we'll all go about our evening. It wasn't always this way, but when so much of the "personal issues" used to hype matches are so clearly just a way to fill time and are so transparently phony to even the least cynical among us, maybe it's hard for it to not be this way. It's hard to fault the wrestlers for this regression too much. When they aren't booked in meaningful, relatable situations, they have to go farther to manufacture the excitement they create by trade, working against the booking tide just as much as they work without it. If we look at Duggan-DiBiase, the Doom-Horsemen match at Starrcade '90, or the Cactus-Sullivan vs Nasty Boys match at Slamboree '94, to name only a few, the best brawls of previous generations had a few things in common. The wrestlers dressed for a fight instead of dressing for a match to get it over as a departure from the norm. They also kept the match relatively short. The highspots were derived from taking actions that would normally result in a disqualification -- and the match continuing! -- or for the babyfaces finding ways to do unto the heels what is normally done unto them on a level playing field. So the best moments ended up as low blows, babyfaces using weapons, heels being isolated for babyface double-teaming, and all of that. Call it Wrestling Ice Cream for the fans that usually try to eat healthy, topped with plasma syrup to boot. The best thing about this match is the short duration. It's not the least bit convincing for a brawl with such ramped-up intensity to last thirty minutes. The longest matches in the classic view of what professional wrestling is are typically the most sportsmanlike wrestling encounters pitting evenly matched wrestlers with great stamina against each other. This is why brawling and cheating are called "shortcuts". Such things seem like Basic Wrestling Psychology 101, but they get lost when wrestlers, and those who produce them, stop thinking about wrestling with the "What if it was all a shoot?" mentality. To paraphrase Bret Hart, isn't it so much more fun to pretend that something as ridiculous as pro wrestling is deathly serious? It's so much easier for wrestlers to have a great brawl when they are complimented by the aesthetics and setting. When most matches are somewhat scientific, a brawl is a big deal. When the wrestlers can avoid cheesy in-house productions in favor of popular music that everyone knows, as the Von Erichs did with their "La Grange" entrance here, the mood is more inviting and has more widespread appeal. When the wrestlers wear street clothes when they aren't wrestling, wrestling gear to traditional matches, and bandanas, jeans, and boots to a fight, it all means more and is more distinct. When weapons aren't conveniently placed around the ring, it's easier to buy the action. And when the brawl is over quickly, it's easy enough to suspend disbelief and question if we might have seen something legitimate. The idea that most fans ever thought wrestling was real was something I never took seriously, but I do think most fans, both then and now, want to at least find the possibility that this rivalry is real to be plausible because it creates a more fun viewing experience. Wrestling fans want to follow along, and they will, but those in wrestling have to lead them somewhere. The Freebirds and Von Erichs took fans on a five-year journey that certainly had good and bad qualities, hot periods and cold periods, but it was also a rivalry that defined pro wrestling in Texas for a generation of fans. This match, its setting, its action level, and its respect for its own mythology, is one of the reasons why.

