Phil Schneider

This was probably a bad match to start this project with, because it really sets an impossibly high bar. This was on a high school football field in Williamstown New Jersey, and Tarzan Goto is sitting on a folding chair on the track watching the match. This is worked like a super amped up PWFG match, with Severn aggressively shooting in for takedowns and suplexes and Tajiri throwing kicks and using his speed to counter Severn's power, it feels like I was watching an Earth 2 Tajiri where he ends up trained by Funaki and fighting in Pancrase. Tajiri hits a plausible shootstyle enzigiri. Severn is awesome in this, he is totally amped up and just hurls Tajiri with suplexes, he reminded me a bit of peak Brock here especially in the where he walks through a low kick by Tajiri, hurls him with a belly to belly suplex, right into a german suplex, right into a choke. I couldn't believe how good this was, I would have lost my shit watching this in the bleachers at a 1995 indy show.

Sprint of the year candidate, and my favorite match of the tournament so far. Bayzler comes out and throws this jumping knee right into Candice's face and walks away with this great Kazunari Murakami style smirk. She misses a kick though, and Candice pushes her to the floor and hits a great looking tope into a spinning DDT, Bayzler is surprisingly great at catching dives, which isn't something you would think you would learn at Josh Barnett catch wrestling school. LaRae hits an octopus into her husbands crossface finisher. Baszler had a great almost tap near fall here, and it really felt like Candice might catch her, and there was also great second selling by Jessymyn Duke and Ronda Rousey, both really looked concerned and worried. LaRae tries for her top rop neckbreaker and gets ripped off the top right into the Bayzler choke. Shayna refuses to release it, and really comes off like an asshole. Awesome performances by both ladies and a hell of a short match.

Very good match, worthy of a finals, but very clearly the wrong lady went over. Not only are there way more interesting things that can be done with Shayna as a tournament champ, but she was obviously the superior performer. Most of the cool things in this match were provided by Baszler, all the early cockiness, the little kicks to the head, the absorbing of the spear, the nasty armwork. Then later in the match she did a masterful job of selling the broken rib to make herself look vulnerable, and set up the big finish. I really wish Sane’s spear looked better, a selling job that good deserved a better looking instigating move. I did love Sane’s backfist, which she hits with such force, and the diving elbow to the ribs was super nasty (Baszler covering her head only to get wasted in the body was awesome). Also total waste not to have some post match gaga. If you are going to have Shayna lose, at least have her jump Kairi post bell and have some sort of pull apart with the Horsewomen and the WWE wrestlers, any business they want to do there lost a lot of its luster. It really felt like they just wanted the photo op with horseface Ivanka and roid Kushner post match.

We get a nifty chance to look at Regal work a house show tag match along side fellow classic heel stooge Dick Slater. This is mostly the heel bumping and clowning for the faces and these are a pair of great clowns. Regal and Davey Boy had a great PPV match full of WOS spots, and they break out a bunch of those tricks here. This stuff has been spammed a lot by indy dudes lately, but it is pretty crazy to watch them do wristlock cartwheel counters in 93 WCW. Sting and Regal have a really fun knucklock sequence, with Sting doing a super impressive bridge with Regals weight on top of him. The finish came a bit abruptly after a long heel kneework section on Davey Boy, but that was my only quibble. Fun stuff and a great out of nowhere upload.

I am going to move this discussion over the Village Green folder

Feels like a fixable problem, obviously we would need a Brit willing to do the legwork, but crowd sourcing fees could work.

If that is possible we should find a Brit to buy some stuff, raise a little cash and throw it on a google drive or something

Everyone should watch the Mitch Connor promo on this episode of CWF Mid-Atlantic, I am behind a bit in the show, but this was one of my favorite promos of this decade https://youtu.be/8GCsAQMsn48?t=9m57s

We reviewed Episode 4 over at Segunda Caida and praised Tessa Blanchard to the skies http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2017/09/mae-young-classic-episode-4.html

This match was on a whole different level then the match up the previous month. Shino and Ito jump the Karate team at the bell and bust them both open quickly. It stays nastily violent for the entire match with Ito and Shino throwing these really reckless suplexes with very little regard for how their opponents landed, there was a spinning powerbomb and a released back suplex both of which looked like they might end in spinal fracture. Aoyagi and Umibozu fought back with some unpulled kicks to the face and body. The match ends with Aoyagi lynching Ito with his black belt and Umibozu stabbing Shino in the head with some sort of spike. It escalated bad, like a bar brawl where someone pulls a gun.

Yeah, all of that...plus he's really, really short. Like, tiny short. Like, he's probably not allowed to go on a lot of the rides at Disney World, short. Like, he can probably still order from the kid's menu, and the waitress doesn't bat an eyelash. He is as tall as Bryan Danielson and Eddie Guerrero and taller then El Hijo Del Santo and Rey Mysterio. He is the same height as Floyd Maywether and only an inch shorter then Connor McGregor and they just had a fight that made an estimated $500 million dollars. There haven't been any smart arguments in this thread, but this is an especially dumb one.

Why do you give a shit about his earning power? Are you his accountant? You really think he is missing out the notoriously huge paychecks in Impact wrestling? Also calling a guy a "malcontent" because he didn't just do what his employer told him is pretty much the definition of a management shill.

