Moonsault Marvin

If this is the end of the first round, did I miss Demolition somewhere?

Pat O'Connor and Bob Konovsky take on Hans Schmidt and Angelo Poffo in a two out of three falls match. Early in the match, I was somewhat confused by the punching and dirty rope breaks by O'Connor, with Schmidt and Poffo actually being the heels. O'Connor's flexibility is impressive with his bridging up multiple times. When Konovsky got in the ring, he was eaten alive as Schmidt and Poffo dominated him in the corner as they made quick tags. Schmidt was laying it in with his strikes to the back. They easily won the first fall. Konovsky gets dominated again in the second fall, but Poffo accidentally strikes Schmidt in the head, which allows Konovsky to make the comeback to win the second fall. The angry Schmidt makes Poffo wrestle the third fall and wouldn't tag back in. O'Connor wins with his O'Connor roll. I thought Schmidt looked good in this one, especially with his height making his downward blows look forceful.

When wrestlers are being put into the surfboard, way too many wrestlers raise their arms up before the guy putting it on even reaches for the arms. In watching matches for the GWE, I've seen every major luchador do it, with the exception of Hijo del Santo.

Here's Pat Patterson's first interview as champion, where he lays out the title as more important than the North American title and equal to the World championship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx7geOFXC04

Edouard Carpentier defends his NWA World Championship against Lou Thesz in a two out of three falls match. Thesz plays heel here, often stalling to try to let his arm recover after being worked over by Carpentier. Thesz is impressive as usual on the mat with little touches such as trying to plant his feet to get out of the hammerlock instead of just lying there like most wrestlers do. Carpentier shows some acrobatic skills throughout the match, but never pulls anything off seamlessly. He wins the first fall with a roll up. The highlight of the match is Lou Thesz's back suplex to finish the second fall. It looked just as devastating as Tsuruta's. Carpentier brings on the acrobatics again in the final minutes as they approached the hour time limit. He went for a somersault senton type of move, and he nailed Thesz in the back on one of his attempts. The match ended in a draw after Thesz collapsed in attempting a body slam, since his back was hurting from Carpentier's senton. The match had a couple of slow sections, but for the most part, this was a good match.

Kostas Davelis takes on Sonny Myers in a one fall match. This one never really gets going. Davelis tries to cram every heel technique into a couple of minutes of match time. He pulls the hair, uses the rope for leverage, punches the stomach, etc. without ever sticking to working one method thoroughly. Additionally, the referee is out of sync. The referee is supposed to not be able to see Davelis cheating, but he is looking straight at him and doesn't break the holds. Davelis stomps Myers's fingers, which fires up Myers. Myers does a quick comeback and wins with a primitive version of the atomic drop.

I doubt Undertaker cares about the win or loss as much as not wanting his looking injured and pathetic in the Lesnar match being the final memory of his Wrestlemania career. At this point, Wyatt has lost all momentum and the recent wins haven't helped him. It will take a rededication to the character like new cult members to improve him and a new purpose, so you're right that he won't gain anything from the match.

Hopefully, if Undertaker can get through the match without a concussion, it will be decent. He could retire on a high note after looking bad in the Lesnar match. Then, they could put him in the Hall of Fame next year in Texas.

I loved those vignettes as a kid. "Doo doo is good for me and doo doo is good for you."

I hope Dibiase gets a giant Million Dollar Man birthday cake with green icing and huge golden dollar signs on the sides.

What are you measuring here, Mookieghana?

Ivan Rasputin and Hans Schmidt take on Rudy Kay and Farmer Don Marlin in a two out of three falls match. The crowd boos everybody but Farmer Don. Farmer Don wrestles barefoot in jeans with frayed legs. Schmidt goes straight to heeling with dirty breaks, punches to the gut, and hair pulling. I think he did too much of this too soon and should have paced it better throughout the match. After Rasputin gets in, Farmer Don and Rudy do a comedy sequence where they forearm Rasputin back and forth between them. Rasputin and Schmidt are able to trap Rudy in the corner, but I wouldn't call it much of a hot tag when Farmer Don finally gets in, since he gets cut off fairly fast. Rasputin is able to get Rudy into his finisher, the bear hug. Rudy breaks out with forearms, but Rasputin grabs him in it again and is able to bear hug him down to the mat for the pin. The highlight of the second fall happens when Schmidt inadvertently forearms Rasputin when Rudy breaks out of the double team. Rasputin falls to the floor and they exchange words, but they go back to the match. The end of the second fall is the reverse of the first with Rasputin trying the bear hug again, but Rudy is able to knock him down with the forearm to get the pin. Commentator Russ Davis explains that Rudy is usually booed but is teaming with the fan favorite Farmer Don, which finally explains why the crowd isn't cheering for anything. Probably the funniest part of the match happens in the third fall with Schmidt twisting the toes of the barefoot Farmer Don. Rasputin and Rudy get some hard forearms in on each other in this fall. Schmidt ends the match against Farmer Don with a piledriver followed by an airplane spin. I thought this match was fairly average. I was expecting more out of Schmidt, since he is a famous name, but he did show some nice agility in his bumps over the ropes and the toe pulling was funny. I think the three heels in the match probably lessened the atmosphere of the match, since the crowd wasn't really cheering for much, only booing.

