Smelly McUgly Lost a Bet and Owes Me Five Match Reviews

[Matt D]

Around a year ago, @Smelly McUgly and I made a bet about Bayley's potential Teflon immunity to horrible week to week WWE booking. He lost.

The stakes were five match reviews. I'm not sure what he's seen and what he hasn't. I am being mostly merciful.

Here are the five matches for Mayor McUgly to watch:

1.) Les Kellett vs Johnny Czeslaw: I thought about going with something else from WoS, like Breaks vs Boscik or Hayes vs Steve Veidor but this is much less seen and very, very striking. One of the funniest comedy matches I've ever seen. Here's Part 1. The others aren't hard to find.

2.) Terry Funk vs Rick Martel (WWC, 1986): Terry's antics in this match are amazing. I thought about Terry/Dory vs Can Am Connection from AJPW because I love that match but I only wanted one AJPW match and I'm going with goofus instead of gallant.

3.) Mil Mascars/Dos Caras vs Hansen/Brody (AJPW, 1983). My least favorite match of all time. Mascaras and Brody give each other nothing. Hansen is exasperated. Caras is resigned. Enjoy

4.) Eddy Guerrero/El Satanico/Mocho Cota vs Lizmark/Latin Lover/Solomon Grundy (AAA, 8/27/93): Cota in all of his glory.

5.) Jerry Lawler vs Nick Bockwinkel (No DQ, Memphis, 11/08/1992): Bockwinkel showing how he adapts to EVERY match. Super technical Bock using the No DQ to its fullest without any of the hardcore excess you think of today.

 

[Curt McGirt]

This was my review of Funk/Martel 

Spoiler

Terry Funk vs. Rick Martel (9/20/86)
Martel and Terry jaw before the bell; Martel puts Terry's hat in the center of the ring and drops a knee on it. Terry, outside, wanders about with his chaps falling off bemoaning his hat. It sounds stupid and it is but I laughed. Terry is in a rare way here, crotching himself on the top rope, throwing chairs at the crowd (that are deflected by a net), literally showing ass. After he gets done clowning around he piledrives Ricky on the grass and Ricky does his best to imitate Funk being piledriven. Later on, Funk takes a piledriver with a chair on his head that he puts on himself. That about sums up this one.  The echo on Hugo's voice... gah... 

The promos leading up to it were awesome though

[NikoBaltimore]

Matt is quite the merciful one, indeed.  I was imagining you would have sent him the worst matches in history for him to review.

[Dolfan in NYC]

I mean, I do that to @RIPPA for fun (wait til you see Rumble '11!) and to mentally steel him for when the Nats win the World Series this year. 

[J.T.]

This is going to be my new favorite thread. 

Hitting the Follow button right now..

Why be merciful when this is still on the YouTubes?

 

[SirSmUgly]

I was waiting for a truly shitty match list to compare to Bayley's truly shitty booking, but this isn't bad. Bonus: I've seen the fifth match before and enjoyed it! 

Thanks for not being mean, MattD. What's my timeline to get these done?

[Matt D]

We're already suffering from the booking. It was a bet I didn't want to win.

I had the hardest time picking #5. Let's say one month unless you think you'll be unable. I am pretty merciful.

[RIPPA]

Just repost Dean's review of the Martel match

Matt will never know

[Matt D]

2 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Just repost Dean's review of the Martel match

Matt will never know

Rule #3: no tildes.

[mattdangerously]

3 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

I mean, I do that to @RIPPA for fun (wait til you see Rumble '11!) and to mentally steel him for when the Nats win the World Series this year. 

That's not how you spell Astros.

[KidNatural]

4 hours ago, mattdangerously said:

That's not how you spell Astros.

You spelled that wrong too... It's spelled Rockies.

[Lacelle]

Dummies, it's spelled C-a-r-d-i-n-a-l-s

[SirSmUgly]

Fuuuuuck.

