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New Footage Fridays


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With the WWE Network dropping new footage every Thursday, we are going to be reviewing the best unearthed gems every Friday, both from the Network and the internet at large, this week MattD and I reviewed, Piper vs. Valentine, Simmons vs. Vader and a newly released 1988 Tijuana El Hijo Del Santo mask match

 

http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2018/05/new-footage-fridays-vader-santo-piper.html

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I agree  with Phil and Eric ~80% of the time (maybe Eric a bit more than Phil), but I get that I'm a crazy outlier on 80s tag AJPW Hansen. He really needs the right opponent to be able to stand up to him (see: Andre) or that's an amazing seller (on the level of Funk) who can get eaten alive by him and still make it compelling. Otherwise, his stuff is just pure noise. It's violent, brutal, visceral noise, but a little goes a long way. In this one  I thought Idol brought some Memphis structuring to help things along.

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Quite a week this week, with a 1978 Tenryu/Buddy Rose match (no lumps on Tenryu!) and Hijo del Santo/Eddy Guerrero vs. Blue Panther/Negro Casas from 1987. Santo gives a performance of a lifetime of a lifetime of performances (I think that reads...). They all look great. You want this. 

http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2018/08/new-footage-fridays-santo-casas-panther.html

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Brazilian wrestling from the 80s, a Dynamite/Kandori showdown from '91, and boxer vs. wrestler from FMW as Leon Spinks takes on Mr. Gannosuke!

Brazilian Riots, Leon Spinks, Shinobu Kandori

And here's Valentine vs. Wahoo from a '94 indy, Ricky Morton opposite Death & Destruction from Southern States Wrestling, oh, and...maybe the earliest singles match in existence between Yuki Ishikawa and Daisuke Ikeda. 

Valentine/Wahoo, Ikeda/Ishikawa

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This is some of my favorite writing we've done this year, with a 2010 match featuring a class Jerry Lawler performance, teaming with Beau James and Dutch Mantel against a still great Jimmy & Eddie Golden (available on Beau James new streaming site), and two rare early 80s All Japan with Bobby Heenan teaming with Larry Z, and a glorious 2/3 falls tag with Killer Karl Kox & Dick Murdoch taking on Jumbo & Giant Baba. It's my favorite match of the year, a fantastic performance from all 4 guys, something we really need to circulate. 

Killer Karl Kox and Friends

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This week we have ANOTHER spectacular Killer Karl Kox match from 1981 AJPW, Bob Roop vs. Mr. Wrestling II from the recent WWE Network Omni upload, and Dream Machine working Jumbo (I didn't even know Dream Machine worked Japan). PLUS, TomK follows up his surprise ROH Road Report from earlier this week with a pop in appearance on a couple of the matches. 

https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2018/10/new-footage-fridays-kkk-harley-baba.html

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Nice grab bag this week, with a great 70s tag with prime Ernie Ladd and Beatlemania popularity Dick the Bruiser, Lawler and Rude throwing 50 or so perfect punches, and one of the worst matches we've ever reviewed/best on paper matches we've ever seen: a USWA vs. SMW 10 man with PG-13, Smothers, Tommy Rich, Koko B. Ware....and it's awful. So you need to watch it. I wrote 900 words on it, and it's awful. 

https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-footage-fridays-lawler-rude-pg-13.html

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This week we have Gypsy Joe clonking heads with Ashura Hara, Matt calling out 20-year deceased footage-absent legend Ray Stevens (and just wait for a future post for his thoughts on The Streak and Gitarzan), and a go go go Stampede 8 man featuring a fantastic babyface performance from British wrestler Chic Cullen, and really one of the longer looks at Stampede main event format that we've seen. 

https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-footage-fridays-gypsy-joe-hara.html

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If you read the review, I think I covered that argument with the cruel irony of the guy's partners being Patterson and Bockwinkel. (Plus, it's not like I'm making this call on one data point. I'm pretty sure I've seen just about every available Stevens match, because I WANT to see the greatness. I go out hoping i can build the guy up and see the value behind the hype and it's just never there; this was the closest and it was primarily in elements that aren't heavily talked up/valued by his wrestler proponents, like stalling, and he was still completely overshadowed by three-years younger Billy Robinson).

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My point is that "He couldn't have been great when he was young because he wasn't great when he was old" is a pretty weak argument. There may be some wrestlers who consistently perform at a high level well into their 40s and 50s, but there are also plenty, including some of the greatest of all time, who fall off a cliff when age and injuries catch up to them. Not to mention all the guys who die or retire before they reach that point. On that note, Patterson is a curious counterexample given that he had been retired for several years when he was 46, which is how old Stevens was at the time of that Robinson match. There's not a lot of Stevens footage out there, and almost none of it is from his prime. You're extrapolating from an extremely small sample size.

Here's some prime Stevens footage where he looks like a proto-Flair. I wouldn't call him an all-time great based on this alone, but he does seem like someone whose overall body of work would hold up pretty well if we had access to it.

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