Jetlag
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Murakami wasn't doing his googly eyed psycho act at this point, but he was getting there. This was a really fun match. Yone is hit and miss, but put him in a short match where his sole duty is to hit and get hit really hard, he's quite formidable. Lots of guys pushing into eachother and trying to land thudding kicks and punches which is Murakamis forte. His non-showy style of matwork was a nice contrast to the BattlARTS crew and their shenanigans as well. Last few minutes was basically Murakami acting as a mini-Naoya Ogawa which works just for fine. Short, stiff, to the point, nothing too complicated and the ending drew big crowd reactions, it's everything an undercard on a post modern shootstyle/lucharesu joint show should be. -
I assume in 2008 when BattlARTS was running wild people didn't care much for HARD HIT, but I find it neat to go back and check out these indy shootstyle matches. This was a quite good undercard match and wouldn't have looked out of place on one of the smaller U-Style shows. I've never seen Ishikura before, but apparently he's an MMA fighter who's been around since the 90s. Baby Irie is capable and this was a fun power vs. skill matchup. Ishikura seemed the superior shooter so Irie had to try and push him out through sheer pudginess.
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Not a forgotten or super obscure match, but I still found myself stunned by how good this was. I imagine if Kota booked more shootstyle shows and did this kind of match more often we'd all be Kota fans. That aside, I thought this was Satos best performance ever. He was pushing hard and capable of carrying a servicable Kota to some very good mat exchanges. The best thing about this was the unique twist they did on the wrestler vs. shooter formula by having Kota rely on pinfalls and Sato outclassing him and giving up no points. It easily could've ended up looking like a goofy spectacle but thanks to both guys throwing some hideous suplexes and not pussying around with their strikes it ended up being a really fun fight. I also loved how Sato early on answered Ibushi attempting some ground striking by quickly shutting him down with a massive palm strike. Defenitely needed more of that streak in the rest of his career.
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I have read about Dr. Adolf Kaiser, aka Hans Waldherr before. A german reporter, I think from Der Spiegel or Stern, saw him on TV in France and then wrote a rage filled article about Dr. Kaiser, who was portraying an evil German on French television, which supposedly had a toxic effect on the relations between France and Germany. I assume this was maybe the earliest appearance of Dr. Kaiser, since he gets a respectful reaction from the crowd at his introduction. I was expecting Adolf Kaiser, Doctor of Philosophy to be this outrageously evil and brutal character, but he was a fairly classy worker and he wore leopard trunks of all things. He surprised Chaisne with a nice leg trip and wrist attack, later he locks in a cool double armlock that a luchador could steal. It made me wonder how technical German and Austrian workers could get, I guess simply everyone in Europe then was some awesome wrestling genius. However, it soon became apparent where the bout was gonna go, since Kaiser was eager to show ass, bump big and throw inside shots. His animalistic body language and antics also had „evil“ written all over them. Chaisne soon started to give Kaiser the business with some nasty nasty knee scrapes and laying in the uppercuts. I almost thought it was too much too early, since Kaiser hadn‘t done anything that nasty compared to the heels we saw on French TV before, but I guess when you‘re a German named Adolf Kaiser working in France you gotta be prepared to eat some uppercuts. Wrestling wise there was some cool body scissors work and the Dr. showing he could wrestle even when he would gladly take shortcuts. Chaisne is another worker we‘ll see many times until the very 80s and he looked veritable here. He seemed to have the match in the bag until Kaiser launched him outside and rammed his head into the ringpost. Chaisne came up bloody and fell to an Indian Deathlock coupled with the dreaded nerve hold from the Dr. Afterwards Chaisne has to be carried to the back with everyone acting all concerned. Really nifty TV bout which was oozing with character all the way through.
