KB8

This was quite literally a Greg Valentine slobberknocker, with all that entails, occurring within a metal cage that could be used as a weapon, with all that entails. It was fucking awesome. Babyface Valentine is a bit of a rarity and he totally ruled. He worked much the same as he would as a heel and was pretty reserved for the most part, at times almost embarrassed by the fact the people had adopted him as their own. But then as time went on he seemed to realise that it didn't matter how much of a mean bastard he was being; it just mattered that he was being a mean bastard to Slater. "Oh so I can punch him in the neck and elbow him in the ear and we're still good? Well hot damn, I'll do lots of that!" By the end he'd come to welcome the peoples' support and maybe even feed off it, though ultimately, when you get right down to the root of it, he was driven by the need to kick the living shit out of Dick Slater. Nine days a week I could watch Valentine beat the brakes off someone. It started almost immediately as Slater tried to trade body shots, and of course Valentine won that exchange and then just clubbed him in the throat because why the hell not. There was some headlock work early, but it was tight headlock work and more of a punctuation point between the fists and forearms. Slater was pretty great in this too. I'm not a huge Slater guy and sometimes his hamminess can be too much even for me, but he took his licks like a trooper and when it was his turn to dish out receipts he sure made the most of it. He took over with a fairly standard cage spot, where he grabbed Valentine's trunks and yanked him into it, but the set up for it was cool. Valentine was hammering away on him as was Valentine's wont, and Slater practically had to keep hold of those trunks just to stay on his feet. Eventually he goes down, but in doing so he can use his momentum and hurl Valentine into some steel. All of his headbutts looked nasty, his jab flurries, the way he'd just grab Valentine by the hair and repeatedly slam the back of his head off the canvas. The latter was one of those instances where he looked genuinely crazed, like he was trying to make an end of someone. Valentine's big revenge spots were home runs and I loved him choking Slater up against the cage, taking in the moment afterwards with a raised arm as the crowd went nuts. The finish also came across as something you'd get between two guys on their last legs, which was fitting considering how much they laid into each other in the last few minutes.

Largely in agreement with Sleeze on this. tl;dr write-up: This was probably the perfect litmus test for how much Flair I can handle these days. It's one thing watching him work a ten minute studio match with Sam Houston or twenty minutes with Magnum, but a full hour? Even if it's with Steamboat? in 2020? Who could possibly know?! Well he passed it pretty comfortably. I'm sure he definitely gives a shit, just as I'm sure you all do too. For about forty five minutes I thought this was excellent. I usually think of Flair as a broad strokes kind of guy, not really much of a details guy. He's more about the macro rather than the micro, but I thought this was one of his very best performances in terms of nailing the subtleties. When you take it as a whole it's still Flair doing what he often does when working long. He starts out sporting, begins to lose his composure, gets tetchy, gets nasty, gets desperate, and eventually sheds all the bullshit to be the man we all know he is deep down. He just went about that a little differently at points. We got the handshake at the start and then for about twenty minutes Steamboat controlled him utterly, first with a headlock and then with a front facelock. It was all nice and tight, especially the front facelock where you'd see Steamboat really grimacing, really looking like he was trying to unscrew Flair's head from his shoulders. Flair tried a few things, like driving Steamboat into the corner and then with some amateur wrestling of his own, but it got him nowhere and Steamboat was relentless. Even at a couple points where he could've thrown a chop he opted for the clean break, and one time he offered up another handshake in begrudging appreciation. The other subtlety in Flair's performance was how he sold and worked holds. I'd never call him a particularly special matworker and if we're comparing blond heel world champions then he's nowhere near as strong in that regard as Bockwinkel. This all had a real nice sense of struggle, though. Steamboat would crank on that facelock, take Flair down to the mat and try to pin his shoulders, Flair would try to use his own legs to hook Steamboat's in a cradle, they'd get back to a standing base and he'd try to grab Steamboat's head for a suplex, Steamboat would make a point of bobbing his head out of reach. They'd fight over a knucklelock, Steamboat would force Flair to the mat, Flair would have to bridge up on his neck to keep his shoulders up, he'd catch Steamboat in a body scissors, Steamboat would get back to a standing base with the body scissors still applied. None of the sequences were mind-blowing, but it was a really quick twenty minutes (as much down to Steamboat as Flair, obviously). Flair then started getting irritated and almost threw a punch before checking himself. He went in for a knucklelock and pulled back to do a strut instead, just to remind everybody who he is. I also liked how he sold Steamboat's Boston crab after the fact, how he'd do some quick stretches and try to loosen out the lower back. By the halfway point he hasn't acted like a prick once. By the forty minute mark he's only thrown one chop and that was a miss. Then he cracks and shoves Steamboat, backs him into the ropes...and everybody knows what's coming. When he connects on that first chop and chucks Steamboat through the ropes the whole atmosphere just picks up. Flair going to the ribs not long after that was some good stuff. Steamboat sold all of it like he's Steamboat, but I liked how Flair barely threw any more chops and instead kneed and elbowed Steamboat in the side. Some of his forearms to the head looked really nasty as well and I sort of wish he did more of them. His abdominal stretch also ruled and I loved how it looked like he was trying to rip Steamboat in half. Last ten-fifteen minutes were my least favourite of the match, as they kind of moved past all that awesome build and struggle in the first three quarters to go into your big Flair stretch run. There was good stuff in there. Steamboat staggering around like he'd been shot in the stomach was that guy in a nutshell and you know the crowd was biting on just about everything, but for all the work Flair did on the midsection it felt like they probably could've dropped the headlock-into-bridge sequence just this once. Still, the Flair staple spots are a horse long dead and beating on it at this stage is something neither of us can be arsed with. At its best this was terrific, at its worst it was good, and as a whole it was a remarkably quick sixty minutes. That in and of itself is impressive.