Pat O'Connor fights the Mighty Atlas in a two out of three falls match. Mighty Atlas draws the boos by stalling on getting inspected by referee Jack Dempsey and then taking forever to put his jacket in a garment bag. O'Connor starts quick with a series of dropkicks. O'Connor is able to twist out of Atlas's hip toss attempts and land on his feet, showing some nice athleticism. They work a series of rope breaks in which Atlas does the dirty break, but O'Connor figures it out. Atlas goes tumbling over the ropes when he misses his dirty punch. O'Connor does a flying headscissors into a headscissors on the mat. He does a nice job of moving around and varying the hold. O'Connor does a headlock with quite a bit of motion like something Bob Backlund would do. Atlas gets the advantage and works a hammerlock and argues with Dempsey as he catches him trying to cheat. Mighty Atlas has a signature defense spot in his matches where the opponent tries to put him in his own finishing move, the full nelson. As usual, he successfully breaks it. Next, O'Connor traps him in an Indian Deathlock. After escaping, Atlas puts him in a headlock. They work a leapfrog sequence, but they botch whatever O'Connor was going to do next. O'Connor goes back to the Indian deathlock. After some knee lifts and the airplane spin, O'Connor gets the first fall. The crowd boos as Atlas gets his neck massaged between falls. Atlas gets some nice uppercuts as the second fall is on its way. The match meanders with lots of grappling for position and going back to the headlocks, but then O'Connor does a quick sequence with rope running and dropkicks. After missing a dropkick, Atlas begins throwing him into the turnbuckles and O'Connor has some big bounces off them. Atlas gets the full nelson, and Dempsey stops the second fall. In the third fall, Atlas tries to get the full nelson on again, but they both go through the ropes to the floor. As Atlas barely gets back in, O'Connor dropkicks him back out. When he get back in again, O'Connor finishes him off with the airplane spin. The ring announcer says O'Connor gets a shot at Thesz at a future show. O'Connor is quite impressive from an athletic standpoint and is very quick. He had only been wrestling for a couple of years at this point. Although he had a great command of the moves, I didn't think that he was necessarily great at developing the structure of the match yet. He seemed to jump back and forth between moves and repeat holds. I preferred Thesz's match with the Mighty Atlas with its more dramatic ending.

Sad to hear this. I was watching some Heavenly Bodies matches last week, and it was great to revisit what a fun wrestler Del Ray was.

I like the way that the Destroyer can be doing high quality matwork or selling a hold in those matches with Mascaras and then have the crowd laughing with the things that he's shouting. He is able to do comedy but keep the match serious at the same time.

I was watching joshi matches on Youtube last night, and I came across a 1996 match between Bison Kimura and Jaguar Yokota, in which Jaguar was working a masked gimmick named Li Hua. It was a really violent match with Yokota cutting herself at the end and dripping her blood in Kimura's face. What was the story behind this gimmick and this part of her career?

This was a one fall midget match between Haile Selassie and Fuzzy Cupid. They played it straight for the first eight minutes until Selassie started the obligatory biting of the rear end. He was really good at his flying headscissors, and he also did a bulldog, which I don't remember seeing so far in the 50's footage. Fuzzy Cupid was on par with the bigger guys at heeling, including putting something in the eyes of Selassie which Russ Davis speculated was snuff. The match ended with Selassie doing a military press into an airplane spin.

Chest Bernard takes on Tarzan White in a one fall match. Chest is the heel and refuses the handshake. He has a large barrel chest and walks around the ring puffing it out. Tarzan is another one of the '50s wrestlers covered with back hair. Tarzan starts it out by repeatedly pressing his head against Chest's jaw while he pulled down on Chest's head. This led to the crowd laughing and Chest becoming angry. Chest throws a wild punch but misses. He takes him down to the mat to work a wristlock. Tarzan is able to bridge out, so Chest tries some hair pulling but gets caught. Chest is able to trap him in the corner and starts running into him. Tarzan moves and Chest takes a nice bump over the ropes. Chest tries a headlock, but Tarzan is able to lift him and dump him. Chest goes back to the headlocks and repeatedly won't make clean breaks when Tarzan gets to the ropes. Tarzan takes his turn working the headlock, in which Chest pulls on the trunks to try to escape. Chest takes back control and continues to pull the trunks and hair to maintain his advantage. Tarzan can't take it anymore, so he starts hair pulling and throwing punches. After a snapmare, Tarzan begins to bounce off the ropes to deliver shoulder tackles to the gut. He gets some extreme rope bend. Tarzan next works a toehold, which Chest is able to counter with a body scissors. Tarzan is able to bearhug Chest off the mat into a standing bearhug, which was an impressive display of strength. Chest gets out and rams him into the turnbuckle. After some lockups, they take turns ramming their shoulder into the stomach while the other guy is against the turnbuckle. Chest puts him a hold that is sort of a cobra clutch variation with the arm on the wrong side. He then rams the back of Tarzan's head into the turnbuckle. Tarzan takes back control with a flurry of snapmares. He returns to his rope bouncing shoulder tackles. The last one knocks Chest up and over, but Tarzan flies out of the ring. After escaping the countout, Tarzan tries for a body slam, but he collapses under the weight of Chest, giving Chest the three count and victory. This was a fun match with the bearhug spot and Tarzan's rope bouncing shoulder blocks. Chest kept the crowd involved with his constant cheating.

