Tackling the 80s

[Dylan Waco]

On Snuka v. Steamboat, I agree with the critical comment about it earlier. Watching it I thought it had some of the most business exposing big bumps I'd ever seen and as a whole the match was terribly phony to me on both watches (yes I watch all the 80's Sets from beginning to end at least twice before voting). I said this at the time and people thought I was joking, but I seriously think I saw a half dozen or more Billy Wiles/C.W. Anderson v. Roadkill/Danny Doring fancam matches from the ECW Set that were clearly better than that match.

[PeteF3]

I didn't hate Snuka/Steamboat as much as some others, but I do remember Snuka taking a Steamboat chop to the chest and running forward bumping over the top rope as being one of the most eye-rolling bumps I've ever seen.

[Loss]

Eddie Gilbert & Ricky Morton vs Masa Fuchi & Atsushi Onita (Memphis 09/04/81)

 

I wish we had the entire match proper, because the finish in the ring was very heated and well-worked. I love Fuchi and Onita in Memphis and don’t ever want it to end. But the action ends up spilling (quite literally spilling) into the concession stand, which was a staple of wrestling in Tupelo when gates started to suffer by this point. This is of course a crazy brawl - one of the best ever - as they throw stiff shots at each other, all four guys are juicing and the plunder is flying all over the place, including a nasty spot when Morton shatters a mustard jar on Tojo’s head. Eddie Marlin ends up involved and taking some crazy bumps too. Apparently, the woman who was involved was never clued in that this was a work and she freaks out. Wild, wild scene that is carried by intensity and great brawling more than the stunts that would eventually define this style.

[Loss]

Tiger Mask & Tatsumi Fujinami vs Pete Roberts & El Solitario (NJPW 09/04/81)

 

There were a few sloppy moments from Tiger Mask, but otherwise, this was a wonderful tag match with some really beautiful mat exchanges and highspots. I always like watching Pete Roberts pop up. Fujinami takes to the air and is pretty terrific. He’s a more modern wrestler than most modern wrestlers, if that makes any sense at all. I’m really impressed at the hard pace they cut in this one. The action never really stops. I don’t think Sayama is horrible here, but he is the worst of the four, for whatever that’s worth. Fujinami is a machine and is looking like the best guy in the business in 1981 too.

[Dylan Waco]

I think Sayama could be good against the right people during this period, but he was almost never the best guy in a match.

[Loss]

Atsushi Onita, Masa Fuchi & Tojo Yamamoto vs Rick & Robert Gibson & Roy Rogers (Memphis 09/05/81)

 

A lesser version of the previous excellent multi-man tag, but still good and worth checking out. The Gibsons both put on excellent performances in this, and the terrific Fuchi/Onita run in Memphis continues. Check out how seasoned Fuchi and Onita have gotten at working US tags as heels in a short period of time. Fuchi is already positioning the referee to cheat and cutting the ring in half. The Onita/Rick Gibson martial arts stuff being teased right at the finish is awesome. Sadly, the match was just heating up when time expired.

[Loss]

Mil Mascaras & Dos Caras vs Ricky Steamboat & Chavo Guerrero (AJPW 09/06/81)

 

This had some terrific, hard fought wrestling exchanges, but despite the work being excellent at times, something was missing to keep it from getting over the hump. It was lacking in hate, but it was ultra competitive in a way where this never really felt like an exhibition. It’s the kind of match that I think people would rave about if it happened today, but I think it went a little long for the type of match that it was. Perhaps it’s that the match feels like randomly grouped singles matches instead of a tag team match. Steamboat works the lion’s share of this for his team. There are “tag team” moments like the great full nelson/senton combination that Steamboat and Chavo used to win the first fall, but those moments are rare. Chavo and Dos had excellent chemistry and Steamboat looked great in this. Just shy of a great match, but top notch work all the same. The luchadores have some great flashy spots, but seem to understand the Japanese psychology really well and build to those big moves instead of just giving us a steady stream of flying.

 

Part of me wants to backhandedly call this the 1981 version of the Indy Respect match, but I don’t think that would be fair. It doesn’t feel like they’re working tribute to something that was done better elsewhere. But it also doesn’t feel like much is at stake except pride.