More of a condensed, low-key version of this match-up, but then even the low-key version of these two is going to bottom out at pretty great. It's everything that makes it a timeless pairing. Kobashi is dogged and his refusal to stay down in the face of such a mauling is inspiring, while Hansen does what he always does and overwhelms Kobashi with redneck fury. Kobashi dips into his big bag of offence and once or twice it looks like he might sustain a real advantage, but then Hansen will outright punch him in the face or boot him in the throat and shut him down. We get the staple powerbomb on the floor and I love how Kobashi just stares dead at the ceiling afterwards like "why do I keep getting in the ring with this man?" Hansen going after the neck for a bit and sort of using the dragon sleeper as a base was a really cool wrinkle as well, one that I don't remember him using in their other matches. He's such a big guy that you can easily buy him smothering you with something like that. Incredible finish as well, with Kobashi seemingly coming up with a way to avoid having his head taken off, only to turn around and have his head taken off. There was also a moment in this at the very start that encapsulates everything great about Hansen. He drags Kobashi to the floor and tries to wade into the crowd for a chair. The barricade blocks his way, but in his haste to procure a weapon he doesn't seem to realise that the gate opens towards him. He tries to shove it the opposite way but of course that's not how it's supposed to open. So instead of stopping for literally one second to open it correctly, the way the gate was intended to be opened by design, he just boots it inward until the hinge no longer has any say in the matter. Bend to his will or be broken. The Hansen way.

One of the all-time great pissed off screwball Hansen performances. He was a riot in this, jumping Misawa before the bell and about planting him fully vertical with a back suplex. The amount of shit he gave Misawa early had Misawa as annoyed as I've ever seen him. This wasn't stoic Misawa who'd maintain his composure and strike when the moment was right -- Hansen had pushed the wrong buttons and Misawa was going to cave his face in. There was one point where he had Hansen tangled in the ropes and raining down holy hell with elbows. A couple of the Hansen/Kawada exchanges were up there with their very best, culminating with Kawada biting off more than he could chew and Hansen punching him dead in the cheek, which in turn led to an extended Kawada heat segment. Before that Kawada's aggressiveness had served him pretty well, but it was most effective in tandem with Misawa's and as soon as he tried to go it alone he paid big time. Spivey was mostly just there and his Boston crab was pretty loose, so Hansen would keep it interesting by coming in and stomping repeatedly on Kawada's head, and a little later applied one of his own where he sat across the lower back with the full beef of Borger, Texas. Best moment of the match was when he grabbed a chair and, completely unprompted, smashed it over Kawada's spine, then hurled it across the ring at Misawa who went fucking apeshit in response. The way he went for Hansen was amazing; Hansen chucking him over the barricade like a small child even more so. The first elbow Misawa threw at Hansen after the hot tag was truly jaw-shattering. I watched this about ten years ago and loved it, so I'm happy it held up. One of my favourite All Japan tags of the decade.

The Funks feel so out of place in All Japan at this point. It's sort of charming and I wish there was more of it. And hey, this was a super fun ten minutes. Terry v Hansen is a GOAT level match-up so of course their exchanges were amazing. Terry gets clubbed about the head, falls out the ring, falls over the barricade, gets walloped with chairs and tries to throw a box full of drinks at Hansen. His flurry of jabs to Spivey late on popped the crowd something fierce and I love that he stopped mid-combo to hiptoss an onrushing Hansen. Even if you'll never get Dory being as expressive as his brother I liked him going right at Hansen with his uppercuts and forearms, and the bit where he grinds the sole of his boot into Hansen's nose was one of the meanest versions of that spot I've seen. He couldn't really do a ton physically, but the people went wild for the spinning toe hold and it was an awesome moment when he locked it in.

