ohtani's jacket

This was good stuff. I don't know how legit Danielson's shoulder injury was, but they were selling it as though he hadn't wrestled since the match against Cabana and was refusing to have surgery on it so that he could continue his reign as a fighting champ. The shoulder came into play during the course of the match, and Danielson did an excellent job of selling the injury. The highpoint of the match was Danielson's incredible plancha into the crowd. That may be the most memorable spot I've seen from him. I'm not the biggest mark for dives but that one impressed me. The finishing stretch was exciting, though they overdid it a bit with the elbows and multiple attempts at cattle mutilation. The cattle mutilation is a cool looking spot with a badass name, but I'm sorry if you do it that many times then it's no better than the ankle lock. Part of the problem was KENTA's lousy selling of the elbows. That said, a finish that went more beats than necessary is a minor blemish in what was an exciting bout.

Les Blousons Noirs (Marcel Manneveau/Claude Gessat) vs Remy Bayle/Dan Aubriot (1/2/66) The only notable thing about this was when they wound in in the first few rows. By far the weakest of the studio matches. Not even Manneveau did anything interesting. Couderc got on my nerves with his singing.

A man after my own heart.

This was a test for the young Aguayo. Would he bring his working boots to a match against Santo? These two had a match in 2004 that was well received and went a long way to establishing Perro Jr as a singles star, but he's been living the high life in recent matches, riding a wave of immense popularity that doesn't require him to go full throttle in the ring. So how did Perro do? Well, the match was good. It was mostly good because of Santo, but Perro sold well. It was a classic example of a Santo formula match. Santo had been working matches like this his entire career. He could roll out of bed and work this match before his coffee was ground. However, he still managed to make it seem special. His selling and attention to detail were impeccable. He worked this with the same intensity of a big title match or apuestas despite it being a mano a mano. The match was far more interesting when Santo was on offense, not only because Santo is a more interesting offensive worker than Perro, but because of the intensity he brought to each hold. Perro put over Santo's stuff well, though I suspect he was sucking in the big ones in the tercera. The finish was screwy. I was kind of surprised that Santo went over and that he disrespected Perro after the bell. I guess we've seen that shitty side of Santo before. I'm not sure where they were heading with this as it was clear there wasn't going to be an apuestas match, but that would have been fun.

Danny McShain vs Great Bolo (NWA Los Angeles, 09/14/1953) I'm not sure about the date on this one since it's from the Wrestling Stars of the Sixties TV show, but it may have been rebroadcast. I have a lot of time for Danny McShain, however I had my trepidations about watching him work a long match against a generic masked heel. Bolo was extremely limited in the ring, but if you follow this match closely from moment to moment, you'll see amazing attention to detail from McShain that is honestly on a Terry Funk level. That's not to say it's a great match, but McShain gives a masterful performance. I especially loved the struggle over the atomic drop. Ricky Rude would be so proud. Great selling from McShain as well, as Bolo is constantly sticking a piece of metal under his mask and headbutting his man.

Paul Orndorff, Adrian Adonis & Hercules vs. Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper & Billy Jack Haynes (WWF, 3/7/1987) Fun, proto-Survivor Series match. A lot to enjoy here, from Piper firing up the Boston crowd in his "last" appearance in the Garden, to the ping-pong agility of Adrian Adonis despite all of that added weight, and Orndorff still managing to be awesome despite only having one working arm. Even Billy Jack and Hercules weren't bad, all things considered. It reminded me of the type of match I'd have with my WWF action figures. Will brought up the mystery of Orndorff not appearing at WrestleMania III, and it's rather baffling all things considering. Was he the backup to Andre right up until the 11th hour? He was still working house shows, teaming with Bundy, so it wasn't the injury. Man, when Hercules put Hulk up in his backbreaker, the size of Hogan in Hercules' arms was unreal. Hulk was a large human being.

This is considered the weakest of the four Danielson vs. McGuinness matches from 2006, but that's largely by people who don't care for broadway matches. Danielson must have been binge watching Flair or Bockwinkel matches at the time because he had three broadway matches in August alone. I thought this was better than the Samoa Joe match since McGuinness showed more urgency in his final shot against Danielson than Joe displayed. I do think the timing of the match was odd coming two weeks after their unification bout. I'll also admit that I watched it while doing a bunch of other things since it's an hour long and I'm too old to be invested in an hour long match from one hold to the next.

I forgot to mention that the Pat Curry clip shows a rare instance in catch of a guy wearing a championship belt around their waist, and yep, it's ugly as all hell.

