ohtani's jacket

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.

My lucha watching fell off sometime in late 2005, but this feels like as good a time as any to pick things up again. This trios was part of the buildup to the Mistico vs. Black Warrior match at the Anniversary Show. CMLL was hot during this period. There was constant heat throughout the bout and they weren't afraid to cut to a wide shot of Arena Mexico, which was literally packed to the rafters. This was well done. There was a tremendous amount of variety in the bout. I always enjoy it when trios matches throw you little nuggets to enjoy. I particularly enjoyed the individual confrontations that Ultimo Guerrero had with all three tecnicos (one in each fall.) Those are the types of moments that add spice to a trios match. There was a lot of great offense from the tecnicos, and Santo and Casas were complete pros. They had were so seasoned that they knew exactly how to contribute without taking a backseat or overshadowing Mistico. The finish to the segunda caida was so good it felt like the match was over. I was a little confused when the ring girl came strutted down the ramp carrying the tercera card. A nice reintroduction to lucha.

This was pretty good, but it was very measured and slow paced because they were going long. It reminded me of when the All Japan guys would go long and stretch things out a bit, and you'd kind of wish they'd have a shorter, more concise bout. The finishing stretch had its moments, but ultimately that was what we wanted 55 minutes for? The other strange thing about this bout is that because it was a world title match, it didn't pay off the angle from cage match. Perhaps that was done in an earlier bout, but I would have expected more venom from Joe. It'd slot this in the three star range.

Wild Wargames match. A worthy modern rendition of the gimmick. I was oblivious to all of the storylines taking place and still found it absorbing. Definitely one of the best matches from the year.

It's been an age since I've watched an Aja/Satomura match. I was wondering if it would be a case of diminishing returns, but not having watched a match of theirs in such a long time meant that it felt fresh. I'll leave it to others to point out the callbacks and psychology behind the match. I'm not sure whether it was Aja shedding weight, Satomura gaining a few pounds, or a combination of both, but there was no longer a sense that Satomura was outmatched and overwhelmed by Aja, which was fitting given it was the debut show for Satomura's promotion. I don't think it was as epic as the GAEA matches, but it was fitting that Satomura went over.

Time to start reviewing these clips @Matt D I know you love clips.