So I'd like to start with two disclaimers:

1.) One of the reasons that I like posting here is that so many posters have a wide range of wrestling knowledge that I don't have, and I enjoy learning about wrestling that I don't know anything about. This is a disclaimer because I might say something that reveals my ignorance (you know, like I always do), and I'd like you to go easy on me in that regard.

2.) I'm not editing these, so also go easy on me for typos, syntax errors, and so forth. 

OK, so I'll do one tonight and try to do the other four over the next week while I have time. Let's start with WoS, my favorite thing in the world re: wrestling right now.

Les Kellett vs. Johnny Czeslaw

I might have seen this when I watched as much WoS as possible on Youtube a few years back, but I'm not sure that I remember anything about it if I did. 

What I like about WoS is that no hold is a resthold if a match is worked correctly within the style. You get that here; there is some good struggle intermittently  (and  at one point, Czeslaw works a nice legbar while standing on Kellett's back that Kellett impressively powers out of, which is actually my favorite spot of the match).

But the bulk of this match is that it's a comedy match, and while the crowd loves it, the humor didn't really work for me (as broad as it was) in a way that makes me think that I just haven't seen enough Kellett to get the act. What I think this match exposed for me is that I love WoS as sporting competition, but the comedy match formula doesn't work for me in the context of rounds.

This isn't to say that the comedy spots aren't worked well, by and large. Kellett ducking down behind the ring apron and furtively peeking over the top of the apron at the referee that he's just accidentally bowled over made me chuckle and reminded me of Hogan and Macho creeping behind the apron while Miss Elizabeth flashed her gams at Andre. I even liked the "tied up so tightly from a leglock that ended round one that round two started before the wrestlers could get unstuck" spot to some degree. But they were just spots in the middle of a full-on comedy that ended up feeling quite disjointed to me on the balance. Think of a skit on SNL with a semi-amusing premise and about three genuine laughs in it, but the rest of it doesn't do much for you and the skit is a minute too long. That's probably one of my big issues with this match, actually. It went on maybe three or four minutes too long, specifically in the middle rounds where Czeslaw was twisting Kellett up and Kellett was doing some impressive work to power out of holds ("He's strong," Czeslaw deadpans after one such escape, which I think is the funnest actual thing in the match beacuse of Czeslaw's delivery.)

The other thing that hurt the match for me was that a considerable amount of the comedy was verbal, but some of it was hard to make out for me due to a combination of the accents and the crowd laughter made it hard to hear much of the time.

If you REALLY like broad slapstick, though, of the Looney Tunes cartoon type, you might just like this match.  A number of the spots have a clear punchline that you can guess from the second the spot starts. That doesn't make it any less well-worked, but man, it's really broad comedy. 

[SirSmUgly]

Terry Funk vs. Rick Martel

I love heel Terry Funk and I love babyface Rick Martel. Maybe nine or ten years ago, I finally got around to seeing a bunch of Rick Martel as AWA Champion and that, along with his work in late '90s WCW, really upped my estimation of him as a worker. 

In other words, this is a match with two guys doing what they're best at. Martel getting fired up and kneedropping Funk's cowboy hat (which should have been black for full effect) while Funk throws a temper tantrum BEFORE THE MATCH EVEN STARTED was another sign that I was in for a treat. 

Funk as a heel is just so good at getting a fan excited that he's getting his ass whipped. He goes all bowlegged and wobbly and begs off and bails out of the ring and argues about closed fists and illegal punches with the ref and generally has no fucking shame and will look like a real chump to the fullest effect. There is nothing likable about him, and he makes sure that even his clowning doesn't come off as comedic, but as the actions of a real jackass. Martel has immense physical charisma as a face and was really miscast by Vince in the late '80s and early '90s. I was just talking with Victator about Jeff Jarrett being somewhat miscast as a heel for most of his career, but I think this applies to Martel, who is amazing both as a young, fiery babyface here and as a vet seeking redemption in mid-90s WCW. 