Interesting that they turned Foley's backstage heat with Flair in '94 into a match twelve years later, but I guess it was part of wrestling lore after Mick's booked was released. On the surface, this was a lite version of Foley's match with Orton and similar to his match against Edge, but I'll be damned if Ric didn't go completely overboard with his bladejob and taking the thumbtacks. I never really got what Dylan was talking about when he compared old man Ric to Onita but here it was. He did an awesome job of snapping. The finish was edgy. Incredibly violent for a WWE match.

This was fairly decent. It was a mano a mano match so they held back from delivering as much as they would in a title match or an apuestas match, but it was reasonably well-paced, given a decent amount of time for a mano a mano, and the exchanges were meaningful. Perro was riding on a wave of popularity at this point and didn't have to work as hard as when he was an up and comer, but he was able to pick his moments here and Bucanero's selling and Santo at ringside helped carry the drama.

This felt a bit mediocre, to be honest. They were building towards a Santo vs. Perro match the following week, but there was barely any heat between them. If it wasn't for Santo throwing a few punches, you wouldn't know they had beef. Perro was one of the most over guys on the planet at this point, but a lot of that was due to him stalling and mugging with the audience. His ring work had gone south at this point. Nothing really gelled here and there were no interesting exchanges.

1948.2.2 Yvar Martinson vs. Stan Karolyi 1949.10.19 Stan Karolyi vs. Sandy Orford 1950.6.28 Stan Karolyi vs. Big Benny 1953.11.29 Stan Karolyi vs. Mohamed Djaber 1954.1.24 Stan Karolyi vs. Pat Curry 1954.2.14 Stan Karolyi vs. Lino Di Santo Karolyi was a grizzled, Hungarian veteran who was a fixture in the European scene from the 30s to the 50s. He was clearly a skilled light heavyweight, although we only get glimpses of his technique in these bouts as most of his matches turn into violent brawls (a winning formula in my books.) It's clear that that the formula we saw in the late 50s catch footage was already well in place by the time TV rolled round. It would be interesting to figure out whether audiences grew tired of foreign heels or if there was some financial reason they stopped being booked as often. It seems that more outlandish gimmicks because popular in the 60s and tag team wrestling began the top draw. There were still some of the old elements of the 50s brawls, but they definitely moved away from the big foreign singles stars

Dandy jumped off the page for us when we watched the stuff originally. He was like a rock star. I kind of feel that we've reached a point where we're waiting for new matches to be discovered, then we consume them and wait for the next thing to come along. The Dandy/Pirata match was on a Japanese VHS tape that Jose Fernandez discovered in the Champion wrestling store in Tokyo. It was rental only, and I was able to rent it and convert it to DVD at my job at the time, which was a high level public junior high school. Little does the school know the part its AV equipment played in match culture. The Emilio stuff was on a random comp of 1989 lucha that a guy had. After I acquired it, Bihari was surprised that I had matches that weren't in circulation. Alfredo eventually sourced the stuff from Mexico, IIRC. My 15 minutes of semi-fame. I realize that it was a tough transition for Atlantis, but he looks lost. You can find lacklustre stuff from various points in his career, to be honest. I am a big Atlantis guy, but I think if I'm being honest, his best stuff was always against other top guys. He does hold together ragtag tecnico sides in trios matches, but it's the same routine 90% of the time. I don't know if it's because he goes on auto pilot or needs a fire lit under him, but I suppose it's also to his credit that he rises to the occasion when he gets to wrestle another great worker.

Santo has a formula. It's a good formula, though, and it works. No matter how many times I watch a Santo match, I'm still awestruck by his signature spots. I think the other thing that adds to his mystique is that like an old-school territory attraction, he never really sticks around long enough to wear out his welcome. He'd disappear from CMLL TV then show up again and immediately prop up the match quality. And when he wasn't on CMLL TV, you had to rely on whatever footage you could find of him from the smaller Mexican promotions or overseas. Casas was a genius performer. I think he's a better worker than Santo when it comes to performing. Santo is a better worker technically. That said, Casas wasn't in the same boat as Santo in terms of being a masked luchador and carrying the heavyweight legacy probably in the history of wrestling. Peak Casas is an experience to behold. People went over the top with the hypebole for him in the early 2010s about being the best worker in the world for every year of his career. I'm in the mid-00s right now and he pretty much only shines when he's Santo's tag partner. I love Fuerza, but I can't see him as a top 5 guy. He did some great stuff but it was within the Pena camp and that was never my favorite style. Great comedy, though. I also think Virus is on the outside looking in, but there are a few matches I haven't watched yet. His best trios stuff was pure workrate lucha, as far as I recall. Dandy isn't championed as much as he was two decades ago. I guess two amazing prime years aren't really enough of a case. He did have some decent stuff post-prime, but you have to sift through a lot of mediocre stuff to find it. All of that 1990 stuff was new to us at the time. ironically, I was never much of a source for anything, but I did help unearth the matches against Pirata Morgan and the hair match against Emilio. Atlantis is a great tecnico worker, and in my opinion, the best tecnico trios match worker of all-time, but I've been watching his heel run lately, and it's not good. I'm not sure how good of a worker you are if you can't play the rudo role convincingly, especially after facing so many greats over the years. I guess the top three are Santo, Casas and Satanico. Satanico has his weaknesses too, but I think he's better than anyone else on the list in terms of available footage.