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Awesome, awesome fight. I was excited to see Bert Royal, a really neat WoS guy with all too little footage, showing up as a young lad in France 13 years before his WoS material. Tony Oliver is, I assume, another Spanish worker, and like all Spanish workers we‘ve seen so far he is really awesome. This was nasty, grinding title fight, 1 fall over 35 minutes. The wrestling equivalent to seeing Ali slugging it out with someone over 12 rounds. Great mix of wrestling and beating the shit out of each other. Oliver was the kind of worker who was all about inside shots and grinding his knuckles really hard into his opponent. Anytime he got an advantage he would dig his fist into Berts face, elbow to the stomach , bite, or hammer him in the ribs. There was a lengthy section where he was just trying to pull Royals knee apart. He also has really awesome mannerisms, like he gets so upset at the audience booing his tactics in hilarious ways, he is totally the hero of his own story. Later he takes the chance to stomp the referee, which was such an amusing psycho move. When Royal gets fed up and starts firing away with those forearms, Oliver is really awesome flopping around wobbly headed, it was amazing to watch. Royal is mostly on the receiving end of Olivers cheapshots, but he busts out some really cool fast movements here and there, he also has his awesome signature backslide submission hold and a really cool Tiger Mask spin into a victory roll. I loved how intense they worked the pin attempts, I am so mad workers nowadays have no sense for that kind of thing. Oliver also really knows how to escalate things, he is basically throwing shots the whole match, but when he drops his knee on Royals throat or stomps him in the back of the head it really feels like he crossed the line. It builds to this really intense frenzy, Royal taking bumps to the outside, Oliver getting pasted with a big palm strike (!!), both guys trading forearms on the floor, nasty use of the ring ropes, awesome finish. Post match Oliver shows some class, which I guess is a nice conclusion to his story, since we seemingly won‘t see him again. It‘s really amazing that we all got interested in French wrestling by guys doing improbable athletic shit in black and white matches, and then France keeps throwing completely different things at you that end up being really awesome.
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"I watch him and just see a man who can't make good offensive moves, can't sell his injuries properly and who has no personality in the ring other than The Rainmaker" - "inbetween those spots is a lots of dead air- absolutely nothing (...) it gets pretty boring)" - hahaha, pretty much sums up how I feel about Okada. Maybe Ica could get more into eastern wrestling if she saw some Hashimoto & Tenryu matches? Gotta say, you're doing a job bridging this high quality video essay format with online pro wrestling discourse. I linked a non-wrestling fan to your channel and she said she really likes your enthusiasm, even though she understands nothing of the vocabular, and also why are the rules of pro wrestling never explained? Maybe an introduction video for non-fans would be in order, if you haven't done one already?
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2/3 Falls match over about 25 minutes. Browsing through hundreds of French matches, and just out of nowhere a 22 year old Dave Finlay pops up in what is maybe his first ever televised match working like a seasoned veteran heel. Pretty cool. The saying about European tag wrestling is that they didn‘t quite know how to do it, but this match had pretty much the kind of structure you want: Fun babyface shine segment, followed by a heel beatdown before a series of cut offs before a comeback succeeds and then a finish. They fool you a bit here by doing a really long shine with the heels making several attempts at starting the beatdown and being cut off, but in the end the structure is there and even the 2/3 Falls formula is integrated well. This was a bit more holds and takedowns based and less about armdrags and ranas, similiar to what we know from British wrestling, but don‘t be fooled the pace in this match was lightning fast. These guys really do an absurd amount of stuff even in a long match, but everything is executed effortlessly. Guy Mercier is a former European champion and legit Greco roman wrestler with a look and aura that just screams tough old man, and while there wasn‘t a ton of extended wrestling in this match he looked like a classy worker. It speaks for the creativity of these old workers just how much they could do with moves like a body slam or hip throw. Finlay also did this cool thing where he misses a big splash in about the first minute of the bout and spends the next few minutes scurrying away while the faces twisted up his leg and launched him into the ropes. It didn‘t pay off in the long run, but it was a fun bit of selling to make the opening minutes more interesting. Once the heels got something going after what felt like 15 minutes of highly entertaining bumping and stooging, they basically focussed on getting the faces to the corner and stomping the crap out of them. Really simple and effective stuff that made me wish modern workers paid more attention to making simple things like a stomp look good, because Finlay had damn great looking stomps here. Another layer to the match was Michel Saulnier, who was grey and a referee by now. The match had some heel ref antics and comical amounts of babyface retaliation against Saulnier, while that is something that can ruin a lot of these Euro matches it was actually executed in a really fun manner here. The thing I loved most how delighted the fans were at the trick the heels used to get a pin here. No hard feelings, it‘s all good fun in France.