Johnny Saint and Ken Joyce delivered an all-time classic without even getting too competitive or heated. All they needed was an overabundance of joy. June 24, 1981 Joint Promotions ITV 07-04-81 Shrewsbury, England 9.0 Wrestling is fun. It's true. I love watching wrestling, talking about wrestling, writing about wrestling, and thinking about wrestling. It's a wonderful combination of absurdism, emotion, excess, and demonstrated skill. There's nothing quite like it. I love wrestling so much that I started ProWrestlingOnly.com. I've loved it enough to follow it closely for more than thirty years. I've loved it enough to have spent a borderline shameful amount of time and money on the hobby. That said, I could never love wrestling as much as Johnny Saint or Ken Joyce. I simply don't have the capacity, even if in that failure, I've salvaged an endlessly rewarding journey as a wrestling fan. By merely embracing the purest parts of the craft, Saint and Joyce defiantly had an all-time classic bout, forgoing the things that are typically necessary to make that happen. This was a friendly trading of holds and little more, yet it somehow never felt remotely like an exhibition. They clearly had the desire to win, but they were both babyfaces and they weren't going to stray from that. There was no subtle heel work from either guy. There was also no anger. I think the average person gets more upset when some idiot on television buys a vowel. Johnny Saint and Ken Joyce took a pretty straightforward approach, attempting to best each other in one incredible mat exchange after another. Both had moments of triumph, and all of them were celebrated. Joyce in particular cheered both his own successes and Saint's successes equally, just happy to be in the ring with someone who could challenge him to be at his best. The best thing about being a wrestling fan is that just when I think I have it all figured out, wrestlers show me some new path to greatness that I haven't seen, proving that I'll never completely solve the riddle and neither will anyone else. As a perfectionist, it's something that has driven me nuts at times because I've had an innate desire to watch it all and see it all. With time, however, in the same way that scientists love being proven wrong, I've grown to love having any prejudgments that I have about professional wrestling tossed in the garbage. It's a medium where with enough skill and courage of convictions, virtually any approach can work. I now know that it's possible to have a classic match without the wrestlers involved showing any anger and I'm better for it.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Thanks, guys! Someone recently suggested doing an updated version of this (this article is about four years old) to account for streaming services. I thought that was a great suggestion and something I'll try to make time to do at some point.

Forget everything you think you know about the effort level on WWE house shows, as these two tore the house down in Tokyo. July 3, 2015 World Wrestling Entertainment Tokyo, Japan 8.3 As much as we hear from wrestlers about how fun it is to work house shows, this seems to be pretty much what you would expect from a television or pay-per-view match around this time. In fact, it greatly mirrors the two matches they had on pay-per-view, with John Cena busting out the Code Red and lots of finisher kickouts. They also protected Kevin Owens, who Cena still hadn't beaten with the cameras on where it "counts", by doing a low blow DQ finish. I have no qualms with any of this, and my thoughts pretty much fall with where they would for the more high-profile matches from this feud. If you like those, you'll like this, even if it doesn't really bring much of anything new to the table. The more interesting part is that a kid on smartphone captured the match and might have in the process exposed that everything we're told about how WWE thinks about house shows is wrong. "WWE likes to send fans home happy on house shows with a babyface win." "What happens when the cameras aren't on doesn't really 'count'." "Wrestlers do more schtick instead of taking big bumps or working too hard because they need to prolong their careers." We've heard it all a million times. Have we been living in a vast web of deceit? In wrestling? I do think this was a great match, but it's the kind of great match that only works once because of all the kickouts. This feud gave it to us twice, and I suppose we got it three times if this match truly does "count". (It apparently does or Cena would have won, right?) Now, to go ponder everything I've been told about everything since childhood, being that I'm suddenly skeptical of everything we're told about what WWE does and why they do it.

