Gordi the former AEW fan

Hitman vs Hot Rod is absolutely one of my all time favourite matches. Not every match has to tell a story, but that particular match is one of the best examples of how good pro wrestling can get as a story-telling medium. Excellent character work and in-ring acting by both men.

It was a talking point that AEW definitely started themselves. Before the first TV show, they talked a lot about how it would have more of a sports feel and presentation, particularly focusing on how "wins and losses would count" in AEW. It's obviously turned out to be much more about a bunch of likable performers having fun at work. I, personally, am quite happy with that outcome. I don't think that the current roster would be well suited to present any kind of Americanized UWFi, or whatever it a that some people seem to be hoping for. The people who are hoping for a more realistic show are absolutely basing their hopes on how Dynamite was originally talked up, however.

It's a damned interesting thing, watching a bunch of brawls like this, how spots (like, say, someone taking off their boot and using it as a weapon) crop up in different matches, and how you can start to make connections like Rikidozan/Kowalski -> Wahoo/Valentine. You can also see who influenced who, and how, and where people went with things. It's even more fun than I'd anticipated. That Tenryu tumble over the barricade was indeed a thing of beauty. I think my favourite "you might almost miss it if you are not paying attention" moment in that match comes just after Young Kawada hits the German on Gordy - when Hansen stands on Kawada's boot and kicks him in the leg like he's trying to knock his (clears throat, looks around) foot loose from his body.

Hansen & Gordy vs Tenryu & Baby Kawada is right up there with Tsurutu & Tenryu vs Choshu & Yatsu as Greatest 80s AJPW tag match that is also in the GMOAT discussion. Such lovely psychology and story telling mixed in with all the violence, and a good candidate for Best Hansen Lariat Ever, as well. My favourite moment from those two videos, though, is DiBiase setting up for a dropkick and then apparently thinking "nah, that's too fancy for this match" and going right back to clubbering. Also: How much easier must it have been to be a booker when * being from New Zealand * was enough to make you a heel, and waving the Kiwi flag could drive the crowd into a frenzy. Also also: it was nice of Strike Force to lend Williams & DiBiase their gear. I believe this is the famous "I broke Wahoo's Leg" match. It's only about 50% clubbering, but the strikes are every bit as stiff as you'd imagine. Valentine does his father proud here:

Remember when an avalanche-style dragon suplex was a finisher?

I feel like I should have hated this. As I said, "post-1999 self-conscious epic 'please give us five stars' type matches" are precisely what I am not in the mood for at the moment. This match is from 1998, which according to my research is pre-1999 but holy moly is this ever an epic match. It is so very epic. It is, in fact, not easy to imagine a match being more epic than this one. It takes this form: There's an opening back-and-forth that includes Hayabusa trapping Tanaka in a cross arm breaker. Then Tanaka works over Hayabusa's leg with a variety of holds for four minutes or so. Then Hayabusa does the same to Tanaka's arm, for about the same amount of time. Then, almost exactly at the ten-minute mark of the match, they shift into big bomb/high risk move/2.9 count mode and keep it up for fifteen plus minutes. In a certain sense it's as if two guys are doing a live action recreation of a Fire Pro or King of Colosseum match that got a 98 or 99 score. Does Hayabusa ever sell the leg at all, once they switch into high gear? No. Of course he doesn't. Tanaka sells his damaged arm for several seconds, at least... but if you are a person who is bothered by that kind of stuff I would not recommend that you watch this match (unless maybe you want to feel very angry for some reason). Also, some of the bumps these men take are flat-out harrowing. Sincerely, on paper, I feel like I should have hated this. I feel like I should be angry @supremebve for recommending it to me. But... I loved it. I loved every second of it. I watched it twice, all the way through, and loved it both times. What the hell is going on here? Well, for one thing, I am positively predisposed toward Masato Tanaka because he is one of only a few well-known pro wrestlers from Wakayama, which is my wife's home prefecture and a place that I feel a strong connection to. I also tend to give Hayabusa the benefit of the doubt because of this thought experiment: If I had been following FMW when Onita "retired" and Hayabusa was given the impossible task of replacing one of the most charismatic performers of all time... if I'd been paying attention while Hayabusa tried to keep his home promotion alive by busting his ass and putting it all on the line time and time and time again... I think he might have been my absolute favourite Japanese wrestler back then. I also like this particular match-up. It kind of feels like an off-brand version of Misawa vs Liger (and I mean that as a sincere compliment). Also, and I think this is important, Hayabusa and Tanaka pull off some very nice transitions between the various stages, so even though the match is very compartmentalized it manages to flow quite nicely. They transition into the leg work with a sick low dropkick to Hayabusa's knee. The arm work begins when Hayabusa reverses an Irish whip into an arm-wringer take-down. At the ten-minute mark Hayabusa goes for a springboard move only to get caught and powerslammed by Tanaka, which is the beginning of the big bombs section. They even do a nice transition during the epic fifteen plus minutes, around the 20-minute mark of the match, when Hayabusa is going for a top rope move, but' he's moving just a little slowly and has his back to Tanaka, who is painfully struggling to his feet... Also, both of these guys sell exhaustion really well, while also showing the sheer determination to keep fighting. In fact, it might be reasonable to surmise that they were not selling so much as they were legitimately exhausted and also legitimately determined to keep going on. There are so very many One! Two!...OOOHHHhhhhh!! spots in the last ten minutes of this match. That has become a very annoying cliche recently. Here, though - even the second time through - I honestly felt like "That has to be it" on several of the near-falls. Tanaka doesn't just take a big move, lie there, and kick out at the last moment. He takes a big move, bellows in pain, grabs his head, and then kicks out at the last moment. It makes a difference. They pull off a lot of very good little things to differentiate one big move from another and give you that "this has to be the one" feeling: A sudden desperate lunge or a particularly nasty cover... I think guys like Gargano, Ciampa, Edge, Orton, Kenny, Okada, and so on are all somewhere in the "really very good to absolutely great" range as pro wrestlers but I think that even they could learn something from the exhaustion, determination, and the little things that Hayabusa and Tanaka pull off in the lengthy epic sequence here. What I hate is not epic matches, but self-conscious epic matches and the long-story-short version of why I loved this is that it honestly didn't feel self-conscious. It felt honest, and well-earned.