There's been a fair bit of talk recently about what a "hoss fight" is and/or should look like. Among wrestling fans, obviously. Hoss fight isn't currently a topic of discussion on BBC Question Time. But in the wake of that last NXT TakeOver where Keith Lee and Dominik Dijakovic had the match they had, the question has been posed: can it really be considered a hoss fight when the two hosses are wrestling like cruiserweights? What constitutes a hoss fight in the first place? Does the mere presence of hoss-like individuals mean that, by definition, a hoss fight is in the offing? All very pertinent queries. I suppose, as my great grandmother used to say, one man's motherfucker is another man's fucker of mothers, so maybe each and every one of us has a different definition of what hoss fight truly entails. And this felt like a hoss fight to me. A couple brick shithouse bruisers being brick shithouses and leaving bruises on each other. Nothing fancy, everything messy, everything nasty. I think 90s Hansen is my favourite Hansen at this point. He isn't as much of a straight ahead whirlwind as he was in his physical prime, but he has that vulnerability in the 90s that comes with age and his body breaking down a bit. He feels more and more beatable, ever so slightly less like a force of nature but a human being you can strategize against. Doc's strategy was to clobber him in the head until he drew blood, then clobber him some more until he couldn't get back up. Of course you know the bit about a wounded animal and when it's most dangerous so there was always the possibility of Hansen decapitating him at the drop of a hat. The brawling wasn't always the most compelling because I'm not sure Williams in general was the most compelling yet, but they certainly never mucked around with anything elaborate. It was all close quarters, almost no ground given, everything that was come by required a struggle. It wasn't as chaotic as a Funk v Hansen or even Funk v Brody, but it had the feel of those Doc v Gordy brawls from Mid-South and there won't be many instances where I complain about that. The finish was also straight out the top drawer of your Western Lariat murder scenes.

To nobody's surprise this was not a bad wrestling match. It had lots of really good stuff and some that was great. It's just that, at this point in my life as a wrestling fan, 45 minutes of a style I don't love like I once did was always going to be a bit of a bumpy ride. But it's these four so, you know. I thought Misawa was excellent in this. He was more assured here than in either of the Jumbo singles matches and best of all he was SURLY. Maybe it was because of Jumbo's general presence, maybe he was still pissed at Taue jumping ship, but either way he was about as grumpy as I can remember seeing him. Even in that very first exchange with Jumbo he looked like a man who was there to claim his rightful spot in the pecking order, and he carried that attitude with him the rest of the way. I'm not sure Kawada was all that great yet but he was certainly starting to look more like the Kawada we became accustomed to, at least in that he'd dropped the spinning wheel kicks and quasi-juniors offence for the short kicks and knees to the face. Taue really took a shit-kicking and I thought the strongest section of the match by a mile was his extended heat segment. Him and Kawada hated each other to death around this point and Kawada kicked him in the head many times, but Misawa was downright Tenryuish in how he'd just stomp his skull into the canvas. Taue getting opened up and it leading to some working of the cut naturally appealed to the vampire in me as well. That the proper heat segment came later, after they teased it early on when Taue started bleeding to begin with, is one of those cool bits of foreshadowing 90s All Japan did so well. I also thought the match hit a wall after Taue finally tagged out, which came at about half an hour in. It's not that it went off a cliff or anything, but it felt like they started to run out of ideas down the stretch. Even if I don't have much interest in going back to those '95 tags that went an hour or even the Kobashi/Kawada broadways, they had their formula down by then and the pacing and transitions were much sharper. Still, this was the first time anybody had gone this long in years so it's hard to be too critical. I suppose overall it held up pretty well. I think I'd need to watch 90s All Japan in small doses nowadays, but this did give me an itch to open that book again.

This was Tenryu reminding us that he might've been the best wrestler in the world. He was unbelievable here and all three of his match-ups ruled, as did pretty much every single exchange he had. In some ways his performance drove the direction of the match. In the beginning he was in grump mode, but he wasn't chopping anybody in the throat or doing anything untoward. For about ten minutes that was reflected in the overall tone. Everything ticked along nicely, nothing was blow away amazing but it was perfectly good wrestling. Then the longer it went the more Tenryu's temper flared, and that rubbed off on his partners, and that really opened things up. It established a clear face/heel divide, where in the second half Tenryu and Footloose were the heels and everybody decided Fuyuki was a real bastard and booed his every action. Tenryu was throwing shots at everyone, whomping Fuchi with chairs, threatening to launch a table at Baba, stomping on Fuchi's face, chopping Kimura even further into decrepitude, punting Fuchi in the spleen and kidneys and really Fuchi must've done something to him at some point because he got the living shit beat out of him. Fuchi as face in peril being abused by an irate 40 year old isn't a role you associate with him, in fact you associate Fuchi with being the irate 40 year old abusing everybody else, but man was he exceptional in this. Within the first few minutes he was dribbling blood from his mouth and his extended heat segment midway in was what really propelled this into that upper tier. Kimura can't really do much other than throw headbutts and get chopped exceptionally hard in the chest, but of course he did all that to the best of his abilities. Baba ruled, though. He's the oldest and probably most broken down of the lot but he never wrestled like it. Sure his overhand chops aren't the nastiest overhand chops you'll ever see, and sure his offence can look a bit clunky, but fuck it, the people lived and died with him and everything he did in this was money. The stuff with Tenryu was wonderful. I'm a broken record going on about how Tenryu is a master at showing vulnerability in believable ways, but almost nobody could make Baba's strikes at this point in his career look as believable. That the old man was refusing to accept Tenryu as the new king only pissed Tenryu off more, so he'd routinely cheapshot him while Baba stood on the apron minding his own business. There was an amazing moment where Tenryu tried to almost fake Baba out with a chop, but Baba didn't buy it and stood there completely indifferent to it all. It was like that GIF where Matt Barnes fakes throwing the ball at Kobe's face and Kobe doesn't even blink. Solid opening third, great middle third, shit hot closing third. Awesome match.