Old ARSION and new ARSION collided when Lioness Asuka and Mariko Yoshida used the ring - and ringside area - as a battlefield of ideas. July 3, 2001 Hyper Visual Fighting ARSION Tokyo, Japan 7.2 When ARSION debuted in 1998, it was a huge breath of fresh air on both the Joshi landscape and the overall pro wrestling landscape. In the late 90s, wrestling all over the world was starting to drown in its own excess with ever-lengthening finishing stretches, bigger bumps, and unnecessarily long matches. This was every bit as true, possibly even more true, for women's wrestling in Japan. Suddenly, ARSION showed up to suggest return to basics -- similar to how the late 70s punk rock movement made restraint something radical. If ARSION was 1970s punk, they turned Korakuen Hall into CBGB's and the cards were like Ramones set lists. The wrestlers weren't getting paid by the hour and they were in and out quickly, which felt like a return to early JWP in many ways, a Joshi promotion that was a misfit congregation for women who dared to be older than 25 years old (and thus, were required to retire under All Japan Women rules) and Yoshiaki Fujiwara trainees. One of the most dramatic reinventions came from Mariko Yoshida. Yoshida was always a very good worker, and she was a midcard mainstay in AJW during the glory years of the 1990s interpromotional era. She worked the house style in AJW, but in ARSION, she would create it herself, transforming into one of the greatest mat wizards in wrestling history. Others followed suit and we saw an interesting and sometimes new side of wrestlers working the mat. If you can imagine an all women's promotion of nothing but Steven Regal WCW TV title defenses from TBS up and down the card, you can probably get pretty close to what ARSION was. Like any big attempt at change, there was resistance. It came in large part from Etsuko Mita and Mima Shimoda, who teamed as Las Cacharros Orientales, usually called the LCO for short. The LCO had a reputation as an all-time great tag team, and rightfully so, but they also popularized around-the-arena brawling and long bloated matches to a fault wherever they went, which was pretty much everywhere. Phil Schneider of Death Valley Driver once called them "the Public Enemy of Joshi" in a scathing review. Lioness Asuka had success in wrestling as both a minimalist and maximalist, but on the issue of the day, she sided with the LCO. She was brought in as company booker and reformed everything in her image. As arguable the number two star of 1980s AJW, Asuka had some capital as one of the biggest draws on the scene, and suddenly ARSION, while still producing good matches, was more conventional. That struggle played out in how the match was worked, with Yoshida repeatedly taking Lioness to the mat, only to be countered by brawling on the outside. Art further imitated life when Asuka won the match, just as she won the battle. Call it a pyrrhic victory, as ARSION sadly only lasted a couple more years, which made the whole scene Pretty Vacant.

Wrestling fans can spend a heavy amount of time seeking hidden gems, which is great because it leads us to matches like this. However, sometimes, what we would benefit from seeing most has been right in front of us all along. July 3, 1992 Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre Mexico City, Mexico CMLL World Middleweight Championship Tournament Final 10 In pro wrestling, basics can go a long way. Sometimes we think about wrestling through the lens that we have to temper our expectations on smaller shows because wrestlers can't go "all out" every night and have sustainable careers. This is true, but it's also narrow thinking, as if the only way to have a great match in the first place is to go all out. In some ways, what's most remarkable about El Dandy vs Negro Casas is how much of it is unremarkable. Most of the holds are pretty basic, to the point that any wrestler with semi-competent training could execute them. That could be why they're overlooked so much of the time. We tell ourselves that greatness should never come easy, but maybe the real secret to greatness is the inner wherewithal to embrace the obvious. El Dandy and Negro Casas proved on this night that what happens in a match is far less important than how it happens. Casas forcing Dandy to do the splits from a sitting position looked legitimately painful, had low difficulty in execution, was sold believably, and looked great. The gorgeous spinning toehold and bridge combo that Dandy used to take the second fall is a more common move, but it's hardly a staple move in any style. This match is filled with the type of grappling that would ideally be a staple of all pro wrestling. It's logical. It's easy. However, for some reason, it's hard. It's possible, even probable, that this match would not have looked at home on a UWF, PWFG, or RINGS card during the era of worked shoots, more because it's a different style than because it's something less sophisticated. Beyond that, I struggle to come up with any environment where this match would be woefully out of place. It's just easy to imagine this match, hold-for-hold, showing up on an episode of All Japan Classics as it is to picture it as an NWA World Title defense from any decade. It would easily engage a crowd at virtually any U.S. indie show during the last twenty years. Plenty of great pro wrestling requires you to accept or ignore some things about the style, the promotion, or the culture of which it's a product. The beauty of this is that no such viewer shift is required. This is wrestled in a great tradition with both men at their zenith, and it's elevated by its universal appeal. There aren't many matches you'll see that are more true to what classic lucha libre is, but it's also not as hard to grasp for those who are born and bred on American or Japanese wrestling as some argue that lucha can be. The crowd pops when you expect them to pop. The pacing is similar to what you've seen in classic world title matches. The referee's pin counts are slow indeed, but not so slow that they require a parameters shift. For many years, the only known copy of this match was grainy as hell and existed from one source. While Dave Meltzer gave the match four stars in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter when his lucha coverage was still in its infancy, this was never really talked up much prior to the last decade or so. In itself, it serves as a reminder that there are boatloads of great CMLL matches, both that aired on television and that never did, that we know are collecting dust at Televisa headquarters when they could be influencing a generation of fans and performers in much the same way that the World of Sport revival of the 2000s that highlighted ITV matches from 1970s and 1980s Joint Promotions and All Star Wrestling had a lasting impact on independent wrestling. In the meantime, I long for the day when most of us care more about such masterpieces as this inspiring more great wrestling than about who has locker room heat or what this week's television ratings were. However, as Casas and Dandy proved nearly three decades ago, just because something is obvious does not mean that it's apparent.

