Matt D

There was a 2/3 falls title match between Lord Littlebrook and Bobo Johnson from NWAClassics that's worked about 85% straight.

One good thing about the brand split at least.

The Cartel is one of my all time favorite factions too.

It doesn't mean that there's not Race vs Funk on the table. 7/1/77 and 7/29/77 both happened (apparently). It's the sort of stuff that I think Boesch would have filmed and kept. It just means that we're back to waiting for it. And who knows? We might get the 82 Funk vs Stomper or one of the many Harley vs Wahoo matches (Big chance of at least one of those), which is another pairing I don't think we have a lot of.

What I was thinking about while watching was the throughlines, how Curry's punching style prepped Houston for rooting for Lothario later in the decade, that sort of thing. We really saw Johnny blade himself too, but he did it in a way that made it look like he was checking for damage or selling. There was almost a craft of its own to what he was doing. To me the best part was the sheer fury of the start of that third fall. It only lasted for a bit before they tumbled to the outside but I was smiling big watching it.

Curry vs Valentine was the perfect way to start a Saturday morning. It was a really special match with incredible heat and intensity. It's pure Houston and the sort of match that the people there almost certainly told their grandkids about. I wish we had dozens more matches with these two.

Yeah, this was the stuff. We've seen a few really good performances out of him up until now, but it's really obvious after this: Spoiler is such a triple threat. 1.) He's got the size, and he uses it so well. He's able to create a huge base on a side headlock for instance, or make it to the ropes from almost anywhere in the ring. And he's able to use it to menace to a great degree, not just for the claw and for some big power moves, or bits of leverage, a bridging pin that's angled far more sharply than someone else could do, and 2.) He's got the agility. He's doing stuff with the ropes that would be years ahead of his time to begin with, and he's doing it with such size and (thus) implied force behind it. He's able to use it on offense and to make himself vulnerable at key moments. 3.) And on top of that he's such a great, underhanded cheater. He uses the ropes for leverage, he uses Gary Hart for everything he can. He pulls the hair. He pulls the tights, and with his his reach, he can do a lot more than the average person with that. You put all that together and you overlay it with a brilliant sense of timing and of maximizing the impact of all of these things. He never just comes off the ropes. He builds anticipation to it and then he pays it off. He's so good. And Brisco's great too, of course. I like a more heelish Brisco best, but he's fiery and technical and smart here. The crowd is behind him and he earns it and deserves it, despite the fact he could just rest on his reputation. They work very well together, each one helping to unlock the highest level of what the other can do. The match starts with one of the best worked side-headlocks you'll ever see and ends with some awesome revenge leg work into the enjoyable, feel-good screwy finish. In the middle is a lot of stuff I'd rather not spoil. I enjoyed it a lot.

I'm caught up. Let me run through some quick thoughts. Jake vs Humongous: Jake at his best here, really just at the height of his power. I loved the dueling hockey masks. His body language is so good that he could have worked his whole career with the mask and been fine. The early blocked cage shots due to them meant that it mattered all the more when he lost the mask. Good stuff. Thorton vs Gino: I'm not sure i've ever seen the NWA Junior Heavyweight Belt come off as such a big deal in this era. This, like the Race vs Hernandez match, had Gino self destruct at the end. I thought Hart looked very solid here and wonder if he wasn't a step above when he was managing Gino (as he hasn't looked exceptionally impressive in Houston otherwise). Fun match. Gino was so good, so young. Boesch vs George Harris III: I think I've seen at least part of this for the Boesch special that's on youtube, but it's hugely enjoyable. Boesch was a very witty guy in his own way. It's a bit folky but it really works. I've come to love listening to him on commentary, even on his own. There was just a matter-of-fact-ness to him and he shined here. I hope we get to see more of Harris in general. He came off a bit like Dom Delouse in History of the World Part I. That use of his body type for comedic effect. Slater vs Stomper: Yeah, Stomper was great. i was even higher than Pete on the early parts of this match because the stalling and stooging was right down my alley. I actually think it was the lack of Boesch commentating that made the first fall feel a little bit meandering (which isn't a fault of the match or the service, but instead a testament to what he adds). Once the claw got locked in and it got going it became a must-see exhibition in violence. Slater's a dynamo so this was a perfect role for him. A classic.

I could be off here, but do we even have a full Terry vs Harley singles match of any length on tape?

Those top two matches. Wow. And Dusty vs Patera and some Boesch matches to boot. Can't wait.

That is, very much, because of the tradition of workrate primacy. It's not "anything and everything related to in-ring work." It's that workrate is basically the only thing that matters when it comes to in-ring work elsewhere. That's a simplification, but I think it gets at things more than you'd think. It's just taken as a given (or close to it) many other places.

Thanks, I'll get to it at some point. I have this Les Thorton match to watch.

I think it makes a lot of sense to do what you're doing, both for the service and the modern NWA as a whole. Thanks for the reassurance though.

You have to remember that this is a place where some people are relatively low on Tiger Mask and Dynamite too (but that DO like Dynamite vs Fujinami, so it's not like it's a blind thing. It's MEASURED). There's a lot of consistency. There have also been a lot of words written explaining people's viewpoints. Twitter is probably not the best arena for this sort of discussion, but as I said, we've already had it here, a lot. It's not like Ricochet is going to read sixty pages of PWO threads to get up to speed so as to best understand people's POVs. I think Regal would be baffled by people not being high on Tiger Mask vs Dynamite to begin with, but I don't think most of the people who have been here for the last few years reading and participating in threads are baffled why some other people aren't high on those matches, even if they don't agree.

Which is still probably more important than any of the belts they have now.

The Roku news is great. I won't be using it but know a few people who haven't jumped in yet because of it. As for the broader site, so long as you keep the old Houston footage coming at least 4 or 5 matches a week, you've got me on board for the long haul. I'm as happy with the service now as I was when I first signed up, maybe even more so now that I'm more acclimated with the territory.

Some writers are way better with a strong editor.

We've been around this circle for years. We've spent years writing thousands of words about it. This is just another drop in the bucket of the conversation. It's just a little more mainstream today, that's all. Tomorrow it won't be and we'll talk about it more in two months and in six months and in three years, especially as new kids find the board and it takes awhile for them to wrap their heads around the opposing point of view, which is, for perfectly understandable reasons, counter-intuitive to everything else they experience from almost everywhere else. And now I feel like John Williams. Great. Thanks. We need a FAQ or something.

Oz as WCW's attempt at the Undertaker is kind of brilliant.

this channel was mentioned I bet, but he just posted a 73 AWA show which isn't new or anything but it was new to me. It has midgets at the end and A 2/3 falls Robinson/Muraco vs heel Dusty/Murdoch match in the middle

Did you bring up that Mascaras match?

Slightly related, one very cool thing about the footage now, as opposed to a year ago, is that we're starting to see gaps filled and whole swaths of matches, to the point where Houston is coming into focus as a territory instead of just a series of matches. We're starting to see more narratives over weeks and months and years and the fans' evolving relationship with certain wrestlers or the wrestlers' relationship with one another, or specific stylistic things that you can only spot when you have context. That's one of the things I'm most excited about moving forward. I don't think we can easily talk about Houston like we do Memphis or Portland currently, but I think we're getting there and it really was a hell of a territory.

Hopefully Smackdown is ignored and unimportant within six months.

So what? That definition of important is the least important definition of important.