Anyway, the match is typical in structure - face comes out fired up and makes the heel look foolish, heel bails out and stalls, heel eventually gets the upper hand by cheating, face suffers before firing up and going into the finish. In this contest, these guys are the Form of the Good for that typical match structure. 

Some other things I really liked: 

• Martel trying to throw tons of fired up jabs at Funk for the first six minutes of the contest. 
• Funk bumping like a maniac. 
• Funk trying to get the upper hand with a handshake, Martel trying to punch him instead, and Funk pitching a fit and flicking Martel off and then shaking hands with the ref to show that he was on the up-and-up just three seconds after his temper tantrum.
• Martel working headlocks like he was trying to squeeze Funk's head off his neck like it was a pimple.
• Funk doing a piledriver outside the ring. Terry Funk piledriving dudes onto things other than the ring mat is an instant pop from me because as a kid, seeing Funk do that to Flair on a table was like one of my defining moments as a young fan. 
• Funk in general getting more desperate as the match went along. I repeat my earlier point here, but I love that when Funk is vicious, it comes off as a desperate and cowardly sort of viciousness rather than badass enough to get me to want to start rooting for him.

The finish is perfect too because it cries out for a rematch. I think the one minor flaw that I have with this match is that Martel's comeback before the finish should have been just a bit longer. 2.9s are overused as a strategy to get crowd pops, but this could have used a couple as part of a longer Martel run of offense at the end, which I think would have made the finish even better since Funk's cheating at the end would have come across as even more desperate and unjust. 

Two matches in, and I have to give Matt some love for picking matches that are actually interesting watching. I thought I'd get a flurry of Razor Ramon HG or Danshoku Dino matches or wrestling Ninja Turtles in CMLL or some other such stuff (which I would have deserved for betting against the WWE machine, to be honest). 

[Matt D]

1.) Full credit to actually going through with this. We need more such bets.
2.) Outside of Bockwinkel vs Lawler, which is the thing that doesn't fit, I tried to go with matches that were somewhat remarkable while also not being conventionally "great" (even Bock vs Lawler is atypical in many ways). I did want to throw interesting things at you and not just Sid vs the Nightstalker or Abdullah vs Zeus, as well as things that maybe haven't gotten as much play for one reason or another. People will talk about Johnny Saint. Less people will talk about Jim Breaks. Even less will talk about Steve Grey. And less still about Alan Sargent, but next to no one will talk about Catweazle or Les Kellett or the really strict UK comedy workers. Cota's a guy who was reviled during the 90s (both by Dave and even DEAN!), but if you appreciate him then, it's because of how much broader wrestling fandom is now, etc.
3.) I didn't realize you'd been diving so deep into WoS. That's something I did about a year and a half ago and it's amazing how much is out there at our fingertips, especially from years where we don't have a ton of footage from the rest of the world. In any case, I consider that a happy accident, then. You get used to the round systems, certainly, and see how it can be an advantage in pacing and build (using the rounds to set up callback spots, for instance). I think your point about how it may not benefit comedy as much as "sporting drama" is both interesting and valid. Also we're obviously missing both audible and cultural context when it comes to some of the jokes. Kellett is striking for just how broad he is. He's so deep down that well of outright comedy and he keeps going and going and going. If you watch multiple matches with him, you'll see some of the same act, but a lot of different too. it's interesting to compare him to a vaudeville comedian (or even a modern stand-up one) or, to a degree, the closest thing we have in the states, which would probably be midgets, and how they mixed up their act every time they came around which still hitting much the same notes. It's the purity of his act that I find most interesting. Apparently, he was a truly horrible person on top of it all, both in the ring and backstage, which shifts the humor in a black, bleak direction to some degree.
4.) I'm wholly with you on babyface Martel vs heel Martel. I think some of that is context, though. I'm not a big moveset guy, but there was a complexity to his work in the AWA and elsewhere which just doesn't exist in WWF. Simplicity can be okay and shtick is obviously okay but his wrestling was hugely dumbed down after the heel turn. His best WWF stuff is Strike Force/Islanders and not much else even comes close. This match is the two characters taken to extremes. This is around the period where Martel feels like as big as a star/presence as he ever will, around the time of that Can Am vs Funks tag in Japan where he's in the same champions' club as the Funks and the match vs Race where he feels 100% like Harley's equal. Funk has an audience and he milks it for all that it's worth.  He's probably the most wholly committed wrestler of all time. Maybe what's most striking about the match is that it's as good as it is despite being as outlandish as it is. I wish that rematch you brought up actually existed. 
5.) Those Ninja Turtles matches are actually pretty good for what they are. As are the Thundercats ones. I could have given you Cowabunga vs Cornette too which is also really good. 