I feel like, once the crisis has passed and if NJPW and AEW start working together, Orange Cassidy and Juice Robinson should form a tag team. They could call themselves "Cassidy & Robinson."

@Curt McGirt @DEAN @Matt D @thee Reverend Axl Future Matt, I have not seen Blackwell vs Mulligan nor have I seen Ratchke vs Weaver before. In fact, It is probable that catching up on this thread over the last couple of days marks the first time I have ever seen Johnny Weaver or Killer Kowalski in action. I don't think I've ever seen the Dustin vs Vader match that Curt posted. Surely I would have remembered that sick clothesline on the floor and the terrific flip bump Dustin took off of it. Vader has to be one of the all time kings of clubbering. His big inside forearm shots are literally the perfect example of clubbing blows. That being said, the more Blackwell I watch, the closer he gets to Tenta and Vader on top of my personal rankling of masculine behemoth pro wrestlers. I love this call in the Blackwell match: "The big fat man is using his weight to his advantage." "Yes, he is." I loved Blackwell vs Blackjack, and I enjoyed seeing Raschke, too. I think the most impressive thing in that entire video was Gene Mean's astounding curly toupee. My head almost exploded when I realized who that was. I remember Terry Funk telling the story of how Raschke would line up an opponent in the corner and lunge in with the claw, only for the opponent to dodge and Raschke's claw hand to get stuck on the turnbuckle with him unable to break his grip. Imagine getting something like that completely over with the crowd! Has anyone even tried something remotely similar since, I guess, the MasterLock challenge? It was a damned interesting thing to have two claw-centric matches on one TV show. I agree with Curt that the sound on that Kowalski vs Rikidozan match was amazing. Those strikes! They didn't have the sharp crack that we are too used to hearing in the kickpads/leg slap era. It's the dull fleshy thud of bone slamming into muscle. I wonder how they mic'd up that ring. I wish someone could figure it out and copy it. Imagine that sound paired with the sweat-flying visual impact captured by modern lighting and high-def cameras! Then those two Joshi matches that DEAN posted: The first part of Kudo vs Toyoda was like Black Terry vs Wotan without the gravel. It didn't feel like a pro wrestling match fought by pro wrestlers wearing street clothes. It felt like an actual street fight. It was almost disappointing when they got back in the ring and started doing more pro wrestlingy type stuff. If Megumi vs Combat was like two rival gang members throwing down, Kansia vs Hotta was like the two toughest ladies from rival kyokushin dojos settling a grudge. It was like a combination of Tenryu vs Hash with Shibata vs Shinsuke. What amazes me here is that, even if we narrow our focus to something as specific as "90s Joshi brawls" there is still a depth and richness to what we might find. It's also pretty amazing that (unless I'm mistaken) that the second of those matches is from the same card as The Greatest Joshi Singles Match of All Time. Pro wrestling, man... Speaking of which:

This is something pretty cool that I had no idea existed before the algorithm recommended it to me today. Wrestling Machine Terry Funk vs Wrestling Machine Barry Windham, in Puerto Rico!