Rick Martel played the role of the champion just as well as anyone, which is impossible to deny in this AWA title defense in the Great White North. July 3, 1984 International Wrestling Halifax, Nova Scotia AWA World Heavyweight Championship 7.0 While the NWA World Title was the pinnacle achievement in wrestling for decades, I definitely have time for an argument that the AWA title was the next best thing. Sure, the WWF title was defended outside of the home territory occasionally, but the AWA champ was probably more omnipresent, whether that meant Nick Bockwinkel and Jerry Lawler were squaring off in Memphis, the title was changing hands on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, or, in this case, Rick Martel was defending the gold against Leo Burke in Montreal's International Wrestling. Rick Martel's career had quite the odd trajectory. There aren't many wrestlers who were young babyfaces that became world champs before becoming middle-of-the-card tag wrestlers, only to turn heel and gain fame with a male model gimmick -- remember, a male who models can never simply be called a model -- before ending their careers in a series for the WCW TV title, but Martel certainly fits the bill, and this match is an awesome showcase for the best phase of his career. At forty-five minutes and change (of a sixty-minute draw, mind you), I won't say that this match never tested my patience, but the journey was paid off, and Martel only became a better heel the longer the match went. Leo Burke was there, had an interesting career trajectory of his own, and delivered a perfectly fine performance, but this was really a platform for Martel's talents. As much as we talk about the devaluing of world championships by WWE having two of them, the real issue isn't that wrestling having too many world champions as much as it is a wrestling company having too many world champions. The NWA and AWA champs didn't cross paths all that much, with some notable exceptions, but they existed in a wrestling landscape that gave them both plenty of space to play the role. Here, Martel looks every bit the peer to his contemporary in the role Ric Flair, and all I can wonder is how great Martel's career might have been had he reached the top ten years earlier instead of on the cusp of some transformational changes to wrestling itself.