I haven't seen 6/9/95 or 6/3/94 in over ten years so I won't bother trying to directly compare any of them, but in general I'm with you on the '96 Tag League final, right down to the spot with Kawada collapsing outside being the thing to properly grab me. I thought the back half of this was about as good as you could ever want and in a lot of ways it might be the best performance I've ever seen from Misawa. He's out of this world in that last 15 minutes. But yeah, I don't love the first half. And for a match that goes a good 15 minutes longer than I can ordinarily be bothered with, 1/20/97 felt like a pretty strong GOAT candidate when I watched it last year. With lots of 90s All Japan now I can really only watch it (or re-watch it, I guess) in small doses, and it's far from my favourite kind of wrestling at this point, but when they really knock it out the park it still verges on the transcendent.

The structure of this was a bit ropey. Rather than your traditional southern tag formula, where in a perfect world Tommy Rogers takes a beating a few minutes as very few wrestlers take a beating like Tommy Rogers, and very few teams are as good as the Guerreros at dishing one out, we got three mini heat segments on Bobby Fulton, who felt a bit off during this. He wasn't bad or anything, but there were a few miscues and it made some of the double team spots feel a little contrived, or at least less organic than they usually do. Of course the people still lost it for the double row boat, and the headlock noggin knocker, and basically everything else for that matter because it's these four and they are very good at what they do. You've just seen those things done a little smoother, or a little quicker, with a little less setup. Chavo and Hector putting cool spins on otherwise standard spots will always rule so obviously I loved the finish, which gave us a picture perfect Tommy Rogers dropkick as a bonus. Not their best match together, but of course it was good, and really, I'll take every new bit of footage involving these guys I can get. It'd be foolish to complain.

I stuck this on because I'll probably need do work into the wee hours and did Mauro just drop a Buddy Rose reference?

I thought I noticed on last watch Foley not throwing any punches after getting hit with the chair, but I wasn't entirely sure if I'd missed one or two. So it's pretty cool that someone else picked up on it. It's my favourite match ever and probably has been for close to twenty years.

I thought this was an awesome little match. You know how these studio tags tend to go. Usually they'll be way more frantic than they'd be in an arena, less about milking the big spots and payoffs, more about working sharp and heated in the closer environment. Sometimes that'll mean the structure takes a hit because they'll only have four or five minutes to work with, but this had double that, none of the individual segments felt rushed, they built heat with a short and effective babyface workover, everything they did looked snug, etc. It was just really good stuff all the way through. Jake and Steamboat are such a fun unit and I'm not sure I've seen them pair up before. They were clearly the two young studs of the territory at this point and they worked like it. The early exchanges were great, the way everybody worked in and out of quick headlocks, lots of quick leg trips, how each team tried to make the quick tag and maintain the advantage before the other team could make their own tag. Jake's headlock on the Grappler was one of the best I've seen in ages and what made it better was how Grappler put up a struggle to get out of it. He managed to almost shift around onto his stomach and reverse it, so Jake bridged up to his feet in one motion and used his height to leverage Grappler back to the mat. It was an awesome spot, one I think I've seen Jake do before, but this felt properly organic and came off smooth as butter. He eventually takes a turn in peril and Grappler and Super D throw a bunch of tight forearms and elbows, nasty ones to the midsection, a couple right on top of the head, really cutting the ring off and working in tandem to keep him isolated. This also might be the first time Jake busted out the DDT on TV as even Caudle was taken aback by it (he referred to it as a "front bulldog of sorts"). Non-finish isn't surprising, but it leads to a nice heated brawl afterwards with Steamboat and Piper. Hard to ask for much more.

Bring back the TV title already. Seriously, it's such an easy way to build or put heat on wrestlers without actually requiring someone to outright lose. WWE have what, ten hours of content on television every week? More than that? In this workrate world that's surely enough time to throw out a fifteen minute time limit draw. Tully is really a master - maybe THE master - of working this sort of match. He can spend the first half on the back foot in a thousand different and satisfying ways, can take over through shenanigans, kill some more time working over the babyface, then when his back is up against the wall he can run down the clock to save his belt. The first six or seven minutes of this had Manny on top with Tully trying and failing to gain a foothold. We got some nice leg work, and there was this cool little moment where Manny took a bit too long to hook in a submission, so Tully just reversed it into one of his own and made Manny fight to regain control. Usually in those situations the person in Tully's shoes would lay there waiting for Manny to finish rallying the crowd, even if plausibly they could've done something to escape in that time. I love Fit Finlay because he'd never let your rest on your laurels like that and Tully has a lot of the same qualities. He won't let you forget that it's supposed to be a contest. I don't know if anybody right now is as good as Tully, but the framework for something like this isn't that difficult to replicate. In the end your heel escapes by the skin of his teeth while still looking smart and competent, while your babyface takes it right to the wire and might've pulled it off with an extra minute or two. Or in this case, had Tully not decided to just chuck him over the top rope.