@supremebve I joined up late, so my 1st post is somewhere in the middle of the thread. I've really only got YouTube and Dailymotion as options. I remember I said that I have only seen a couple of French matches and one match from Brazil or Argentina... To add to that, I haven't seen a ton of stuff out of Texas, Portland, Puerto Rico... haven't seen nearly enough FMW or SWS or WAR, I would like to see more NWA and territories stuff from the pre-Starrcade era. I have only seen a handful of matches from before the 1970s... I think I'd like someone to recommend me a Mexican minis match. I haven't watched Bryan Danielson, Johnny Saint, or Dick Togo fight in a while even though they are three of my favourites. I'm on a pretty big run of watching hoss fights and brawls at the moment, and I am always in the mood for a good comedy match. I am honestly pretty open to anything outside of post-1999 self-conscious epic "please give us five stars" type matches. I like those, too, sometimes, but I have not been in the mood for that recently for whatever reason.

@supremebve You've said that "...All Japan in the 90s is the absolute peak of professional wrestling" (which, yep) and if I remember correctly you've also said that shoot style is a blind spot because you don't really get it. Allow me to present a possible gateway drug into the joys of shoot style: Kawada vs Albright '95! It's very much a hybrid of 90s AJPW and the UWFi style. In a way, it stands out for what they don't do: There is almost no rope-running (Kawada's late-match lariats are what make this, definitively, a hybrid match rather than a straight-up shoot-style match). They don't jump off the turnbuckles or do any flying at all. They don't brawl on the outside. Kawada tosses in some of his signature stuff, but they stick to strikes, submission grappling, and realistic suplexes with a lot of struggle (which is what makes shoot style, well, shoot style: Paring pro wresting down to the stuff that would make sense in a pure combat sport and sticking to KO or submission finishes). In my opinion Kawada adjusts beautifully to working that way. I'm looking forward to reading your opinion. (note: I almost gave you one of the matches from the Vader vs Takada series that was my personal gateway into shoot style, but I think you might get more of a kick from seeing the many subtle differences between this match and the 90s All Japan tag you reviewed last week).

Don't know if it's been suggested or covered yet, but it occurs to me you could pull a pretty interesting hour out of USA! USA! HOOOOO! and USA? Hah! Phooey! being pulled over while traveling together in a car full of drugs. That North Korean one should be great. A lot of crazy stories on that tour!

Yeah, it looked like something you might see in the "our heroes accidently walk into a tough guy bar" scene in a mid-80s action comedy.

I appreciate the warning about JR on commentary, as well.

I know I am not saying anything new, but BCS is an all-time great TV show. So very well-written, well-acted, and well-directed. The consistency is amazing when you consider how many different writers and directors the show has, as well as how many characters and ongoing storylines. They have a Hitchcockian knack for building up real suspense, and there are characters that I really care about. I am both looking forward to and dreading the last episode of this season.

The Jerry Lawler vs Randy Savage cage match, which @Smelly McUgly gave me to review, is a really good old school angle advancement match. The commentator (I'm assuming it's Lance Russell) says it's only their second time meeting in the ring, ever. How crazy is it to have a feud basically begin with a cage match? Their feud was essentially worked as an invasion angle, and from the clips I found online it seems like they did one hell of a job building this up. The cage itself is an unusual, rickety-looking structure made of two by fours and chicken wire fencing. It extends to the floor, and there is a narrow gap between parts of the ring and the cage, where a lot of the action in this bout will take place. Savage's look and character are already fully formed here. At two or three points during the match, he yells at the audience that "Everybody dies!!" I wonder if Murderhawk Monster Lance Archer liked this match when he was a kid. Lawler takes an early advantage but Savage turns it around by spitting on Lawler causing the king to lose control, in both senses. There is a longish segment, maybe eight minutes or so, where Savage is working on top using a combination of basic wear-down holds (chinlock, side headlock, wristlock...) and subtle cheating (pulling hair, getting an object from his trunks) when referee Jerry Calhoun isn't looking. The action escalates as Savage hits a double axe handle from the top rope to Lawler, who is standing in the narrow gap between the cage and the ring. Then the beat-down really picks up some steam. Back in the ring, Lawler finally regains control, whips Savage into the cage, and grabs the object from Savage. As soon as Savage is able to cut off Lawler's comeback, he climbs to the top of the cage... but Savage misses the jumping elbow drop. Lawler, strangely,. does not immediately go for the pin, but he punishes Savage a little, bodyslams him, and gets a two-count with a splash off the ropes. A vertical suplex gets another two. Lawler goes for a piledriver but Jerry Calhoun stops him, which allows Savage to re-take control. Savage give Lawler a long airplane spin after which both men comically stumble around the ring. Then it's back to brawling around the cage and the momentum switches back and forth. Finally Lawler goes for another piledriver but Calhoun stops him again, and this time Savage savagely smashes the back of his head into Lawler's crotch, which is some pretty creative heeling. Savage beats Lawler down again but now the crowd is really hot and their support gives Lawler the fire he needs.... the strap comes down and Savage is really in trouble... but here comes Joe LeDuc, over the top of the cage, to interfere and cause the DQ. LeDuc and Savage beat Lawler down something fierce, including a nice flying elbow from Savage, until the cavalry arrives to run them off. Like with the Blackwell vs Hansen brawl, this was a very effective big TV match and I am sure it helped put lots of asses in seats as this very memorable feud progressed. The psychology was first-rate, the selling was generally excellent, and my only nit-pick is that I wish they'd made a bigger deal out of the missed elbow from the top of the cage.

