Matt D

Estela Molina vs La Pantera Surena felt like a pretty historical match to me. I'm not sure how much pure luchadora matches we have from 1980 that go this long, this completely. Obviously Boesch was having a blast calling it. Molina was a great ruda. She's someone who is on the record for having some big title matches in the late 70s, I think. They were unsurprisingly ahead of their time here. Just another piece of the wrestling puzzle that the service offers us, one that I don't think anyone was expecting to get. Brody vs Spoiler is probably my favorite babyface Brody match on the service. Spoiler is just a joy to watch. He was athletic, but he didn't need to be athletic. He could have gotten by with his height and leverage and all of the tricks. My favorite here was him using his singlet as a weapon. There was a lot of symmetry and callback here. Later on Brody would use the mic cord, for instance. The finish came from Spoiler utiziling his leverage and the ropes one to many times. Maybe it was because it was because of the outcome, but Brody was far more giving than usual here, always important against someone who uses the claw. They really got over how dangerous it was. Very good match. i haven't loved every Brody performance on the service but most of his matches are somewhat different animals than his bad habit-laden ones in AJPW.

For fun stuff, 78 heel Brody is my favorite Brody, heel Duggan is a real revelation, any Dynamic Duos tag, basically, is a lot of fun, pretty much all the midget matches (and the Littlebrook title defense is a legit good match), everything with Bock obviously, that Dusty/Patera match.

Watch the Hayes vs Williams cage match too.

Everything in moderation.There's a difference between doing that sort of thing every week for the sake of it and doing it once in the Reyes del Aire to get heat (by ending it in the most rudo, disrespectful way possible for that specific crown) for an upcoming match that'll have a cleaner finish.

I loved that finish. It was total rudo.

The lucha people aren't subscribed to NJPW World and the NJPW World people don't care as much about lucha?

Like I said:

I kind of like the idea of systemic wrestling feudalism. It probably means less shady promoters than in decades past.

NJPW President said he is running shows in LA, because WWE ran shows in Japan. War is on! Plus, the WWE has some deal with EVOLVE, yet is now saying people can't be on WWE and on FloSlam. Yet... FloSlam is EVOLVE's main streaming service. Shit is going down. None of this seems like a really huge deal to me. This is like McDonald's going after the local burger joint or Walmart tackling a really small chain of pharmacies.

I don't think you can compare current indies to old territories either.

These guys need to figure out how to get whales.

The long and the short of it is that they let him off because he was about to die, right?

Angle should get a nice safe showcase match against Bo Dallas.

I still see them trying hard to get Leno for DDP.

Not to ruin your line, but this was illuminating in that regard. There are a lot of early 80s Houston shows where they have singles matches and then either a mixed tag or a six man and I always wondered if that was something made within the show or just listed out on the card that way as a feature. We've either gotten the singles matches or the tags but rarely both up until now. Here, Boesch said clearly in the singles that they'd also be in the tag later. So that's one mystery solved.

Good, Phil and Eric both reviewed it (and Elliott too). There is no reason in the world for me to ever watch this match.

If we do get any of the "Baron" stuff from 75, I think that's Tony Rocco (Don Corleone from the DVDVR Lucha set). He's someone that I came out of that set wanting to see more of. Obviously the four Santo matches from 74 and 75 are at the height of what we would want for historical value there, but every single one of those Jack Brisco matches look awesome too. Here's hoping.

Yeah, the first four minutes of this was sans comedy for the most part, just good wrestling. Then the comedy kicked in. Lang is someone we've seen before, including on the AWA set, and he's very good at what he does (and even at some things you wouldn't think him to do). You could tell how much fun both Boesch and the crowd were having. Tiny Tom looked like he could have been Hunter's mini from 1995 between the hair and the nose. I thought the tag was really strong, too. Casey is the perfect Southwest mid-card face. He's so good in that role. The stuff with Mansfield and Tom felt like we'd seen it a dozen times before but it's still always enjoyable. A lot of that was due to Lang's timing but also Mansfield's ring awareness. He was so good at running away from Casey and just missing his grasp without it looking staged. The heat on Lang was very, very good, I thought, with Mansfield cutting Lang off from the outside and Lang playing FIP perfectly, constantly fighting back against the odds. Things sort of fell apart and got too lax after the hot tag. In that regard Lang almost was too good a FIP since he wanted me to see Casey get his hands on Mansfield and really pummel him in what was ultimately a comedy match.

I think Dunne coming off as a petulant teenager might be the wrong way to go. He seemed half confused for why he acted as he did backstepping from Regal and half completely indifferent. "Meh." Like the youngest guy in a gang that shoots the old bank guard in the robbery.

"Cowboy Lang is a solid-solid midget type person." Boesch is great. More comments later.

Sometimes when you watch these matches (especially the 70s ones), you see something and wonder why someone isn't doing it every week now. Gino's front facelock, both the lifting and the way he used it to keep control while continuing to sell, is definitely one of those things.

I wanted to comment last night but I waited until Pete because I didn't want to spoil him on anything. I absolutely loved the entire package of Gino/Chavo. Obviously we're a couple of matches into their feud but we know more than enough about both of them to get what's going on. Gino was such a heatseeker and the crowd going after him at the get go was just awesome 1981 wrestling. The guy's buddy with the hat was about as stereotypical as it comes. For the match itself, I'm not even sure I've ever seen a front facelock sequence done like Gino did it, with the lifting. It was a bit sloppy but gritty as hell. Chavo with his suplexes and throws as a means of getting out was way before his time, and Gino just basically continued to fall on him to keep control. Then Chavo's control sequence with all of the tricked out submissions was a total joy, especially hearing Boesch call them. He did as good a job explaining the re-positioning of lucha submissions as I've ever heard an announcer do.Gino's heat in the second fall wasn't long but it was nasty. He was just all over Chavo, brutal stuff. Then, just as Boesch sort of wrote him off, Chavo came back, keeping the momentum into his revenge in the third fall, until they do another little bit of heat, a lucky bit of positioning for Chavo after the elbow drop and a call back of both the Russian Leg Sweep and the tights pull for the win. I think the crowd was actually a little shocked by it. They went nuts but it was slightly delayed. Then came the post match and I wanted Thesz to absolutely kill Gino too. When Chavo finally made it up, though, I thought the crowd was going to mob him in joy. This is the first main event we've gotten in a while and I think it's one of the best total packages we've gotten on the service so far. I can't wait to be able to put it in context with the matches around it. 81-82 Gino, working with the Southwest talent, was something truly special.

I still want Ohno to crash the thing and win to massive amounts of heel heat (though I don't entirely have faith in the crowd to boo him even in that jingoistic situation).