[Dewar]

I really liked that Funk-Martel match.

[SirSmUgly]

I was sick for awhile, but I'm back! Now I can finish this up and forget my shameful belief in the innate goodness of one wrestler's character and its ability to overcome a jaded audience and a septuagenarian whose breakfasts consist of cocaine and Red Bull and whose moral compass spins wildly, as though it too had been hit by an earthquake, plunged through a waterfall, and entered into the Land of the Lost, never to be seen again. 

Mil Mascaras and Dos Caras vs. Stan Hansen and Bruiser Brody

One of the many wrestlers whom I don't really appreciate like most connoisseurs of the pro graps do is Stan Hansen. I've seen a considerable amount of his AJPW stuff and I've seen all of that random late-career WCW run he had in the early '90s. I mostly don't get it. Add to this match two guys who I think kinda suck from what I've seen in Mascaras and Brody (I've never seen Dos Caras wrestle because Mexico is one of my particularly big blind spots), and I'm just going to try to get through this one without picking up my phone and playing Threes while giving the match a quarter of my attention. 

There are a couple of things that might be interesting if they played out over the match, a couple of threads that don't really get picked up and woven into any type of narrative that I can tell. Dos Caras winning a test of strength by lucha-ing his way out of it and then getting a quick small package attempt on Hansen is a nice way to set up a story about a clash of wrestling styles that the smaller men actually use to overcome their size disadvantage, but like two minutes later, Mascaras is going 50/50 with Brody on a shoulderblock anyway. 

Mostly, a bunch of stuff happens, but there's not really an extended heat section or a big face comeback or a sustained opening flurry by the faces (there's kinda one, but not really). Everyone gets a few moves in and momentum changes on a dime and Brody does some shitty kicks and bearhugs. This is a weird match to review in that it's not good, but it's not bad in an interesting way. It's just there. It's a match without any purpose that I can see except to have four guys in a tag match that the fans really wanted. Maybe I just don't get AJPW tag match structure from the early-'80s or something.

Also, not to be a movez guy, but most of Brody's offense in this match was tying his opponent up in the ropes. I give Brody credit for being a big star and ostensibly making very good money while not really doing much of anything. He was like WCW-era Kevin Nash before WCW-era Kevin Nash in that regard. 

Eddy Guerrero, Satanico, and Mocho Cota vs. Lizmark, Latin Lover, and Solomon Grundy

The Imperial Death March as entrance music is a great idea, almost worth risking the inevitable lawsuit from Disney here in 2017. 

I'm a huge Eddy G. fan off the back of his WCW and WWE work, but I've seen maybe five or six of the more important matches in his AAA career. I've seen Lizmark and Latin Lover, but I'm not sure that I've seen any of these other guys. 

Anyway, there are numerous cuts in and around the ring as the first fall starts with heelery and mayhem. Solomon Grundy wanders around the ring a lot trying to get the refs attention only to get kicked out when the ref sees him - in all that time, he could have saved the Latin Lover's groin from a pummeling directly. There's a lot of cheap heel cheating and ballshots, but it's all done at what feels like a glacial pace, and none of it is particularly interesting. 

