Curt McGirt Posted January 31 Share Posted January 31 I'd probably have to do a huge search but I'd like to see the NJPW matches from that. Pretty sure I've only seen the NOAH ones, which are readily available on Youtube of course. I found some Internet Archive stuff but it's all recent; there was a way that I managed to pull up one of those Nagata/Sasuke bloodfeasts recently but I don't remember how or where. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infinit Posted January 31 Share Posted January 31 1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said: I'd probably have to do a huge search but I'd like to see the NJPW matches from that. Pretty sure I've only seen the NOAH ones, which are readily available on Youtube of course. I found some Internet Archive stuff but it's all recent; there was a way that I managed to pull up one of those Nagata/Sasuke bloodfeasts recently but I don't remember how or where. The Liger/Tanaka vs Kanemaru/ Kikuchi from the NJPW Crossroads show on 29/08/2002 was the bee's knees. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zimbra Posted January 31 Share Posted January 31 Rey Hechicero vs Valiente Fall 1: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8l8bu Falls 2&3: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8l8mj Since Hechicero will be on teevee this week here's a banger of his from '08. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infinit Posted January 31 Share Posted January 31 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonzombie Posted February 1 Share Posted February 1 "Everyone is over 120kg!! Runaway Giant vs. Big Japan Pro Wrestling in a super luxurious hand-to-hand battle 《2023/6/17》All Japan Pro Wrestling Battle Library #" https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=X4b8d-O8NoeByiWT&v=PYfbJxM6hGg https://www.cagematch.net/?id=111&nr=74662 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamhock Posted February 2 Share Posted February 2 On 1/31/2024 at 3:21 PM, Infinit said: This was great, and everything after the top rope/turnbuckle breaking was superb; that DiBiase/Magnum could do the Tennessee Tiptoe into a Hotshot using only the middle rope was something else. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 (edited) Wild Red Berry vs Carlos Guzman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2qrdgywpwM (second fall: well, if one dropkick really isn't much of a special move, could repeated dropkicks still be something that could work today?) 20 minutes of early 1960s Promos (Bockwinkel, Mr. Moto, Blassie, Thesz, Szabo, Carpentier, Mr. Moto again, Bockwinkel again, Sammy/Samson Berg, Carpentier/Szabo again, Hans Hermann, and Blassie again) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiADWgDKlbo Edited February 4 by Cobra Commander Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 High flying Dory Funk jr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 Aguila vs Pirata Morgan on Shotgun Saturday Night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2603t2uIcjg El Dandy vs Barry Houston on the Pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50wtpx21FCc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 5 hours ago, Cobra Commander said: 20 minutes of early 1960s Promos (Bockwinkel, Mr. Moto, Blassie, Thesz, Szabo, Carpentier, Mr. Moto again, Bockwinkel again, Sammy/Samson Berg, Carpentier/Szabo again, Hans Hermann, and Blassie again) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiADWgDKlbo don't let cleancut babyface Nick Bockwinkel distract you from the fact that Freddie Blassie probably sounded the exact same for like 50 years in a row Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clintthecrippler Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 I am now through February 1987 of my Mid-South/UWF watch project which means I have watched the UWF Tag Team Title Tournament after Hacksaw Duggan lost a loser leaves town match to One Man Gang, thus vacating the championship held by Duggan and Terry Taylor. The tournament was broadcasted over two weeks of UWF Power Pro Wrestling. I noticed these episodes weren't on Youtube so I went ahead and uploaded them myself, and honestly the booking of this tournament feels like it should be as famous/infamous/notorious as the "All three championships change hands" episode of TV from November 1986. UWF Power Pro Wrestling - Broadcast Date 2/14/1987 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWdFhnO-9mA UWF Power Pro Wrestling - Broadcast Date 2/21/1987 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTZseUQ2m3s (note: source video quality is a bit rougher here) Thoughts/observations on the tournament (spoilered here in case anyone flying blind wanted to watch the tournament first): Spoiler The return of Gentleman Chris Adams after his stint in jail - admittedly this may be because we know how his story ends and he has more legal problems only a year later, but the return of Chris Adams after serving jail time for assaulting a pilot