There are less than 40 countries that have access to the WWE on Netflix. In Japan, the WWE signed a multi-year deal with a streaming service called ABEMA back in 2023, and there are dozens of other countries with pre-existing agreements that the WWE has to honor.

Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage (WWF, 5/24/86) Phil Schneider mentioned this match in his Yahoo article about Hogan's best matches. It's an awesome Hulk/Savage match from the Boston Gardens in what was arguably Hulk's best year in the WWF. Arguably, the Celtics' greatest year, for what it's worth.. Hell of a time to be a Bostonian. They work an excellent formula here. Hogan is on top early. Savage is running scared. He keeps putting Elizabeth in harm's way. Savage eventually takes over before Hogan hulks up, but instead of the usual shtick, Hogan ends up laid out on the arena floor and does one of those great Hogan bladejobs. We're all familiar with smoke and mirrors in a wrestling bout. This is an example of great smoke and mirrors. It even has an awesome visual of Hulk carrying Savage back to the ring after the bout to finish his Hulk up routine, but Randy manages to escape once more. Worth the price of admission and then some.

That Armstrong match is great. Their match from the week before is also fun. Their best match, though, might be their Saturday Night match from August '93.

Lou Thesz Vs. Jersey Joe Walcott | Boxer Vs. Wrestler Match - 1966 I didn't know that Thesz worked these types of bouts. Apparently, Walcott had two of these matches against Thesz and two against Buddy Rogers. There was a Thesz match in '63 and '66. The '63 bout was said to be a shoot, but I doubt it. There's around 8 minutes of footage from the bout. It's mostly a whole bunch of nothing, as you'd expect, but it's not like there's a ton of Thesz footage circulating.

I went down a YouTube rabbit hole that led me to Dara Singh matches, but I'm telling you, I don't think we saw the best of Jose Tarres in the catch footage. He was something else in his youth. Jack Dale (my new hero) was sublime in the way he sold for him.

Someone needs to bring back beard vs beard matches.

Yanneck Fryziuk vs Batistou (10/12/75) Bob ALPRA uploaded a house show match of Batstou's about ten years ago where he came to the ring with the same band. I've got a lot of time for Fryziuk as a wrestler. He wasn't at his fighting best at this stage of his career, but his accumulated wrestling knowledge was impressive to behold. This was a slower heavyweight bout, but it had some exciting moments, such as the part where Fryziuk had Batistou tangled up on the mat, and the forearm contest towards the end. Even though it had a slow, lulling rhythm, it never bored me. Kind of a gentle bout despite the manchettes.

There's a lot more footage available of the 80s and 90s stars than the older stars. Whether anyone will be interested in watching that footage, I'm not sure. There is retrospective interest in older WWF wrestling in terms of podcasts and YouTube video and so on, but it's dwarfed in terms of people's interest in the current product. I imagine that it's always been that way. People are more interested in whatever the latest thing is than older pop culture. Until they get to a point where pop culture passes them by and they gravitate towards the stuff they grew up with, but for the future generations that will be wrestling from the 2010s and beyond.

Cornette's podcast was better than the drivel everywhere else.

Can't say I'm surprised.

I am a huge fan of Mike Bennett, but that Collins stuff was from the end of '84 to early '85. Blitzer vs. Jones is one of my all-time favorite WoS bouts, but the rest I can live without. There was a serious drop off after '84. It really began earlier than that when people started jumping to All-Star, which diluted Joint's talent pool. There is some good stuff post-84, but not very much of it. I doubt Germany/Austria was much better, to be honest. The early 80s in Europe wasn't as good as the 70s, which wasn't as good as the 60s, which wasn't as good as the 50s.