So I guess that proves the bar for "how much unprofessional shit will a company put up with if you're good in the ring" is somewhere between him and HBK. It weird how so many wrestling fans are management shills. Low-Ki would rather control his own fate then go along with whatever dumb shit his employer wants. He values autonomy more then being a widget in a mostly shitty machine, I think that is admirable. Ki can go back to doing cool shit in AAW and JAPW, and I am sure he is happy doing that.

My favorite Low-Ki moment would be one of the 20 years worth of awesome matches he had.

What a cool matchup. Kurisu is my favorite all time puro indy crowbar. A balding dumpy looking dude who hits quite a bit harder then is called for. Hashimoto is also willing to hit harder then necessary, and won't take any bullshit from an FMW scrub. Kurisu keeps trying to draw Hashimoto to the floor where he could smack him with the chair. Hash and Kurisu smack the crap out of each other in the ring but Hash obviously has the advantage. Kurisu is able to take over when finally gets Hash outside where he can recklessly crack him with a chair. It can't last forever though and Hash absolutely plants him with a bunch of DDT's at weird unsafe angles. I totally loved this, exactly what you want from this matchup. a couple of guys with a tendency to be unprofessional, losing their cool.

I was at that show live, it was awesome how hard Santo would work in front of like 50 people

No this would be the guy who worked as marachi in Lucia underground

Jeez, when did I do that? I can't even remember the last time I watched a Seth Rollins match, much less praised one, that does seem like my license should at least be suspended.

Eddie Gilbert & Ricky Morton vs. Masa Fuchi & Atsushi Onita (Memphis 9/4/81) ***Complete*** We really only have post match for this one too, the match proceeding the brawl is joined in progress

This is just what you want from a turn of the century skinny Jersey fliers match. Rainchild is a guy who wrestled for maybe six months, but he looked good here, especially early doing some nice fast arm drag and rana exchanges with Wasted Youth. Maximo's were working pretty stiff I don't remember them as Dynamite Kid/Beniot style juniors, but they were all about stiff chops snap suplexes and head drops. The match finishes up with a great dive train right next to the Bayonne wall, so lots of height but not a lot of distance, Lethal hits a tope where he basically piledrives his head into the concrete, but all the other dives were beautiful. Insane Dragon then gets finished off with some truly harrowing head drops, the kind of thing which you want to watch through your hands like a horror film.

This match starts with possibly the coolest entrance in wrestling history as Flair lands on the field of a baseball stadium in a helicopter and steps out to Also Sprach Zarathustra. Morton has a face mask and is looking for revenge as Flair and the Horseman mangled his face and broke his nose. The whole match is based around working the face, Morton goes after Flair's face, landing these awesome downward punches to the giant nose, and lots of eye rakes and cage face rakes. When Flair gets the advantage he rips off Morton's mask and bloodies him up. Super nasty way for a pair of hearthrobs to work, only one will be pretty at the end of this match. The whole feud was based around Flair being pissed that Morton was draining off the teen rats, so a match where both guys were trying disfigure each other works perfectly. Morton has awesome looking punches, and this was some of the best Flair punching I can remember, there was some Lawler level exchanges in this match, including one with both guys standing on the top rope which ends with Flair doing a top rope Flair flop, which is an awesome 80's high spot. Violent brawler Flair is the best and this was maybe the most vicious he has ever been. Finish was a bit cheap shotish, although you know Flair was going to sneak his way to a win. Loved this, so crazy it sat in a box for so many years.

Well the world is going to hell, but at least we waltzing on the deck of the Titanic to the sounds of new 80s Brazos matches. This was a great quality pro-shot Juarez show, which hopefully means that more stuff like this exists. This was the earliest Eddie match I can remember, although he is more of an afterthought to the El Brazo v. Rocky Star feud. That is probably the least interesting on paper focus of any of these six guys, although it is still great stuff. Both Rocky and El Brazo bleed buckets,and El Brazo takes some nasty post bumps, El Brazo was clearly a world class 80s bleeder. This was the most serious I have seen the Brazo's work, as they were straight violent rudos including flipping off the crowd and brutalizing the babyfaces. There was some fleeting moments of Super Porky agility including a punishing superfly splash and a dive off of the ring apron. More of a cool discovery then an all time great match, but what a cool discovery.

God bless youtube as this tasty slice of lucha libre violence just shows up one day. I didn't even know Emilio Charles Jr. was in Los Destructores and here he is trying to open up El Brazo's head like a difficult coconut. Destructores lose the first fall by DQ by removing Oro's mask, and as he goes to the back, they take a 3 on 2 advantage on the Brazo's and really beat them badly. Brazo is leaking like Reince Preibus, and they tie Plata in the corner and work his ample belly like a heavy bag. Emilio Charles is so great to watch here, the other Destructores are great, but he is on another level, just an amazing explosive brawler. Loved Porky in this too, he may be one of my favorite high flyers ever, he is such a hippo that to watch him fly around is so incongruous, and he knows how to land everything with such force. My favorite kind of holy grail, a match I had no idea existed, which shows up like a surprise present.