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Weirdest damn thing I‘ve ever seen. They‘ve got springs at ringside and using them to catapult the wrestlers into the ring at incredible heights. I can‘t find words to do it quite justice. Before the match, both teams come out dressed as corny sci fi movie astronauts while early electronic music blares. Amazing. Tags are signaled by raising a fist and to tag in, the other wrestler catapults into the ring. To make things even weirder, the match has rounds, which I‘ve never seen in a tag match. Perero & Dos Santos were announced as „Portuguese“ but that may not be true at all. Aside from the insane gimmick, the wrestling wasn‘t blow away, although there were a few beautiful armdrags and headscissors. All these guys moved slick as cats. Seems they couldn‘t focus much due to having to do all these jumps while trying not to blow their knees out. They actually didn‘t use the catapults for many moves, though there is the crazy spot where one guy catches the other flying and hits a body slam, not something I would‘ve believed possible before seeing this. Also, guys kept bumping on their back while flying into the ring and they just got up and kept moving. How am I supposed to buy a body slam as a finisher after seeing that? Anyways, this felt like a true crossover of wrestling and acrobatics. I‘m sure a couple AAA guys could do way more with the insane gimmick, but that would be riddled with thigh slapping moves, Canadian Destroyers and backcrackers. What we got here was classier, basically Catch in Space, and it was fairly nice.
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I got stupidly excited when I saw this match in the archives. Two guys who had an awesome match series in the 1980s (when Franz was nearing 50 and had recovered from a paralyzing back injury, while Lasartesse was looking like a corpse) fighting each other in their prime, what could go wrong? However, the match was lacking focus, and didn‘t play to either guys strength. They were noticeably struggling to kill time, so I guess they did get wiser with age. Still, there was plenty to be enjoyed here: the match takes place in a ring that is floating in a swimming pool, and they send the wrestlers there in tiny little boats while a young Atsushi Onita was furiously taking notes at ringside. Of course the whole match was building to someone getting thrown into the water. For something that could have been a light hearted spectacle, the match was quite violent. After some initial feeling out, Lasartesse quickly took over the match and started working over van Buyten's throat with nasty stomps and elbows. He also busted out plenty of offense, too much offense really, he uncorked like 5 Tombstone Piledrivers on Franz which no matter how much they tried to cover up the following pinfalls should have ended the match. Also, Lasartesse is notorious for not being very good at the actual wrestling and his suplexes looked like shit. Once Franz made his comeback, a heel ref got involved to kill more time. Even when Lasartesse hit the dreaded diving knee to Franz, he couldn‘t end the match. It‘s very strange for a match between two guys who stood out before working no frills story driven matches to suffer from 2019isms such as too many finishers, but here we were. At least we got to see Franz hitting his cool in-ring topes and throwing the evil referee headfirst into the shallow pool.
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A 30 minute contest 2/3 falls contest, JIP about 7 minutes into it and both guys are already at each others throats. It‘s a battle between rather mysterious figures. We‘ve seen Inca Peruano before as a bumping rudo, although he is in the tecnico role here. Joachim La Barba is mentioned as „The terrible champion of Mexico“ on a fanpage. Genickbruch.com lists him wrestling in Germany as „Abdul Khan“ and in Mexico as „Pancho Zapata“. No guarantee about these facts since there was also another luchador named Pancho Zapata. I really wonder about the background of Inca Peruano – is he actually Peruvian? A Mexican worker with an Inca gimmick? Was he trained in France? No matter where he came from, he shows up a lot in this footage and is clearly a great worker. This was an absolute slugfest. The kind of match you‘d never see on British or German TV at this point. But here, the announcer was cackling like a madman at these two trying to put some serious hurt on each other. Both guys were really laying in those trademark European uppercuts, cracking each others ribs with thudding kicks and using holds so they could hit the other guy from a safe position. Joachim La Barba was an absolute beast here, throwing punches to the back of the head, constantly stepping on his opponent, walloping him with kicks. At one point, he was driving knees into Inca while holding on to the ropes like a PRIDE fight. He came across as a guy it really sucks to fight, and Peruano's stoic selling performance enhanced the grittiness of the match. Between beating on each other, they work the mat (usually leading to more shots on the ground) and other nifty spots. One of the things they do that you can‘t just do in modern wrestling anymore is the use of the ropes, which were really loose to allow for tying up spots. The „tie up the other guy as revenge“ spot is a staple of German wrestling, but they did some pretty unique shit here. Peruano takes the horrifying looking spill into the ropes where he gets his head tied up and is nearly strangled, later he uses the ropes to hit several Toyota style dropkicks to Joachim's chest, there is also a really swank and well timed head scissor over the ropes. I am absolutely amazed how workers from nearly 70 years ago find unique twists on spots we‘ve seen plenty of times in other matches, such as said rope trickery or La Barba unexpectedly landing on the rope when they went through the classic „pull them off his torso-armbar“ sequence. Also, there is a real sense of bomb throwing towards the end of the match. Both guys hit some flying moves off the top rope which set up the finishes to the falls, and one guy takes a big missed back bump that is put over in a big way. I especially liked how they seemingly improvised Inca Peruano who was slow to get to the rope working a fun cutoff before Barba could catch him. Even though this was by far the least pretty of all the matches from France we‘ve seen so far, this was a baffling and amazing match, great mix of a violent fight and some pretty unique wrestling, with state of the art finishes.