and a flight attendant during a flight is an incredibly cringe-inducing attempt at PR rehab. A "press conference" with Chris Adams and his tag team partner for the tournament, Iceman Parsons, is shown and the talk is some of the most generic "don't drink alcohol" and "I want everyone to learn from my mistakes" motivational speaker banter to the point where if you don't know what actually happened, you would think all Adams did was have "one too many" and got arrested for drunk driving, instead of you know, assaulting a pilot and flight attendant. One bit of storyline that will play into the tournament is that Adams chose Iceman as his tag team partner because Iceman was the wrestler that visited him the most in jail and called him on the phone the most, but overall the return of Chris Adams somehow comes off more icky with the "PR rehab" aspect of this than if they didn't acknowledge his jail time at all. Two sets of Freebird tag teams in the first round - There is some genuine intrigue with the tournament hosting two sets of Fabulous Freebirds tag teams (the team of Michael Hayes and Buddy Roberts, and the team of Terry Gordy and "Freebird Bounty Hunter" Angel of Death, with some pre-tournament promos playing up that they could meet in the finals. Alas, both Freebird units are eliminated in the first round. The UWF doesn't know how seed brackets work - In the weeks prior on TV, the UWF noted a ranking of the seeds for the eight teams in the tournament. Instead of following #1 vs #8, and so on like most seeded tournaments do, first round matches got jumbled up where the #1 seed wrestled the #6 seed and the #3 seed wrestled the #5 seed for example. The #1 seed did ultimately wrestle the #8 seed, but it didn't happen until the second round! Iceman Parsons turns heel and is absolutely justified - The aforementioned #1 vs #8 second round match occurs, and it's a face vs face match between the teams of Ted Dibiase and Steve Williams against Chris Adams and Iceman Parsons. All seems copasetic and scientific until Devastation Inc. walks down to the ringside area, which draws Dibiase and Williams to the outside to engage them in combat. Instead of a disqualification, the ref starts counting out Dibiase and Williams (seemingly because Dibiase and Williams left the ring to engage first? though that point isn't really put over on commentary). Adams runs out to help and is begging Iceman to come help Dibiase and Williams, but Iceman stays inside to accept the countout victory. After Devastation Inc. is fended off, Adams gets on the mic and says he doesn't want to win that way and wants Dibiase and Williams back to the ring, with Iceman pleading "WE WON!" and pleads his case about having been in the UWF for months and finally getting a championship shot, at which point Adams says "if you want to win the championship that way, do it alone". And despite Adams seemingly being the one to walk out on the team, UWF officials decide there's going to be a COIN FLIP to determine which member of the team gets to continue into the finals of the tournament with another partner of their choosing, and Adams wins the coin flip, knocking Iceman out of the tournament. Iceman then comes out for a solo promo and begs for Chris Adams to come back and finish the tournament with him, only to be told that Adams has now selected Savannah Jack as his partner. Jack then comes out to try to talk down Iceman, who then attacks Jack and injures him, leaving Adams again without a partner for the finals. Adams ultimately enters the finals against Rick Steiner and Sting with his third official tag team partner for the night, Terry Taylor, who had already been in the tournament with his original partner Sam Houston and eliminated in the second round by Steiner and Sting. And it's Chris Adams and Terry Taylor, a team that didn't exist in the first two rounds of the tournament, that ultimately win the UWF Tag Team Championship. Between the icky vibes of the Chris Adams return from jail, the "two pairs of Freebirds" angle being blown off completely in the first round, Iceman seeming more sympathetic in his heel turn (though the attack on Savannah Jack was very heelish, the dude spent all that time visiting Chris Adams in jail and got screwed out of his first shot at UWF gold by the coin flip even though it was ADAMS that said "I'm out, win this alone"), and the winners being a makeshift team as far as the tournament was concerned - again, this felt like proto-Russo booking without the gross T&A and bad humor of the Attitude Era. Other observations of UWF through February 1987: Ted Dibiase - goddamn he is incredibly over in his quest to defeat One Man Gang for the UWF Championship, and seems almost as over as Hacksaw Duggan was during his peak. The UWF live crowds are incredibly loud and ready for him to be the next UWF Heavyweight Champion. Given how over he was at the time, I absolutely don't blame him for bolting immediately after the JCP sale. I think if most wrestlers found themselves