What a frustrating thing this is. Not because of anything the wrestlers did -- that was about as good as you'd expect from everyone involved. I mean look at those names, you know what you're getting. We just have a deeply unfortunate big stupid bastard commercial break that cuts out not only what appeared to be a Tommy Rogers in peril segment, but a lengthy Ricky Morton in peril segment as well. And lots of Guerreros shenanigans as Joel Watts explains on commentary how Chavo and Hector bludgeoned Morton with their bandoleers! I'll assume this would've been top 20 on the Mid-South set if we had it in full. Maybe the uncut version is sitting pretty in a WWE vault somewhere. Anyhow the Guerreros are so good. Hector gets popped by a Morton right hand and takes an amazing face-first bump to the canvas, then gets up and popped again and takes an amazing bump onto his back. Chavo's horse shit on the apron ruled and at one point he dropkicked Bobby Fulton in the arse through the ropes. And then their offence is impeccable as Chavo fucking murders Rogers with the greatest delayed northern lights suplex we've ever seen. It goes to commercial right as Hector hits a butterfly suplex and you just know for a fact the Rogers beatdown would've been immense. Somehow this is Joel Watts' fault. Leading up to that we got lots of fun interactions between all four teams, everybody playing some chess, some guys trying to strategically effectuate certain match-ups. The RnRs and Fantastics are on good terms and bask equally in any humiliation of the other two teams. When Rogers and Morton end up in there together - which Cornette just gleams at - they have a nice respectful exchange. They trade a couple headlocks, a few snap armdrags, it was almost a precursor to your indie standoff of the future. Then they fist bump in acknowledgement and go punch a Guerrero or Midnight Express member, which of course counts as a legal tag. The Midnights/RnRs section at the end probably wasn't on the level of their absolute best stuff together, but it's these guys, it's a bloody foreheaded Ricky Morton getting pummeled, it's Dennis Condrey dropping knees on his throat, it's Cornette battering someone with a shoe. Come on, this was never going to be anything short of good. You just know there was an incredible part that we missed out on.

These Worldwide crowds are insane. Just consistent, ballistic heat; obviously more so when your Dustys and Flairs are in there, but it's not just a star power thing. Every episode from around this period has some of the best crowds ever in wrestling. It's very awesome. This was also a wonderful little five minutes. It's a hyper-condensed southern style tag but they made the absolute most of every second. Flair flopping as he tries to make the tag, Dusty kissing both Baby Doll and Garvin, Arn's look of pure hatred when he finally gets the tag, Dusty's incredible double punch combo to Flair and Arn in the corner; everything they did was on the money. Great finish as well. I pretty much adored every second of this. What a fucking roll Crockett was on at this point.

We are truly blessed that, nearly 35 years down the line, we can go back and watch Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson wrestle on TV just about every week. Crockett was next level in '86. This was only about eight minutes but it was a ridiculously fun Tully performance, which was pretty much his average around this point. You knew 2002 Tim Duncan was giving you 25 and 12 on a nightly basis. It was an inevitability and at a certain point became an accepted part of our lived existence. Death, taxed and Timmy Duncan. That's basically Tully in 1986 (with none of the geniality or respectable disposition). Mike Jackson is always rock solid - the late-career Timmy Duncan of enhancement talent? - and if you stick him in there was a proper foil you're usually getting something decent. He wasn't in the mood for Tully's horse shit and I guess Tully noticed this and decided to be an even bigger dickhead than usual. After Jackson won the first couple exchanges Tully tripped him off a clean break, just a total high school P.E. bully move by a guy who can't stand things not going his way. Then Tully backs him into the corner and slaps him across the face. Jackson is pissed and rips the straps down like Lawler in the Coliseum, so Tully bolts outside and has a good laugh to himself. We always talk about Arn being a guy who can flip that switch and go from bumbling stooge to stone cold killer, but Tully is equally great at going from shit-eating weasel to relentless hunter. He's not as methodical as Arn, where he'll pick a body part and go to work. It feels more vicious though, in part because it looks like he's enjoying himself in a way Arn rarely seems to. Arn ripping your shoulder apart is a means to an end but Tully will splat you on the concrete because it's amusing to him. The way he lost the plot after Jackson kicked him in the mouth was sensational. The sneer, the way he checked his lip for blood, how you knew right there the fun was over. It was like a cat toying with a mouse, then the mouse bit back and had to be put out its misery.