[Loss]

Andre the Giant vs Stan Hansen (NJPW 09/23/81)

 

Outstanding match! It works as a spectacle obviously, based on the crowd heat and the cool factor of seeing these two duke it out, but it also works as a smart wrestling match. I really dug all of the arm work and Andre’s teases of big moves, some of which were paid off and some weren’t. Hansen sells Andre’s offense like death. They cut an impressive pace and Andre is an awesome heel, better at goading the crowd than any Americans I’ve seen work Japan in 1980-1981. Love the bodyslam! It’s so cool to see Hansen working as an underdog babyface, because that’s not a dynamic we encounter very often. The restart was also really effective in this setting and I thought it added a lot to the match. Andre’s stiff shots and big bumps got a pop out of me.

 

Andre has always seemed like a sacred cow that people are afraid to look at critically who I perceived as having a reputation he didn’t deserve, and I’ve never been a huge fan because I didn’t think much of a guy who could barely move in the late 80s being called “great”, especially when factoring in stories like working loaded, taking a dump on a guy in the ring, not always showing up to work and stiffing guys unnecessarily. But that’s all crap and this match helped me get over myself— he won me over here in a big way. And that’s to take nothing away from Hansen, whose selling and comeback teases were as good as just about any I’ve ever seen in wrestling. I didn’t know Hansen could be Ricky Morton! Every superheavyweight in wrestling should study this match. My MOTY right now.

[Loss]

Stan Lane & Koko Ware vs Eddie Gilbert & Ricky Morton (Memphis October 1981)

 

2/3 falls. No DQ, but it’s the 80s, so the rules are still enforced and they don’t make a big deal of that. This was the Bret/Owen Ironman match of 1980s tags — lots of good work, but lots of stalling and a 20 minute match that was just stretched out to 30+ to the detriment of the match. I don’t think 2/3 falls works really well in a Southern tag either because it doesn’t complement the traditional tag formula very well. Memphis probably had more top shelf young talent than any territory at this point though, and this match manages to showcase that really well. Pretty cool that these guys worked this long and produced a sound match without a vet in the ring to direct traffic.

[Loss]

Dory & Terry Funk vs Umanoseke Ueda & Buck Robley (AJPW 10/06/81)

 

Based on Ueda’s entrance and some of the standoffs that kept getting broken up, this seemed to be building to the roof finally blowing off and an out of control brawl breaking out. But when the brawling finally happened, it was pretty underwhelming. Dory is so freakin’ weird. The spot where he blocked the impact of the Irish whip to the turnbuckle didn’t really fit well with where the match was at that point in time. Not really a match that made an impact on me at all.

[Loss]

Tatsumi Fujinami vs Isamu Teranishi (NJPW 10/08/81)

 

Not as long and sprawling as some of Fujinami’s mat classics from 1980, but a great 10-12 minute match that would fit right in on a BattlARTS card. A really violent, high octane match that doesn’t overstay its welcome. These two work really stiff and have some outstanding matwork, hard strikes and a great flair for the dramatic. I’ve always liked Teranishi, and Fujinami is the best guy in the world at this point. Really feels like the godfather of a lot of the fun short matches in G1 Climax tournaments in the 90s. Kind of a holy shit combo of moves from Fujinami for the finish too. What a talent!

[Loss]

Bruiser Brody vs Dory Funk Jr. (AJPW 10/09/81)

 

I kept waiting for an employee to break up this cafeteria fight between mental ward residents. Dory just wanted to hand out flowers, but this Frank fellow kept attacking him. Anyway, Brody beat the shit out of Dory and in Dory’s comeback, he takes Brody outside to give him a snapmare on the floor before bringing him back in to apply the spinning toehold. That’ll show him! Kidding aside, this isn’t a bad brawl at all and I sort of enjoyed the superficial aspects of it at least, between the double juicing and the hot crowd. This is far more emotion and passion than I’m used to seeing from Dory Funk. And he’s a guy I need to see more of although I’m well aware of the criticisms, but I thought Brody looked perfectly good as a madman brawler in this.

[ohtani's jacket]

Man, I forgot all about that Fujinami/Teranishi match. That match ruled so much. I wish all Japanese wrestling had been worked like that.

[goodhelmet]

That Teranishi match was a blind spot when I was nominating matches for the NJ set but on rewatch, I really enjoyed it. As for Brody-Funk, I joked that for two guys I like the least ever in wrestling, they got the best matches out of each other.