I have only just started watching the Snuka episode, but already the "I feel bad for threatening to strangle you, please accept some cocaine by way of apology" story has me shook to the point where I am not sure if I want to keep watching it.

Pro wrestling haiku Is far from the worst way to Kill some fucking time

Thanks for that match. That was a legit great brawl, and it was a treat to see Kazuo Sakurada in action! RIP This particular match is worked at a very deliberate pace and is mostly intricate mat work. It's a shame the crowd wasn't more into it. But, if you pay close attention you might notice the very subtle way they work chairs into this match: Which does kind of bring to mind this classic moment featuring two former world champions:

Los Ingobernables de WWE!

Here's an excerpt from an interview I did with Bad News back in 2004: One other thing I’ve always wondered, how did your family react to Roddy Piper painting himself half black? My family didn’t like it, I didn’t like it, but him and Vince thought it was a great idea. I figured that if he was going to do that he was taking his life into his own hands, plus I didn’t like Piper anyway, he was a racist, so I figured if he got beat up for it or whatever, he deserved it. What were they going for there? I have no idea. I don’t know if it was just to make fun of us, I don’t know what they were trying to prove.

It's very well covered ground, but in the situation the world is in now we can all use one more entertaining thing to read. I agree, go ahead.

@Smelly McUgly I have indeed seen that match... but, 35 years ago. I traded tapes with the editors of Wrestling's Main Event magazine back in the mid-80s, and that was one of the matches they sent me. I very rarely watch Lawler matches, so this is an excellent choice for me. I remember loving this match back then, and I haven't seen it since. I am very much looking forward to seeing how I feel about it now. I hope that 80s Joshi tag is enjoyable for you!

@Smelly McUgly the sense I get is that you like tag matches that feel like a fight, with a clear heel/face dynamic, and lots of heat. Please enjoy Crush Gals vs Devil Masami & Jaguar Yokota: The top one has marginally better video quality and is (arguably?) the better match but it is really long, so I am also offering a shorter alternative match from the same teams that was fought three month later (in case you are pressed for time). The bottom match has a weird spot where the face team hits a spike piledriver and the ref refuses to count, but it also has a hot finish. Both matches have white-hot crowds. If you have time I'd go with the top one. If you really have time, both are certainly worth a watch. Probably unnecessary clarification for anyone who hasn't watched much 80s Joshi: Crush Gals are Chigusa Nagayo (red swimsuit with horizontal white stripes) and Lioness Asuka (dark swimsuit with horizontal white stripes). They also, helpfully, have their names written on the lower back area of said swimwear/fight gear. In his wildest dreams, Ricky Morton gets the kind of reaction from the teen girls in the audience that Crush Gals do. Jaguar is wearing a white swimsuit in the top match and one with a red back and mutli-coloured front in the bottom match. Devil has a kind of V-pattern in white and blue in the top match and diagonal white and blue in the bottom one. In my opinion, Jaguar is one of the greatest workers ever. I was thrilled to meet her in September last year,

After that Ishikawa vs Aoyagi match blew my socks off (by the way, Ishikawa probably means "stone river" and Aoyagi probably means "blue goat" so those are pretty great wrestling names) I went looking for more Aoyagi. He's a favourite over at Segunda Caida, because of course he is. And here he is in a match against another SC favourite, Masanobu Kurisu. This might be the closest thing out there to pure, uncut NBC* There is, like, one single-leg crab hold that lasts two seconds and otherwise it's just two absolute bastards beating each other to death. Handheld footage. No commentary. No mercy. *NBC = Nothing But Clubbering And, over on MattD's YouTube channel: Hot damn! Thanks, brother!