in that position, went to Japan for six weeks, and came back not only to find out that the UWF was sold but that Dusty put the championship on Big Bubba Rogers, the majority of those wrestlers would have bolted too. Sting - The rising star is starting to get face pops from the TV crowds and on a trajectory where you pretty much HAVE to turn him at some point. Since joining up with Rick Steiner and Eddie Gilbert, he is finally evolving into the franchise player that we would see one year from this time tearing it up with Ric Flair at the Clash of the Champions, and the TV crowds are reacting accordingly for what's been a fun evolution to watch. The departure of Hacksaw Duggan - Duggan was THE top dog in Mid-South Wrestling after JYD left in 1984. The second half of 1986 was a bit rocky for him, as his own Japan bookings and reported money disputes with Bill Watts saw him sidelined to being more of a "special attraction" type wrestler, but he still felt like someone that could have been heated up instantly if someone decided "let's put the UWF belt on Duggan". Him and Taylor are made the UWF Tag Team Champions, but he apparently gave his notice that same week, as the actual title change isn't shown in full and is limited to a clip of the last two minutes, with the only real notable moment being a very awesome tag team match between Duggan/Taylor against Sting/Steiner. Duggan leaving though really does feel like a final blow to the UWF as we know it, even if Dibiase is picking up the slack on the babyface side. The debut of Steve Cox - oh man, the UWF TV debut of Steve Cox is one of the biggest Poochies that has ever Poochie-d. For his debut on UWF TV, he is heavily featured in THREE segments throughout the show. (1) being introduced as the protege of Dr. Death Steve Williams, who advises him to sit at ringside for the whole show and study everything that is happening in the matches, including Dr. Death's match where after he bodyslams his opponent, he pantomimes the motion of showing Cox what he did with his arms on the bodyslam like an instructor (2) Cox staying at ringside for Ted Dibiase's challenge of One Man Gang for the UWF Championship, and jumping into the ring to help Dibiase after interference from Skandor Akbar and counts a visual pinfall for Dibiase. (3) getting challenged to step into the ring by Bill Irwin and Eli The Eliminator, and fending them both off with a little help from Dr. Death and Dibiase. And oh boy, Steve Cox is really rough around the edges with his movement and selling. Watts seemingly thought he could create another Oklahoma-based star like he did years prior with Dr. Death but Steve Cox needed some more cooking before coming out of the oven in such a spectacularly-pushed way. This episode is on Youtube as well and can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krXtG70Z2bw More "proto-Russo" booking - the amount of "we're outta time" matches does seem to be tempered a bit, but that has been replaced almost every week by this run of the UWF finding new ways to just not deliver matches that are advertised at the beginning of the show. One episode includes hype at the beginning of the show for a Duggan/Taylor tag team title defense that gets mucked up by a pre-match attack by Devastation Inc. and the UWF doctors declare Duggan and Taylor unable to wrestle (admittedly, at least this is a call back to the Gordy/OMG angle where they say that Duggan and Taylor don't have to forfeit the match and title because it was UWF doctors that examined them), and a Dark Journey/Missy Hyatt match doesn't happen due to Missy feigning an injury (though Dark Journey attacks her anyway so the crowd still gets some sort of physical confrontation). But every week now it's either "advertised match doesn't happen" OR "we're outta time" and that happening so often I can see that playing a part in people NOT wanting to come out to see UWF live at all, which ties into... A lot of empty red chairs in the crowd at TV - By February 1987, the fans that do show up are lively and loud, but the art of "put ALL the fans on two sides of the building and only shoot those sides" hadn't quite been mastered yet. It is starting to get very visible on both the main UWF TV taped in Tulsa and the Power Pro tapings from Fort Worth that anywhere to 25-50 percent of the floor seats are empty, and while the bleachers are mostly darkened, there's a few shots here and there where you can tell there's not that many folks up there either. I do honestly wonder how much money they sunk into making Power Pro a separate "pro-shot" TV show in Fort Worth. I'm sure the mindset was "more TV equals more stations equals more fans", and I am guessing the strategy of going into the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex was "World Class is losing them, we can win them back" when all these TV tapings really seemed to confirm was that Dallas as a WRESTLING city was officially dead. From the footage of this era that is available, the only market that seems