[Loss]

Ric Flair vs Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW 10/09/81)

 

People can say what they want about Flair’s act, but looking at him in the context of what was surrounding him less than a month into his first run as NWA World Champion, he comes across as completely fresh and as the best guy who could possibly be in the role at this point. His strengths are on display in a big way here. Aside from Fujinami, no one else was wrestling matches that were this intense and athletic and cut at such a fast pace around this time, at least not in the other groups that have had 80s sets with representation in 1981.

 

I love the initial spot with Jumbo almost pulling a fast one on Flair and Flair bailing outside until he collects himself. Jumbo controls with the headlock before Flair takes over with this nice looking crossface/facelock thing. Eventually, Jumbo does some nice knee work (check out all of that figure four build) and wins the first fall, which puts Flair on the defensive going into the second fall. When Flair targets Jumbo’s leg, Jumbo bails out of the ring, but Flair brings him back in with a great vertical suplex and elbow drop and is now firmly in control. It takes a couple of attempts as Jumbo is still very much in the fight, but Flair finally locks in a figure four, which Jumbo sells like death. The crowd chants for Jumbo to rally a comeback, but it’s not enough to turn the tide, as Flair takes the second fall. Cool dynamic at play where at the end of the first fall, the match looked like Jumbo’s match to win, and now it looks like Flair survived his best and has got this.

 

Jumbo hobbles around to start the third fall and Flair is relentless, crawling after him on the mat in an attempt to catch him off balance and finally cornering him to toss him outside the ring and beat the shit out of him. He then brings him back in and punches him in the face repeatedly until Jumbo is bleeding. But Jumbo finally stages his long-awaited comeback and appears to have Flair beaten for a few minutes until he goes for a high knee, only for Flair to duck and Jumbo to hit the top turnbuckle knee first. The earlier work had an impact, as he’s an easy pinfall win for Flair to retain his title.

 

Great match. It flew by and was definitely one of the best of the year. My only issue with this is that even at over 30 minutes, the match felt a little bit rushed. They really did cram a lot in here, but the work was so good that it’s hard to fault them too much for that. Still, I think they could have easily filled in another 20 minutes just by milking everything they did anyway for maximum effect. I think this was every bit as sophisticated as something like Robinson vs Bockwinkel, with the key difference being that they did a lot less “stuff”, which made what they did carry more weight. The idea of Flair as this weak champion who makes himself look weak and ineffective in his big title defenses is hogwash. He was an asskicker in this one, and he had a game opponent but was clearly the better man on this night.

[goodhelmet]

Yep, my favorite Flair-Jumbo match that I had in my Top 5 on the 80s set.

 

Let me ask you this as you move forward... after geting through most of the decade... lets say through 1985.... let me know if you think Flair wrestled differently in Japan than he did around the territories. We know Hogan has that reputation. I wonder if Flair will get the same rep as time goes by watching the 80s sets in a much different way than they were intended.

[Loss]

Tiger Mask & Kengo Kimura vs Negro Navarro & El Signo (NJPW 10/30/81)

 

Really cool to get a glimpse of the luchadores at this point. They look great in this. There are a lot of great sequences, including a few lightning fast counters from Tiger Mask. But if Tiger Mask was a musician, in this match he'd just be a guy playing around with the effects in the stereo, not a guy using them to produce a good song. Things like the quick roll from his back to his feet are overdone in a weird way and don't really add anything to the match, even if they pop the crowd. Kimura isn't amazing in this or anything, but he's more focused on the task at hand. That's not really a huge Sayama criticism, as he was over because of the crazy stuff he did, and it made sense to experiment with certain things to figure out how to maximize that. But it results in some weird matches, because he's using his matches as a playground to try out highspots he's thought of instead of working a match.