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JIP 1 fall match with about 20 minutes shown. Iska Khan was the child of Mongolian parents and born in former Yugoslavia in 1924. He was also an actor and even has a French Wikipedia page. He is introduced as the Tibetan champion here, while Jimmy Oliver is introduced as the champion of Spain. French wrestling was quite diverse. This was in the same style as the previous match between Inca Peruano and Joachim La Barba, a mix of wrestling and two guys beating the shit out of each other. There is an art to beating on each other for 20 minutes and making it good, and they had it down. Jimmy Oliver, a former boxer, had the vibe of a hard as nails guy who will really hurt you, and he had some big bumping and awesome selling. Considering that is something you can say about most of these 1950s heels working France, it really says something about how amazing the talent at the time was. Khan was working barefoot and hitting chops and nerve holds, which was a fun breath of fresh air, and he was really chopping the shit out of Oliver's neck here, he also had some amusing ways to torture his opponent. Iska works this match as the babyface and the crowd is really into him. There was some fun wrestling, although nothing super athletic or graceful. Oliver was pretty awesome to watch, he makes basic holds look really violent, and he had some really nasty knees, at one point he throws a punch combo to the body that had the referee jumping on him. The strike exchanges here were really awesome and stand out to someone watching this in 2020. These days it seems most wrestlers idea of strike exchanges seems to take turns hitting each other and making angry faces, these guys tearing into each other is on a completely different level. Khan was just chopping his opponent silly which lead to some awesome wobbly selling from Oliver, and Oliver come across as a total prick. The finish is a big move that you would expect a 1980s powerhouse to do, it comes a bit out of nowhere and I would‘ve liked to see these two guys kill each other for a little longer because it was awesome to watch. This is probably the most "standard“ of all the French matches we‘ve seen so far, it was simple but they totally nailed it.
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2/3 Falls match over 30 minutes. Really heated, intrigueing piece of TV. Pellacanis birthplace is listed as Italy, and supposedly he won the heayweight title of Europe at one point. I cannot stress enough how awesome it is to get a long glimpse at workers like this. Bout is a stoic babyface, and he really dominates with athletic wrestling ability typical of French wrestlers. Pellacani has no real answer but to clock him with thudding forearms. While Pellacani didn‘t show much wrestling, pretty much anytime Bout had him in a hold he would scurry for the ropes, but he was absolutely bumping his ass off, really good pinballing performance. By the second fall Bout was really making minced meat of Pellacani, throwing punches, dropkicks to the face and cranking a nasty sleeper, all of which the crowd loved. By the end Pellacani looked overwhelmed and was taking frustrated swings at the crowd who threw lit cigarettes at him. It looks like another 2-0 blowout like other 2/3 Falls matches we‘ve seen so far, but then a huge, potentially crippling apron bump happens and things turn around. Really in our modern world apron bumps have become so meaningless that the way they put it over here stands out as really memorable, and what a ballsy move to go from Pellacani being outgunned to going over.
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This French gem features a 29 years old Al Hayes. Aside from that, there is an obvious thought looking at the matchup: how will a British guy fit into the French wrestling style? The answer is they meet up in the middle and work pretty much a World of Sports style match without rounds, with Hayes working classy British escapes, and Robin bringing the French touches, although the sights of the match were set on a chippy bout from the introductions. There it is immediately noticable how this match is pretty much the Roland Barthes description of wrestling exemplified: Hayes, the clean cut, tall technician who never complains and is never unfair, against the short, balding, somewhat mishapen looking Guy Robin. And Robin really embraces his role to the fullest being a pesky little goblin. And he is a total show here, gesturing big, diving all over the ring like he was Gargamel trying to catch a smurf. His out of control bumping, mannerisms and cartoony stooging were really awesome and may have carried the match. That is not to disparage Hayes, who had some quite beautiful escapes and knew to lay in the european uppercuts when it counts. At one point he did a totally GIF-worthy escape from a cravate that was slow and deliberate like Arkangel de la Muerte, at another he just lifted Robin and threw him, and my favourite may have been his beautiful sweep from the ground. It was almost like carny Jiu Jitsu. The whole match had a slow and deliberate pace, maybe because both guys weren‘t familiar, but they kept it simple and effective, with Robin really bringing the funk towards the end , earning himself a few public warnings and trying to crack Hayes with nasty backbreakers and armbreakers. Hayes retaliated with some nasty face scrapes that seemingly bloodied Robins nose and got sold with BattlARTS style 9 counts. Classic formula match executed extremely well, and it was really cool to see the classy British technical style in place at this stage.