Is it time we start a dialogue on Sam Houston? He'd been pushed as Dusty and Magnum's protege for about half a year by this point, they clearly had plans for him as he'd recently won the Mid-Atlantic title on TV...and then about a year later he was up in the WWF. And apparently he spent four years there but I would not have guessed that. He sort of faded into obscurity, basically. Which may have been a crying shame because he was starting to put it together nicely, really coming along as a fiery underdog babyface, and by golly he looked like the bee's knees here. Did somebody miss the boat big time on Sam Houston? This started out with Arn fully on his own bullshit, first mowing Houston down with a big shoulder tackle - which Houston awesomely flip bumped off of - then opening the ropes for him in case our young cowboy wanted to cut bait before being humiliated. Arn is obviously all googly-eyed when Houston cartwheels out the way of a punch and connects with his own, and I love how Houston held the ropes open in case Arn decided HE wanted to cut bait. The angle late in '85 where the Andersons and Tully break Houston's arm is tremendous, so I loved Arn taking control by just smashing the wrist off one of the turnbuckles (bonus points for some booking continuity and all that). Arn's arm work was obviously good stuff, but I was super impressed by how Houston made it compelling on his end. It was some really good babyface work, how vocal he was in selling the pain, how he'd keep trying to fight out of holds or create openings, how he was never content to just take a beating and only show some fire when it was his turn for a hope spot. He'd even sell the arm after or during moves where the arm itself wasn't actually the focus, like when he ducked low for a backdrop and Arn elbowed him in the neck. He went over selling the blow first, but then he'd quickly clutch the bad arm and draw it in close to his body. His missed crossbody bump at the end was fucking wild too. This was Dustin Rhodes before Dustin even laced up a boot and possibly even more reckless. I thought this was a legitimately great 10 minute studio bout. Who's doing the deep dive on Sam Houston?

I'm more with Sleeze on this. Before watching the 12/85 studio match last year it had been about a decade since the last time I watched a Flair/Garvin match. Honestly, I never had much interest in going back to them as a pairing, but it somehow feels pretty fresh again after all this time. Probably because they tear strips off each other and I guess that sort of violence will never really get old. This had lots of that and felt plenty uncooperative (in a good way). I like Flair best when he's lacing into someone, so there'll always be something for me to dig when he's in there with Garvin and of course they had a bunch of great exchanges. For all his hubris Flair's strikes always looked pretty lethal, but against Garvin he's in over his head and I love when the realisation of that tips him over the edge, usually resulting in him just choking Garvin or trying to gouge his eyes out. My favourite part of this was when he actually managed to gather some momentum, only to piss it all away by getting cocky and slapping Garvin across the face. Sometimes I do wish he'd come out on top of a few more strike exchanges, but I suppose Garvin IS the man with hands of stone. Flair screaming at Crockett to shut up afterwards as Dave tries to tell Tommy Young about the foot on the ropes was A+.

Tully was so good in this. I've always sort of taken for granted that he was a step below your guys like Arn, Eaton and Morton, but these days I'd pretty comfortably stick him in that same bracket. He was a phenomenal pro-wrestler. This started out with Dusty working the leg, which is how many a Dusty v Horsemen match would start around this time. Flair and his cousins broke Dusty's ankle so it made for an instant revenge hook any time they matched up for months afterwards. His leg work is fine enough, nothing particularly special or compelling but he's Dusty and the crowd are always with him. It's the way Tully reacts to and sells all of it that makes it stand out. Dusty will throw on a spinning toe hold so Tully will roll onto his belly to prevent that spinning toe hold from turning into a figure four. Dusty will try and drag him to the floor so Tully will push his free leg against the bottom rope to stop him, or at the very least make it difficult for him. It wasn't anything mind-blowing in isolation, but it creates that sense of struggle. He takes over when Dusty hits an elbow off the top and tweaks his own bad ankle, and there was a great bit right away where Tully would drive his knee into the ankle, selling that knee at the same time as Dusty had just wrapped it around the ring post not but a minute ago. Tully jumping a guy is like Pat Beverley playing man defence. He gives you no breathing room, just completely swarms you and on top of that he was rolling out some mean looking inverted Indian deathlocks. Both guys' punches looked amazing in this as well. Dusty's left jabs were as good as I've ever seen them, right up there with the best Lawler jab combos. There was an incredible bit where Tully was peppering Dusty in the corner with rights and lefts and Dusty's jelly-legged selling was out of this world. And JJ's interference, while fairly low key, made for a couple great little moments. The first was when Dusty left the ring to stalk him down and Tully lunged between the middle and bottom ropes to get at him. A bit later Dusty went after him again, but when Tully dove for him this time Dusty was ready and caught him with a peach of a right hand. I liked this a bunch and it might actually be my favourite of all their matches together.

What's usually considered the best Flair/Dusty match? It's not my favourite match-up and the one that was on the Puerto Rico 80s set did nothing for me at all (not that it'd be eligible for this anyway), but the last couple I've watched I've enjoyed. Thought Starrcade '85 was good when I watched it last year, and their 1/25/86 match from Greensboro that I watched a couple days ago looked even better, although it was clipped up a bit.

I'm also going through GH's Horsemen and MX comps right now and watched the 1/19/86 Flair/Garvin match the other night. I'm too pernickety to vote for most matches with clipping, but it was good stuff. I mean, I don't feel bad leaving it off a top 100 considering we have a handful of their other matches in full and their 12/85 match from the studio will be pretty high on my list anyway. Crockett in 1986 was truly absurd. What a year.