[ohtani's jacket]

I watched that Jumbo/Flair match. There was an old school sensibility to the mat work that I'm not really into these days, but once they started exchanging moves the match started to captivate me. I've always thought the Jumbo/Flair match-up was underrated in the sense that Flair isn't really the Mid-Atlantic/Crockett Flair and Jumbo doesn't really dominate either, so people tend to write it off as a styles clash, but I always find their bouts interesting. I agree that the time passed quickly. The only disagreement I have is that I don't think Flair was that much of an asskicker. It seemed like he was working from underneath for a large portion of the match and simply weathered the storm. The match was hurt by the botched german suplex on the visual pin after the Lord Blear ref bump. When Jumbo tried to make up for it by hooking the leg, Flair was clearly in the ropes and even though they tried to sell it on commentary as Jumbo scoring a pinfall from the suplex it was a bit of a limp finish to the match. I did like how Jumbo submitted to the figure four, however, and the Japanese were as considerate as ever by putting ice water on the leg and putting over the damage.

[Loss]

Tiger Mask vs Gran Hamada (NJPW 11/06/81)

 

I thought this was a pretty good match. This is the match that really shows that Hamada totally outclassed Sayama as a worker at this point. It’s more of a good display of what Hamada can do than it is a great match (even though the last few minutes are awesome), but I really enjoyed this.

[Loss]

Billy Robinson vs Crusher Blackwell (AWA 12/03/81)

 

Steamboat vs Snuka? Really? This is the worst match I’ve seen on an 80s set. For the first half of this, they are laying on the mat doing nothing while a dead crowd sits in silence unless they are doing a boring chant. When they get up, this picks up a little bit but it’s nothing special at all. Blackwell’s dropkick is impressive and I sort of like Robinson’s attempts to do leg holds when he can’t get Blackwell in the desired position because of his body type, but that’s not remotely enough to make this match any good.

[Loss]

Tiger Mask vs El Canek (NJPW 12/08/81)

 

The best thing about the Tiger Mask matches so far is getting to see more of guys who intrigue me, but for whom footage is limited. El Canek looks excellent in this. The crowd goes crazy for Tiger Mask, but he blows so many moves and is so sloppy. People I trust said this about the guy but I was worried it was just group think gone amuck until I saw this for myself. Didn’t care much for this match, but as I said, I was glad to see El Canek.

[Dylan Waco]

Billy Robinson vs Crusher Blackwell (AWA 12/03/81)

 

Steamboat vs Snuka? Really? This is the worst match I’ve seen on an 80s set. For the first half of this, they are laying on the mat doing nothing while a dead crowd sits in silence unless they are doing a boring chant. When they get up, this picks up a little bit but it’s nothing special at all. Blackwell’s dropkick is impressive and I sort of like Robinson’s attempts to do leg holds when he can’t get Blackwell in the desired position because of his body type, but that’s not remotely enough to make this match any good.

I can see not liking this at all, but I think Steamboat v. Snuka is easily worse because it was so transparently phony. It looked like two backyarders performing their big spots without even trying to make them look good, where this was just a slow match.

[shoe]

Billy Robinson vs Crusher Blackwell (AWA 12/03/81)

 

Steamboat vs Snuka? Really? This is the worst match I’ve seen on an 80s set. For the first half of this, they are laying on the mat doing nothing while a dead crowd sits in silence unless they are doing a boring chant. When they get up, this picks up a little bit but it’s nothing special at all. Blackwell’s dropkick is impressive and I sort of like Robinson’s attempts to do leg holds when he can’t get Blackwell in the desired position because of his body type, but that’s not remotely enough to make this match any good.

 

I liked Steamboat/Snuka better than this too.

[Loss]

Antonio Inoki & Tatsumi Fujinami vs Andre the Giant & Rene Goulet (NJPW 12/10/81)

 

Andre continues to impress. There are so many fun spots that they are able to do around a guy so big. Inoki and Fujinami work as a team to try to take this guy down and just can’t do it. I love Inoki and Fujinami working together to lift Andre. That was a hell of a bump for a guy Andre’s size. Yeah, I want to see a lot more of this guy working Japan, because this was a really fun match.

[Loss]

Dory & Terry Funk vs Bruiser Brody & Jimmy Snuka (AJPW 12/13/81)

 

Here we go! Pretty famous match. “Hansen? Stan Hansen?” One of my favorite calls ever. Super match that really picks up after Hansen takes Terry out with the lariat. Dory gives one of his better performances here, both in working over Snuka’s knee out of desperation because he has no idea what else to do to keep the heels at bay, and as the underdog fighting solo after Terry is taken out of commission. Hansen’s profanity laced post-match promo is of course tremendous.