Matt D

Benoit was the golden boy as early as 98 if not earlier. There was internet rejoicing and then massive frustration when the house show TV title win over Booker T happened and then wasn't acknowledge on TV.

I'm not entirely saying that Rose taught him but of course Michaels credits Buddy with teaching him a hell of a lot. Aynway, I am falling way behind here. Buddy Rose/Kim Song vs Matt Borne/Hack Sawyer - 9/12/81 - 2/3 Falls There's a promo introducing Kim Song that I absolutely love. Buddy, knowing Kim doesn't know English just runs circles around him while he stands right next to him. It's awesome stuff. Anyway, I'm glad this is Borne and not Regal. I don't think the "incident" has happened yet, but there's still a lot of heat between Borne and Buddy, not the least over that Borne turned his brother-in-law down to be partners. They're going one-on-one on Tuesday. Luke Brown's the ref here and I really do love his red "Referee" shirt. Apparently he was Dutch Savage's half brother and wrestled against him and with him years before. Bonnema makes the important distinction: "Judo chops are legal, karate chops are not." Kim and Buddy bow to each other and here we go. I've not seen a ton of Song but I'm curious how they compare to the awesome team of Bockwinkel and Saito. Song, by the way, is not Kim Sung Ho, who wrestled in the 70s. There's some debate on exactly who he was. All you really need to know is that he's got astoundingly stereotypical facial expressions and a karate/hard head gimmick. They do a great job of establishing what sort of threat Song is right from the get go. He presses Borne against the ropes and rears back throwing a giant backhand chop. Borne ducks it and scrambles across the ring and Sawyer complains. It's a little thing but instantly, the fans know that yes, Song is a martial arts threat, and if he hits that chop, it's bad news. All in about fifteen seconds with no actual contact. Pro wrestling is great. Then they do the same thing in the corner with a straight thrust "karate chop." Anyway Borne tries to counter this with wrestling, but Song responds with kicks (Borne sells them huge) and a slam before missing a giant legdrop off the ropes. Borne hones in with an atomic drop and drags Song back into his corner so Hack can do one too. Hack (who I will liken to a mix between Eugene and Spike Dudley today) goes for another one but Song reverses it into a beautiful Russian Leg Sweep which he follows with a nice knee drop and a terrible "judo kick." They run the missed leg drop again to the delight of the crowd but Song dives across the ring for the tag and Buddy lawn darts Hack with a great press slam. this allows Buddy to stooge for the fans for a bit. Hack comes back in and ends up in a back body drop toss. Buddy against smaller guys can be really fun because he's able to kick out just the meanest looking power offense and you know he's probably enjoying the crap out of it. They start working a headlock with Buddy keeping Hack away from the corner. Finally he tags Song who starts unleashing the chop. They protect it well enough, too as Borne has to make the save. Heels are working well in controlling the ring. It's a fun pairing. They do a great looking turnbuckle treatment reversal spot with Buddy eating the corner then Hack walks over to the heel corner and tries to do it to Song, who is, of course, immune to such things. Song comes in and does it to Hack which draws Borne in so that things break down. The chaos allows Buddy to goozle Sawyer. When Borne complains, Buddy tosses Hack so that Song can attack him on the outside. Borne's fiery as hell in this match and rushes around to brawl with Song again who weeble wobble sells it. Buddy uses the headlock to contain Sawyer again but he makes it to the corner and Borne flies in with a sunset flip off the top while Buddy had the headlock on Sawyer and that's the first fall. Crowd was super into it. Nice little heel-tactic based FIP there. Second fall starts with Buddy trying to sneak Song in, first by default and then before touching Borne, with a tag. this is followed by another bow to Song, some stalling in the corner, and a quick touch on Borne's chest before he scrambles back to his corner and tags Song in. Amazing that I haven't seen him do this before because it's such intuitive stooging. Song goes for the hair with a