Man, this absolutely ruled. What the hell? Why is this never talked about when one of the guys in it is the most talked about wrestler in the history of our great sport? How is there a Flair match this good that hasn't had eighty six thousand words written about it? Pre-world title babyface Nature Boy is so awesome. I never thought I'd get properly excited about Flair again, not after all this time when I thought I'd seen all I ever possibly needed to see from him, but I couldn't believe how impressive he was in this. His babyface energy was startling. This wasn't like when he'd work babyface after he'd won all those world titles. It wasn't even like that brief period in '85 when he worked babyface against the Russians, and that was him at the absolute peak of his powers. I've said this before, but a lot of babyface Flair still felt like heel Flair only dialed back a bit. He'd still do a bunch of the things he'd do as a heel, they'd just get the babyface pop because of who he was. In fact he could practically work heel opposite an actual heel, but if he was presented as a babyface and the fans were supposed to cheer him then the fans would cheer him. He was Ric Flair and could do whatever the hell he wanted. This, though, was a babyface who worked 100% like a babyface. In an alternate reality he took this act and paired up with a Ricky Steamboat and they became the greatest babyface tag team that ever lived. He strutted and woo'd but there was no arrogance to any of it. There was none of that veneer where you knew deep down he was still that same guy who'd pat you on the back then brag about your wife waiting in line for Space Mountain. At one point Mosca had Valentine in a bearhug and Flair strutted along the apron, started the crowd clapping along, then grabbed the house mic and folk just went apeshit wooing along with him. He was hitting running dropkicks instead of knife edge chops. Nothing was methodical; he was all energy, whether he was working the apron or coming in off the hot tag. The Valentine feud was in full swing so he was after him the whole time, getting super nasty by grinding his knuckles right into Valentine's nose (Valentine had broken Flair's nose not long before this) and popping him with elbows, rapid punch flurries to the gut, it all ruled. And man was he an awesome face in peril. He took two stints being beat on and both were great, but the second was where he got cut open and that was the strongest run of the match. Valentine was obviously being a nasty fuck, and the Sheik was a ton of fun throwing cheapshots and biting the open wound, but it was Flair's selling and sympathy-garnering that really made it. There was a great spot where he came in off the hot tag earlier and went for a big elbow on Valentine, really stopping to measure him before landing it, then when Valentine rolled out the way Flair just took an extra step in his direction and dropped it on him anyway. They repeat that spot during Flair's second heat segment, except this time Valentine drops four elbow attempts and Flair moves out the way each time, eventually scrambling into a neutral corner and leaping off the middle turnbuckle with a big Dusty style elbow of his own. It was as good a hope spot, with as perfect a sense of timing, as you could've asked for. Even the finish was great. After all those times we've seen him almost get caught out with a backslide, who'd have guessed he had the best backslide in his locker all along? Killer match. Everybody did their bit in it, but this was a Flair performance even the most jaded of us can appreciate.

I actually started watching that whole Boogie Jam (3/17/84) show a few days ago so I should get to the Flair/Steamboat match soon. I've never seen it before.