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A 23 minute contest in 2/3 falls. Luis El Gayo may also be „El Gayo“ or „El Gallo“ (it would fit his hair) or El Galio since the announcer keeps calling him something like that. One of the cool aspects to the old French footage is that there are a ton of Spanish wrestlers featured, so getting to a glimpse at that is really something special and something I never would have hoped to see, since the Spanish scene ended in the 1970s with a few later revival attempts failing. Jacky Corne is someone who shows up in matches all the way to the 1970s and 1980s, so it‘ll be cool to watch him for a nearly 30 year period. This was the 60s lutte libre style that we saw in Cesca/Cantanzarro, both guys working holds while mixing in cool arm whips and headscissors. It wasn‘t quite at the transcendent level of Cesca/Catanzarro, as they didn‘t seem to have some things fully worked out, but they knew not to expose the business when a spot wasn‘t hit perfectly. El Gayo was right there working the French style, he had some graceful escapes, a cool headwringing snapmare and he did these awesome BattlARTS style 8 count near KOs when Corne started dropping the bombs on him. He also launched Corne to the outside with a cool throw from the ground in a nasty moment, then later took a big bump himself flying over the rope. Both guys were moving fast and really making their hip tosses and body slams look good. The first fall was going nice until Corne caught El Gayo with an awesomely timed powerbomb and then took him to town dropping him with some more before El Gayo would seemingly come back only to be caught. The second fall gets chippy with both guys really cracking each others jaws with thudding european uppercuts and elbows, the high quality audio and video that the French preserved really adding to each exchange. One of the cool things El Gayo does is he will move in like a Greco wrestler, grab a hammerlock behind the other guys back and use that to set up a move, in one case he uses it to drill Corne with a nasty tombstone piledriver which was pretty mindblowing even by 1957 French standards, unfortunately Corne didn‘t go to the Spanish school of selling and just kind of moved on in the match. I liked the feel that El Gayo was pushed to the limit and had to resort to making things chippy. After Corne threw him to the outside in a heated moment that lead to several cigarette smoking fans helping El Gayo back in the ring, both guys shook hands only for El Gayo to start throwing elbows and knees the next moment. Seconds later the Spanish wrestler had to resort to throwing a punch to the mid section, seemingly apologizing to the audience and being frustrated with himself for having to resort to such tactics. Once again, I really liked the rope running sequences and the finishes were good although I was hoping for the match to go a little deeper, I thought El Gayo was done a little dirty here although he did a great job telling the story of the match. Still, good shit and a threat to see.
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JIP with about 12 minutes shown. This kind of bout probably won‘t stand out in the long run of French watching, but it‘s really cool to check out. Both guys did some neat stuff. Di Santo had some Billy Robinson esque offense, nasty neckbreaker and the big backbreaker. I think of Billy Robinson as someone who had pretty advanced offense for 1970s AJPW, so seeing a guy bust out that kind of offense in 1957 is pretty wild. Both guys took some nasty bumps, especially Di Santo flying into the ropes trying a pin. Both guys had some cool ways to work around the greco roman knucklelock pin, Di Santo bridging out of the with van Dooren on top was pretty freaky. This is our first time seeing van Dooren and he looked good, busting out a cool luchaesque pin and uncorking some nasty looking headbutts that got a big reaction nicluding one from a full running charge, and Di Santo fires back with straight elbow smashes. Pretty cool to see how evolved this style was in 1957 already. Van Dooren keeps finding ways to reverse Di Santos counter attempt, and the finish sticks with this time. Nice stuff.