take down and Borne flies back up menacing him out of the ring. Borne is, as I said, really fiery. The attempts of communication between Buddy and Song are pretty enjoyable. After a ducked judo chop, Song slows things down and requests a test of strength. He immediately kicks born to drive him down and kicks him back down every time he starts to fight up. Borne finally breaks it and takes over which starts a mid match mini shine on the arm including Hack coming off the top with an axehandle to it and Song flipping over like nobody's business on an arm wringer/legdrop on the arm combo. I hate that I can't help but like Sawyer. He's do damn plucky, like a goofier Brady Boone. Nice little transition sequence here: Song rolls up Sawyer and then uses the ropes for leverage. Borne comes in and pulls him off with the tights. Ref pulls Borne out. Sawyer gets another armbar on. Buddy complains about Borne. Ref checks on Borne. Buddy grabs Sawyer's hair to pull him down, letting song take back over. Rose comes in and hits the big back elbow and a great little walk-up kneedrop. Buddy slams him and tags Song who FINALLY hits the legdrop (Borne breaks up the pin but Sawyer goes to the wrong corner) and then a BEAUTIFUL butterfly suplex (Borne breaks up the pin but Song tosses Saywer back into the heel corner). Buddy comes in and locks on a bear hug, again keeping Sawyer away from his corner. RIGHT when Hack's about to get the tag, Song rushes in and pulls him back; he makes the tag but the ref is distracted and misses it. He has to force Borne back out while the heels take advantage with the super illegal Song karate chop. Ah, tag team wrestling. Song hits a much cooler kick on Sawyer but Sawyer kicks out (on his own which is important once and a while for a plucky babyface underdog). Song cuts him off with a nasty kneedrop to the back of the head though. Buddy tags in and locks the headlock cut off again but this time Sawyer back body drops him out of it and hits the hot tag. Borne bursts in and cuts through the heels before unloading on Buddy. He gets too close to the heel corner though and Song beats him up from behind. This brings Sawyer in and the ref has to pull him out. Meanwhile, Borne's got Buddy up in the airplane spin which is his finish, but Song comes in, hits the big headbutt and Buddy basically falls on him for the three count. Bock/Saito is actually a GREAT comparison to Rose/Song so far. I'm happily surprised. Third fall takes its time to get back to the ring and then even more time as Buddy stooges and stalls and does the chest tap on Borne again before tagging out. What a glorious jerk. Then Song comes over for instruction and Buddy starts doing these hilarious over the top hand signals. This is followed by more of Borne trying to slam Songs' head into the turnbuckle. All he gets for his trouble is a headbutt and some clubbering and a lovely opportunity to eat the turnbuckle himself. Buddy tags in. He's chewing gum visibly here which not something I've seen out of him before I don't think. Borne takes a big back body drop and then, after getting dragged back to the middle of the ring, a delayed vertical suplex. Buddy sells his own head after the fact and tags Song in who hits a nice back suplex. Transition is Borne ducking a chop off the ropes and then hitting a really nice dropkick to set up the hot tag. I love how Hack does the crazy Bob Backlund hand motions after hitting a drop kick. He's such an excited lad. Song just clobbers him though leading to another ducked chop and then a Nikolai Volkoff side kick without the spin (i.e. he lifts up his foot and someone runs into the side of it with his stomach) and then a pretty cool frantic judo chop on prone Sawyer from the second rope for the three count. Heels dismantle the faces post match including a chair shot on Borne from the floor in after dodging some angry fans. Yeah, I liked this a good deal. Lots of stooging and heel tricks executed well. It was a showcase to debut song while still having Borne look great and in that it did exactly what it was supposed to. Song overachieved from what i was expecting even if his facial expressions are sort of Kamala level over the top.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1892331...company-history Bix wrote a really good article on this. I know Chris has been following it on his site as well.