I'm feeling that my lack of experience with trios matches and my general dislike of Lucha tropes are combining to fail me here, because this all feels interminable even in its chaos. The heels get a fall with a double Camel Clutch or something, I think? It seems like they got a fall. There is more random arena brawling as the match goes to break. 

Yeah, we're back for fall number two! There's still a lot of heel chicanery and cheap-shotting everywhere, and it's totally uninteresting to me. There are a lot of chokes, eye rakes, and shitty double-team punching flurries. Mocho Cota and Grundy have a face-off, and then instead of something interesting happening, there is another heel punch flurry after Eddy jumps Grundy from behind. Like, how can one match have a bunch of stuff happening and yet be so fucking boring? I didn't think this was possible. 

After about forty years, the faces finally start stringing together offense. Grundy does a fat man elbow drop, which is my favorite thing to happen in this match by a long way. Eventually, the faces get the pin off a Grundy side slam, I think. Maybe? There's more action and Satanico gets beaten up for a bit. Then Satanico gets pinned and Latin Lover chases Mocho Cota into the crowd. Then everyone starts fighting again. 

We get a cut and then the third (and final? Please, please be the final) fall begins. Satanico is bleeding a lot somehow. In the new best spot of the match, Cota is talking shit into the camera in a close-up and gets booted in the face in mid-sentence by Latin Lover. That shit was hilarious and someone should steal that spot. But I'm going to be honest, this fall does nothing for me either. This is easily my least favorite match of the bunch because it went on forever. At least Brody/Hansen vs. Caras/Mascaras was over after like ten minutes of non-action.

I'm aware that my understanding of wrestling tropes really only extends throughout the United States and Canada. I long had a hard time appreciating Japanese wrestling, and even with the benefit of having something that's more available and accessible like modern New Japan, it took a long time for me to enjoy stuff like the drawn-out strike exchanges or even fighting spirit (which, considering that I grew up watching Hulk Hogan Hulk up, should have been something that was easier for me to understand).  

When it comes to Mexican wrestling, I can get bloody strike-fests just fine, but trios matches in particular have always been outside of the scope of my wrestling sensibilities. Something about the structure or the tropes just don't connect for me. Heck, I watch LU now, but I tune right out when a trios match comes on. Combine that with the lack of context for what was going on in this match, and I personally kind of hated it. I await Matt's response so that he can tell me why it was good (and I fully accept that this is probably a "me" issue and not a match issue). But yeah, for me, there weren't enough Solomon Grundy elbow drops to make this enjoyable. 

This has been a loooooooong post, so I'll add the last match in one final post after this. 

 

[SirSmUgly]

Jerry Lawler vs. Nick Bockwinkel

I love Memphis, and I've consumed as much of it as possible on Youtube over the past ten years. I've been interested ever since I saw that Andy Kaufman Comedy Central doc in maybe the mid-to-late '90s? I'm from the Pacific Northwest, so I didn't know anything about Memphis as a territory until I saw that documentary, and I was immediately hooked. It wasn't until the magic of the internet made it possible that I was able to see more of it. 

I have seen this before, and I remember quite enjoying it. I like Bock immediately taking advantage of the lack of rules by throwing a big closed right while he had Lawler in the ropes, and Lance Russell is fantastic here at pointing that out and again pushing the "Lawler is a traditional slow starter" thing that he often pushes, but pointing out that in this type of match against that caliber of wrestler, Lawler didn't have that luxury. While Russell explains this, Bock throws some sweet punches. They're so sweet that he shakes his hand in pain after throwing another flurry. 