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2/3 Falls match that goes about 40 minutes. Our journey into French wrestling begins with Edouard Carpentier of all people. He‘ll be interesting to watch, since he obviously stands out in the US wrestling scene, but in France he might be just another guy. Although I imagine he will definitely get a bump from watching this French footage. This match wasn‘t quite in the super athletic French style that blew all of our minds in the first place anyways, it was instead a classic heat mongering affair. Gueret seemed rather non-descript, but Bollet drew a really loud negative reaction as soon as he was announced. He was a towering guy, he could clearly wrestle, but you could sense that this wouldn‘t be a wrestling heavy match very soon. The match was the type that I imagine sent folks into near riots all across Europe in the post WW2-wrestling boom. It starts with some slick arm rolls and nice wrestling, but they soon get to the real meat. Guys get bitchslapped, cheapshots are thrown, and eventually you have a bunch of heavyweights throwing forearm smashes with abadon. Gueret did look a little bland, but he sure knew how to throw those forearms. The heels would soon start to try and buckle their opponents to the corner to deliver nasty 2 on 1 beatdowns, and the faces would retaliate with ear rakes which the crowd loved. Koparanian was kind of bastard too, he would bitchslap the heels and get in cheapshots of his own. The whole match was worked like this, there would be moments of well executed wrestling, only for someone to throw a forearm or cheapshot and things would fire up. It‘s quite a long match, but they keep the pace up. Add 3 fun finishes and you have one hell of a match.
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The first Slinger match that I know of that received some modest hype. I'm not sure if the consensus on Slinger was that he sucked or that simply nobody paid attention. Anyways this was an unexpectedly intense scrap with some gnarly submissions. I wonder if AJPW did sudden finishes on houseshows a lot at this time because the crowd really bites on the holds (granted these guys were really stretching eachother to the max). Add a constant feeling of struggle and both guys being willing to kick the shit out of each other and you have an enjoyable match in the vein of a stiff undercard fight. There was an awesome backslide spot too that was one of the better "wrestling" spots I've seen in a match in a while.
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This was a really rewarding match to check out. It may have peaked in the first 5 minutes with both guys trading awesome wristlock reversals. I'm absolutely dead tired of wrestlers flipping out of wristlocks so the fact they made it cool here speaks volumes. Match had everything: brilliant athletic spots, pin-point accurate technique, fierce strike exchanges, and everything made sense. Prince tagging Saulnier with a savate kick to the face also caught me off guard. I didn't think the draw ending was as flat as Phil described it, they clearly kicked it up a bit. This match feels a bit weird to give a YES in project, for all we know there may be a dozen Prince matches in the archive that blow this away, but for now it's a really good, unique bout.
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[1990-08-03-CWA] Dave Finlay & Marty Jones vs Mile Zrno & Franz Schumann
Jetlag replied to Loss's topic in August 1990
I shouldn't have held of from watching this so long, because this really was damn great and easily in the Top 5 euro matches I've seen post 1980s. Really 4 legends tearing it up in a hot match that builds to a big finish. There is a long opening segment centered around the heels working with Zrno and it was really good hold vs. counter hold stuff, more complex than what you'd usually see in these kind of heat mongering affairs and the apex of this style of european wrestling. Finlay & Jones really start working rough house tactics, trying to double team their opponents and constantly throwing forearm shots and kicks. I was a little wary going in since it's a long match, but there was no obvious time killing and they manage to keep the asskicking compelling all the way. Even with the poor black & white footage quality you really feel the aura Jones & Finlay had going for them, which was especially interesting for Jones to be in this kind of role since he normally works as a babyface in england. Lots of neat spots, counters and cutoffs throughout. I liked that Finlay & Jones were allowed to outwrestle their babyface opponents, Jones at one point mixes in a handspring move that is normally resereved for babyfaces and Finlay casually uncorks powerbombs and suplexes. Really liked how the heels seemed to crank up the violence in the 2nd fall with Jones hitting some mean headstomps (including pulling the other guy into a Boston Crab and just kicking the low of his back like a reverse curbstomp) and Finlay punching dudes in the face. The last couple minutes are damn epic and the main reason I'm nominating this, Schuhmann gets bloodied and is taking an asskicking eating kicks and punches. There is a tombstone piledriver that feels as epic as any piledriver in history and an amazing finish that I never ever would've expected to work this well. This is a euro tag so it didn't have the kind of polished structure a US tag would have but I still thought it worked really well, the rhythm was really good, all 3 finishes work and everything felt like a struggle throughout. -
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