I make my eleven year old watch TCM all the time. He tends to want to watch TV whenever he can because he gets relatively small amounts of it and he'll take what he can get and enjoy almost anything, so he's seen probably 70 movies that were made before 1970 at this point. I control the horizontal and the vertical and what not. I also had lists of TV and movies from the 70s-00s that I thought he should watch at certain ages (Ducktales, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, The Muppet Show/Fraggle Rock, Bill and Ted's, Original Gundam/Macross/etc). I really came to appreciate older things when I was in high school but it really ought to be fostered by the parents and it's easier than to be exposed to things now with DVDs/Streaming/etc.

As a kid in 1986 or whatever, I freaking loved the Monkees. For the first few years of my life, that, Danger Mouse, and He-Man were my favorite shows. And maybe when I skewed just a bit younger Bananaman.

I read that as Kelly Kelly for a second.

I can't imagine WWE not JUMPING at the idea of Jack inducting Flair into the Hall of Fame. I guess 2007 Hunter would have that level of veto power since he wanted to do it himself, but I imagine it would have come out in the sheets since there'd be a lot of talk about it internally.

I was in the crowd for Angle/Benoit. I have weird feelings about it and no desire to revisit it.

How would he fit in with the current New Japan style?

I think the smackdown six are remembered fairly favorably now. In fact, I'm not sure how that stuff would age considering Edge's limitations, Angle's limitations, and the general ickiness surrounding Chris Benoit matches. I find it extremely unlikely that it'd match up to the tags and six man matches we've gotten this year.

I loved Bryan kicking out the AWA legwork in that match. Did he get the set or something?

So in my manic attempt to learn more about lucha a couple of months ago, I convinced Devon (a better spanish reader than I) to parse through this DJ Spectro post on Cota (http://djspectro.blogspot.com/2010/03/de-mis-apuntes-el-mocho-cota-rudo-unico.html), mainly because I wanted to know why the hell Cota was dressed up like Darth Vader. What he got was the general gist that he was driven out or banned or something and he kept coming back every week with a different costume to piss off the fans and that this somehow led to the Los Infernales feud. If even a little bit of that is spot on it just makes him all the cooler.

And really, it wouldn't matter if he was a great wrestler. I mean look at this guy from the same era. He looks about the same as Watts, not far off, maybe a little thicker, but it's like night and day.

I kind of want to see a Ziggler/AJ Styles tag team getting beat up by Mark Henry/Big E. Does that count?

Someone should remind Parv that this is what an athlete looks like.

In a year and a half when I finish all the Buddy there is, I am totally going to watch Terry Rudge.

I love that WWE has decided to fill 3 hours with tag matches. And we don't even have Sid breaking them up.

I actually like later career Erik Watts more than most people but

I actually mostly believe that, because you can see a huge difference in the Race vs Martel match from the very beginning of 1980 and the Buddy series. You can also see a huge difference in Martel between 80 and what we've seen in 83 onward but the Buddy matches are still so damn good.

Why the hell doesn't anyone like Stan Stasiak? I'm watching him vs Brett Sawyer here and he's king-sized in it. Sawyer's just a physical mess when it comes to coordination and Stasiak is great as this lumbering old bastard who just walks around the ring locking trapezius claws that would be boring if he wasn't such a looming presence and getting pissed off everytime Sawyer does a goofy Leaping Lanny taunt. There's one of the best jerkiest king of the mountains I've seen in Portland with a really good payoff. He's also pretty great at focusing on a body part with really, really simple but effective stuff. He's like my father in law if he was a wrestler. I really liked him as a face vs Buddy too. He's just a great Mean Old Bastard, like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino or something. The first fall is something like fifteen minutes and it just flies by because Stasiak is such a pissy old codger. I mean he was only forty something but he seemed like he was going on sixty, but in a good way. Old man has great facial expressions. He also sort of sells like Popeye with this great little bobble of his head but is also willing to bump over the top. Also the sideburns make him look like some 18th century British highwayman that'd be a side villain in some Dick Turpin story. When he has the mustache he's kind of like one of those 1910s strongmen and his posture is downright simian. Also, he's got the best heart punch ever. I want to see him wrestle Sangre Chicana or something. also, Brett Sawyer is the biggest doofus ever to wrestle. I can't really put it in a non-offensive way. I guess, alright. You could commentate over his matches with a funny commentary and people watching would get uncomfortable thinking that Hack Sawyer was probably not "in on the joke."

Who's more physically awkward? Greg Gagne, 1993 Erik Watts, or Brett "Hack" Sawyer?

How DID we define that? That they're all too obviously pretending to have a professional wrestling match instead of having a professional wrestling match? You can see the strings?

That Will can still mark out to that level for Cena thanking him silently during a match despite being the wrestling version of Peter Lorre from Casablanca is pretty damn adorable. Rick, you need to hide this comp of wound-biting wrestlers for me.

Yeah, but also boring as fuck considering who will likely have it (and I like Cena as much as the next guy and would think that he'd be the right choice). I was a bit cooler with the idea when there were territories.

I'm hoping for some BS finish where they switch belts. I love the World Title. It doesn't mean much anymore, but I doubt Bryan gets elevated without it. Mark Henry sure as hell doesn't get a "world" title run without it, likewise Christian, and those are three of my favorite wrestlers right there. If there's only one world title it's going to be held by just a handful of guys over the next few years. I'd be curious to have Chris do an analysis of who was in main events before and after the titles split and the level of variety. On one level it'd be okay if they could use this to really make the IC/US titles meaningful, but you know that's unlikely.