Masayuki Naruse v Sergei Sousserov (2/28/93) Man this was fun. It was a little sloppy at points and not everything came off great, but the striking had a recklessness to it - especially Sousserov's - and we got some neat takedowns and submission attempts that the crowd really peaked for when you wanted them to (it's Korakuen, after all). Nothing on the ground was particularly slick and it was a little stop-start with them getting tangled in the ropes, but they were both going for it and I don't mind some choppiness if there's energy to it. Sousserov is the business and this was probably one of my favourite non-Han or Maeda bouts so far. Mitsuya Nagai v Sandor Telgen (2/28/93) You know, this was perfectly fine. It only went five minutes and it wasn't setting the world on fire, but they at least kept the stand-up moving along. None of the kicks landed particularly clean, but they threw a bunch of them and there was no standing around doing nothing. Nagai also had a couple cool takedowns and the finish was sweet. There have been worse bouts, let me tell you. Naoyuki Taira v Toshiyuki Atokawa (2/28/93) This is the fifth Taira match/fight I've watched this week, and for someone I hadn't even heard of until a couple years ago I'm sold on him being pretty fun. I'm not entirely sure what the rules were here, but there are five three minute rounds, interchanging between kickboxing and MMA, and it very much may possibly have been a shoot. It wasn't great or anything but it was spirited and Taira visibly enjoying himself out there was sort of infectious. At one point he went for a flying knee and absolutely hurled himself out the ring, then came back in smiling a little sheepishly even though the crowd ate it up. They appreciated the effort, certainly. Maeda also came in and officiated the MMA/RINGS rounds of the fight and the crowd sure seemed to get a kick out of that as well. Masayuki Naruse v Nobuaki Kakuta (3/5/93) This was about a thousand times more spirited than I was expecting. Then again this is the second Kakuta fight in a row that's turned out to be good so maybe he is no longer the pits? Has Kakuta managed to put it all together as a master of the fake shootfighting? It was a pretty basic fight all in all; nothing particularly slick on the ground -- in fact, not much of anything was actually done on the mat because Kakuta is lost at sea as soon as he gets there, but that'll add to the drama when he's against someone capable and Naruse really played up that advantage. Kakuta isn't the most compelling striker as his stuff will tend to look like he's doing a demonstration, but he was more dangerous during the stand up than Naruse so it settled us into a fine striker v grappler story. His palm strikes were better here than pretty much any other time I can remember so that was a plus. Crowds are always bonkers for him as well and I'm still not really sure why, but you can't complain when they're rocking like this. Some nice drama down the stretch with both guys running low on points, Kakuta trying to score that winning knockdown, Naruse trying to grab a takedown and go for the tap. A fun bout is all I can really ask for out of Kakuta, so I was happy with what I got. Sirra Fubicha v Kalil Valvitov (3/5/93) Man what the hell? I have no clue who either of these guys are, couldn't tell you where they're from, have never seen nor heard of them before and don't know if they ever grace the Fighting Network RINGS at any other point. And hey, this totally ruled. I was skeptical at first because it's fought over six three minute rounds and those bouts aren't usually the best, but they shut me up straight away as Fubicha heaves the much bigger Valvitov across the ring with a uranage. This had some hyyyyuge throws, including a couple super impressive deadlift Germans, an awesome powerslam, a sort of death valley driver, many a uranage and at one point Fubicha even did a headscissors takeover! Neither are great on the mat but we all appreciate Valvitov's determination when it comes to locking in an STF. I'm not sure he knew how to do anything else. Either way he sensed that it was his route to victory and he wouldn't be swayed. Fubicha was pretty wild with his striking, at least in that he would kind of shriek before unloading a flurry of palm strikes, backhands and a pump kick or two. By the end they'd run out of ideas and both were clearly knackered, but it might've been the best fight using the rounds system so far. A bit ugly, a bit sluggish, a bit awesome. Yoshihisa Yamamoto v Pieter Oele (3/5/93) This was another spirited little contest. I'm not familiar with Oele, but you could tell pretty early that he was a kickboxer and not long after that you could tell this was going the striker v grappler route. Even though Yamamoto has nice stand up (or would come to have nice stand up. It wasn't fully developed at this point) he wasn't likely to have much joy on the feet here. Oele was absolutely drilling him with leg kicks that had to just suck being on the receiving end of. I mean these were hellish. Then he'd celebrate each knockdown by sitting up on the turnbuckle like "c'mon, what's the hold up here?" That sort of behaviour along with his punchable Jerry Seinfeld face had me rooting for our boy Yamamoto, and sure enough I thought he was pulling it out the bag when he hooked in a gnarly STF (there have been some killer shoot style STFs on this show). I feel like Oele would make for an interesting Maeda opponent. He hits enough like a truck that you can buy him as a threat standing up, and also because Maeda would be way less receptive to having his legs chopped to bits and might throw professionalism out the window. Not that it'd be like him. Willie Peeters v Sergei Sousserov (3/5/93) Short and nifty. Both these guys are fun and Sousserov looks like he could end up being really good, so I had some expectations for this. Even thought it barely went five minutes they were pretty well met for what it was. Sousserov's engine is ridiculous and he's constantly moving forward in fights, which led to a couple cool moments where Peeters caught him shooting in for takedowns with a high kick. The stand up wasn't the most crisp, but it was active and they made use of their time. Awesome finish as well. Dick Vrij v Mitsuya Nagai (3/5/93) Also spirited! This show is fairly bringing it with the fun five minute bouts. Vrij caught Nagai in the face with a closed-fist punch early on and apologised deeply for it, but then someone in Nagai's corner must've said something to piss the big fella off and from that point on he just tried to unleash holy murder. I've said a bunch of times that Vrij has presence and when he's in the mood to cave someone's face in you truly feel for the person whose nose is getting splattered across their coupon. Nagai would shoot in for leglocks and a couple times he forced rope breaks, Vrij would respond with brutal kicks and palm strikes, the crowd ate all of it up. I'll take five minutes of that twelve times out of ten, thank you very much. Volk Han v Andrei Kopylov (3/5/93) This was way more one-sided than their last bout. Han comes out the gate firing and drops Kopylov with a knockdown, then forces him into a rope break shortly thereafter, and I wonder if anything is quite as terrifying a prospect as pissed off Volk Han out to avenge a previous loss. Kopylov is fun as hell but he was strangely passive in this. There were times where you could see him almost waiting for Han to set stuff up, like he knew this was a fight where Han was going to look great, but didn't know how to create that sense of struggle at the same time. On the one hand it means you get to see Han do a bunch of preposterous shit on a blank canvas. On the other hand it's not nearly as compelling - or impressive - as when he'd do a bunch of preposterous shit against an opponent trying to prevent it with a little more endeavor. But it's Han doing his wizardry so it's hard to complain too much. His reverse figure four was a thing of beauty but his set-up for the rolling armbar was just as great, the way he threw that kick to the midsection to buckle Kopylov over and create his opening. Obviously this was good.