What I don't love is refs who work against the stips of a match, and the ref pulling Bock off of Lawler in the corner is shitty and I hate it. Dude is just getting in the way trying to break up Bock's chokes when they should be legal. It's distracting and irritating. Lance tries to explain that the ref needs to get some semblance of control, and I'm trying to buy it so that I can accept the ref's choices in terms of how he's working this match. Lawler getting control with a desperation headbutt to the nuts is a nice transition. What I like about Lawler in Memphis is that his character is basically that of a regular dude from Memphis who probably won a lot of barfights by punching guys in the throat and kicking them in the nuts and made the transition to wrestling on that strength. He's in his element in a slugfest. Bock is more violent than I think I've ever seen him, which is amazing because he comes off as a technical marvel most times. 

What works about this match is that in most no-DQ matches today, you get tons of dives off ladders and table spots and shit, but the bulk of this match is  no-DQ in a purer form. It's mostly chokes, nut-shots, and closed fists. It's what a no-DQ match would look like if wrestling were a real competition, which makes it so much more convincing. It also makes Bock slamming Lawler on the table outside more impactful because it's more surprising and not overdone, and it comes off like Bock fulfilling a sudden violent urge after tasting Lawler's blood. 

Anyway, the ref bump brings out Jimmy Hart, and after Hart bashes Lawler and Bock goes for the pin, you can hear some dude yelling NO! NOOOOO! Lawler kicks out, and some old lady is yelling COME ON JERRRRRY and this match is FUCKING LIT, I say. Lawler hits one flying fist, then two, and gets two 2.9s, and then hits a third and Bock just can't kick out. No bullshit, not another five minutes of reversals, just Lawler punching Bock into oblivion. This shit was dope. It was spartan - just punches, chokes, a knee here and a piledriver there, and one slam onto a table - and that's what worked for it. It came off like two dudes just wanted to punch the shit out of each other until someone couldn't get up. It was the sort of violence that there isn't enough of in wrestling. There was no crazy shit, no multitude of dumb or dangerous spots, no thumbtacks, but two wrestlers projecting violence through the way they moved and through their facial expressions. Great match. 

Now remind me never to make another dumbass bet again, people. Please. 

[Matt D]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Things have been crazy here with the 4th and work. 

I'm glad you did Mil/Brody/Hansen and the lucha match together. I shared a lot of your problems with lucha in general. You can shamefully go back and see it in the 80s threads as I was trying and failing to figure it all out (save for, like you, the bloody brawls). What it took was watching a ton on a week to week basis and really distilling the patterns and essence of it all. I had to train myself to watch lucha basically. It's like any acquired taste. You kind of wonder if it's worth mastering as a hobby. In the end, I'd say yes. It's like magic eye. I cracked the code and tend to enjoy it a lot now.

What I look for most specifically in trios matches are effective tecnico stooging segments to start, how the heat starts; how well/interestingly the rudos fill the time. Sometimes that's GdI tricked out double teams. Sometimes it's just with swagger and dickishness with basic strikes and goozling; how the comeback happens and how fiery it is, and then how they work to the dives in the finish. There's also usually a central story about one specific rivalry that's being focused on, bu tin general, it's really about the big ebbs and flows In all of this. Build and build and build and payoff. What's more important, to me, than smoothness or slickness or fanciness is how thoroughly the character comes through. While I don't think what I gave you was a great match, I do think it was full of character. Cota's an amazing wrestling character, up there with your heel Tracy Smothers or Tommy Rich or whoever. Satanico as well but in different ways. I'm sorry you didn't at least enjoy them, but not having a good sense of what's going on can impact that. I had thought this one might be transcendent in that regard (even if not necessarily great); it was apparently not.

The point being is that maybe if I watched 80s AJPW tag match after 80s AJPW tag match, i'd crack that code too, because I'm right with you there. It's just a lot of noise. It's a lot of fighting spirit and toughness and guys rushing at each other or goozling each other or whatever, for no discerniblee reason with no discernible story. What's funny about Brody and Mil in this tag match in specific is that there's also no discernible selling, which means nothing means anything at all.