Great job on the interview. I like the story about Fuji teaching Tito how to do a comeback.

Jerry, you're right. I probably overreached with my example.

Matt, I don't really see a Warrior-Brody comparison. They do have the superficial similarities like their fondness for the looping overhead blows. Brody is supposedly a wild man, but does not work that character. He works in a fairly constant, slow, deliberate style. Meanwhile, Warrior has more frenetic bursts in matches. His exuberance is what undoes him, so the heels can take over, such as when he goes running into a turnbuckle or misses the Warrior splash. Warrior's work matches his character better. Brody isn't necessarily treated much as a monster at times. If we look at Flair, an opponent common to both of them, he works them differently. Flair doesn't really seem scared of Brody and endures his punishment. Flair is much more cowardly in working Warrior with lots of begging off. I think the Undertaker would be the more proper wrestler to look at in comparison to Brody, as they work a more similar style. Warrior is more a mix of the Road Warriors with the native american style comeback, and he has the '50s throwback energetic rope bouncing.

No Mongo from me.

I was quite nervous about posting, but thanks to everybody for treating me fairly. It is great that the posters in this forum can tolerate people like me that have some really heretical opinions.

I nominated him and fully realize that I will be his only vote. When guitar players put together top 100 lists, the lists include widely different players. You have the number one contenders like Hendrix. You have the masters like Segovia and Atkins. You have the technical wizards like Malmsteen. You also get Johnny Thunders. The purists will howl, "Johnny can't play. Johnny is sloppy and out of tune. Johnny plays rehashed Chuck Berry licks. Johnny is just a junkie." There is a magic to Johnny's playing though. The energy of his playing and his raw tone make him a memorable guitarist who is beloved by some and hated by others. I enjoy the energy of the Warrior. His character was a barbarian from another dimension and I feel like in his run from 1988 to 1991, he played that character well. His matches feel wild and out of control. They very well may have been falling apart at times, but I think that can be an enjoyable thing to watch at times. I see Warrior as a genre of wrestler that I would call the monster face that would include guys like Goldberg and I think he was the best of that group of wrestlers that destroyed their opponents. I think of the Summerslam '89 match with Rude, his match with Hogan, and the retirement match with Savage as my favorite matches of that period in WWF. I have Savage in my top 5 of the list, so I think he was a wonderful wrestler. I don't think that he could have handed his 30 page script for Wrestlemania to anyone and anybody could have had that great match. Warrior was a part of those matches. I like the theatrics he brought to his squashes, especially the '89 squashes. You never knew who he was going to stuff under a ring, carry to the back on his shoulder, or send off on a stretcher. I like his short form, against the green screen, promos. His and Jake Robert's strange promos always made me pay attention more so than the regular pun type promos others gave. To Jerry's point that he was a bad person, Warrior certainly said some ugly things in his life, but I am not considering things that happened outside the show. The other nominees include murderers and thieves, which I am not holding against them. My working number one Flair is a guy that defrauds people and harasses women, but that doesn't change his greatness as a wrestler. Warrior didn't connect to the "smart" communities of wrestling fans. He did connect to plenty of fans though. If you ever went to a show with Hogan and Warrior, their cheers were deafening. Hogan's were more sustained, but Warrior's were certainly in the same ballpark. The guy knew how to get fans to cheer. He was certainly unorthodox, but I think he was a worthwhile wrestler. I realize nominating him is very controversial, but I am sincere that he is one of the wrestlers that I think needs to be on my list if the list is to be balanced with wrestlers from all sorts of types and genres.

Carl Meyer takes on Alo Leilani in a one fall match. Leilani comes out to music and passes out Hawaiian leis to the crowd. Leilani does some nice matwork in this one including working a bodyscissors. Meyer does well as a heel with lots of punches to the stomach and attacking the toes of the barefoot Leilani. Leilani wins with a dropkick. A fun part of this match is the woman in the second row. You can hear everything she says above the rest of the crowd, as she cheers on Leilani and heckles Meyer.