Portland Wrestling has some really high-quality matches, especially featuring these two. But even the best of us have off nights. July 3, 1982 Pacific Northwest Wrestling Portland, Oregon No Disqualification 5.0 Buddy Rose. More than Nick Bockwinkel, Jerry Lawler, or even Ric Flair, it's hard to think of a single wrestler who made a career out of doing so much with so little on the opposite side of the ring. All three of these wrestlers are considered shining examples of wrestlers who can get a good match out of the proverbial broomstick, and rightfully so. Still, Flair had Ricky Steamboat, Barry Windham, and Jumbo Tsuruta. Lawler had Bill Dundee and Austin Idol. Bockwinkel had Rick Martel and Billy Robinson. Who did Buddy Rose have? The Pro Wrestling Only forums was home to a renewed love for Buddy Rose a few years back, a love that only seemed to strengthen the more that everyone involved watched more matches. I remember an offline conversation where I asked one of the most prominent members of that discussion, "Who's his [Jerry Lawler career rival Bill] Dundee?" "He doesn't have one," this person replied. Looking at match lists, that seems to be true. It's not that Rose never had quality opposition. He faced Rick Martel, Roddy Piper, Matt Borne, and Dynamite Kid. The problem he ran into, however, was one of timing. We usually refer to great wrestlers as mechanics. Buddy Rose was more of a gardener. Curt Hennig became an excellent wrestler, and quickly so at that. When this match happened, Hennig was probably only six months away from being a really great performer. He was so great at a young age that Ric Flair once opined that as great of a worker as Hennig was, he was never as good as he was when he was young. Hennig also idolized Rose and grew to see him as his own compass. When dismissing booking or match ideas, Hennig argued many times that "Buddy Rose would never do that" when providing his reasoning. When this match happened, Hennig still didn't quite understand what it was that Buddy Rose would never do. The match is focused on knee injuries that both men have suffered in pre-match angles and it's an explicit storyline point that both men are expected to target each other's knees. At one point, babyface Hennig goes after Rose with a chair in a moment of retribution and just completely obliterates him, but he uses so many chairshots that they quickly lose meaning? There's no logic underpining the weapon shots. Instead of hitting a guy with a chair ten times in a row, why not get him with one shot and make it count? It makes the rest of the match a bit preposterous, especially in an environment where wrestling holds are put over as devastating and are legal and weapons shots are considered beyond the pale and are illegal. In most cases, a no-disqualification match between two well-regarded wrestlers with both coming in with knee injuries, one where the crowd is so excited that they're specifically chanting for Curt to break Buddy's leg, would be great before it even begins. This match never came close to being something at that level, but for those of us who enjoy following patterns over time, we got something even better. The great matches would come with time. For the better part of a half hour, we saw Curt Hennig sit under the learning tree.

Talk about it here.

This is unique in that Daniel Bryan carries the offense in most of his matches, but here, he has someone who's on his level in that category, so he puts on more of a selling performance. WWE often talks about Daniel Bryan as this big underdog, which is not what got him over. In fact, he was presented as more of a pitbull. This was an okay match. Nothing really wrong with it, but these are two of the best wrestlers in the company and they obviously have more in them when they aren't doing a short TV main event with a non-finish.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

The Rock & Roll Express defend the NWA World Tag Team Titles. Taped 7/2 in Landover MD. Talk about it here.

This had tremendous heat, and was pretty much WWE fast-paced wrestling putting its best foot forward. It's a bit weird watching Dolph Ziggler in main events now, four years after most people were clamoring for it but are now sort of over him. Has he changed or have we? Anyway, I guess it's possible he could reverse his momentum. Stranger things have happened. I'm all about Roman Reigns-Drew McIntyre being set up with the post-match angle with Reigns adding a third current program to his workload. One of the best (and longest) TV main events in a while. ***3/4

A good match that tried to tell an interesting in-match story, but a little too much comedy at times for a title match from my view. This is almost a competitive squash for a big part of this, but then it kicks into high gear in the last few minutes when AR Fox stops trying to out-Riddle Matt Riddle and starts wrestling more as himself. The ringside seconds added a lot to the nearfalls by getting so excited after all of the big moves, which I am convinced played a big part in getting the crowd to bite so hard on those. This didn't really come across like a main event-level match to me, but it also seemed like an early chapter in a long series between these two, so maybe that's okay for now. ***

This is my first time to see Austin Theory, but I have to say I don't get guys cutting promos with that scripted WWE cadence when no one is making them do it. (At least I hope no one is.) I have no desire to return to the rape culture days of early 2000s indie wrestling at all, but calling an opponent an "indie piece of trash" just might be too far in the other direction. I loved DJ Z here and think he has a bright future. I hear he's working BOLA this year, so I hope he gets a lot of matches and has a breakout weekend because he seems on the verge of something cool. I'm not a huge fan of three way matches, but they do execute some of the necessities of that really well here. I thought it was cool how DJ Z wanted to do the big move from up top, but it was presented as him countering something else when they were actually setting up his own move. Pretty cool way to structure that so it's not obvious what they're doing. Good match. DJ Z looks ready to conquer the world. ***1/2