to be doing decent crowd attendance for the UWF is Houston, and we all know how that goes once the JCP sale goes through. Overall, at this stage the weekly TV is still fun to watch despite the more negative aspects noted above, but it's very much the in-ring effort of veterans like Dibiase, Dr. Death, Terry Gordy, and One Man Gang, and the week-to-week growth of Sting and Rick Steiner that are doing that heavy lifting as opposed to strong booking. I had initially planned on stopping my watch with the first JCP-booked episode of UWF TV where Bubba wins the title, but I poked into the weeks that follow and there's three important events that happen on UWF TV in May and June that feel like additional "epilogues" to some stories that start to get told during the final weeks of Watts-era UWF: Spoiler 1. The final on-screen appearance of Ted Dibiase, who actually did work on JCP-era taping. 2. The heel turn of Terry Taylor, one of the most pure babyfaces of the Mid-South era. 3. The face turn of Sting, beginning his ascendency into the Hall of Famer he would become. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonzombie Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 AJPW 1982 02 04 Mil Mascaras vs Genichiro Tenryu https://youtu.be/4nAoyiQlPcA?si=x1B8vCL0KUiR2aTr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 54 minutes ago, clintthecrippler said: anywhere to 25-50 percent of the floor seats are empty, and while the bleachers are mostly darkened, there's a few shots here and there where you can tell there's not that many folks up there either They could have brought down the bleacher folk to the floor seats to fill up room. Then again, Watts was probably of the mindset that "they paid for the cheap seats, they get the cheap seats". 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonzombie Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 FULL MATCH — "Stone Cold" Steve Austin vs. Kurt Angle: Raw, Jan. 28, 2002 https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=ZwAObSI3UMZkREqu&v=jwVq5FEWFjk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 That’s Steve “Do it to It” Cox, if you please. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 between the font used on those 1987 Power Pro episodes and the font used by Florida.. it's like wrestling territorial promoters really loved at least one typeface for their graphics (is it Century font or something else) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 One of the little touches I liked in the Iron Claw was them replicating the WCCW graphics package, even if it was for years before it actually debuted. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infinit Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godfrey Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 1 hour ago, Kang said: FULL MATCH — "Stone Cold" Steve Austin vs. Kurt Angle: Raw, Jan. 28, 2002 https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=ZwAObSI3UMZkREqu&v=jwVq5FEWFjk Really fun sprint. Did Austin always do the Rick Steiner counter-powerslam spot? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Point Stance Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 2 hours ago, odessasteps said: That’s Steve “Do it to It” Cox, if you please. That moniker always made me think of a guy who was in the habit of gleefully encouraging acts of bestiality. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamhock Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 3 hours ago, Cobra Commander said: (is it Century font or something else) It looks like Helvetica to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 10 minutes ago, Hamhock said: It looks like Helvetica to me. yeah, without knowing which popular fonts were popular before computers, I can believe that guess.. it looks like Florida Wrestling used a font that would fit a magazine or a news program (and i've typed this before, but Florida Wrestling really had a set which looked like Gordon Solie was doing the nightly news) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamhock Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 2 hours ago, Cobra Commander said: yeah, without knowing which popular fonts were popular before computers, I can believe that guess. After looking at more footage, it appears that they’re using multiple fonts (both serif and sans-serif), so it’s a hodgepodge. I guess someone really liked using the chyron and wanted to see what it could do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonzombie Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 RAW 2003 07 04 The Rock vs Jeff Hardy, the Rock's last tv match https://youtu.be/gGlDZgRxwNs?si=_QJTJT3VEfSEsNoK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 I am alternating (unintentionally) watching Mid South on Youtube and Peacock. Iceman King Parsons coming out to "We Are Family" is throwing me for a loop. That's quite a choice. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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