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NOVEMBER 2018 WRESTLING DISCUSSION.


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So, lately I've been thinking about Wrestling matches that take place largely or entirely nowhere near a Wrestling ring. Now I'm not necessarily talking about your Falls Count Anywhere arena brawl, or your FMW "Take me by the hair, and you can lead me though the Baseball Stadium"* wondering brawl. I'm talking more your actually stipulated Hollywood Backlot Brawl or Final Deletion type deal. They were very popular in the 90s, and obviously Matt Hardy has repopularised them pretty recently, and then WWE tried to give Bray Wyatt his gimmick, even before Matt rejoined WWE.

So here's some of them I liked... I'm not going to do a top 5 or Best/ Worst or anything. In no order.

  • Goldust vs Roddy Piper Hollywood Backlot Brawl: I liked this because it seemed a lot more like a real fight than anything else the WWE was doing at the time. And because it was a tribute to They Live which is a class movie. Everything up to Piper getting in the Ford Bronco was a really good fight. Everything after that was just silly. First half violent fight, second half comedy match, where Piper forgets to tear his wrist tape and it unspools continuously until it's all over everywhere.
  • IWA Bath House Matches: Hard to work out what the rules exactly were with this one, but they liked the first one so much, they did another. Tarzan Goto and Mr Gannosuke vs The Headhunters, and then Goto and Gannosuke vs Shoji Nakamaki & Keisuke Yamada. Two guys wrestle while their partners sit in a hot tub and await the tag, but they keep putting extra logs in the fire so the heat becomes unbearable. Meanwhile they're Wrestling on a mat on the ground, but you don't win by pinfall or submission... but if you score a pinfall that gives you the right to go through the door into the Women's section of the bath house, and they brawl around their while loads of naked women scream and run away. It's weird.
  • Eddy Guerrero vs John Cena Parking Lot Brawl: Because the WWE style is basically about frequent hard bumping, especially when the babyface is making their comeback. But in a match on concrete, surrounded by metal and glass, you can't bump that much, so you have to work a different style. Which sometimes the fans really appreciate a break from the homogeneity of everyone in the company working the same style in every match.
  • Big Japan Market Stall brawl. In which the Japanese Kendo Nagasaki and his veteran friend beat up four of their trainees (including a young Ryuki Yamakawa, who has to go to hospital halfway through because his elbow gets fucked up) for half an hour. They go through the whole town, in and out of shops and they trash everything.
  • Dustin Rhodes vs Blacktop Bully, King of the Road Cage Match. The only match to be censored on WCW Uncensored.

* nb: At our primary school for some reason, they used to play the song Streets of London by Ralph McTell a lot. I don't know why. Perhaps they were trying to indoctrinate us kids into a Socialistic political philosophy. Perhaps they were trying to make us think London was a Godless hellhole, I don't know. But I heard it a whole lot of times. This has led me to thinking that it's a super well known song and that everyone will get a reference to it.

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1 hour ago, AxB said:

So, lately I've been thinking about Wrestling matches that take place largely or entirely nowhere near a Wrestling ring. Now I'm not necessarily talking about your Falls Count Anywhere arena brawl, or your FMW "Take me by the hair, and you can lead me though the Baseball Stadium"* wondering brawl. I'm talking more your actually stipulated Hollywood Backlot Brawl or Final Deletion type deal. They were very popular in the 90s, and obviously Matt Hardy has repopularised them pretty recently, and then WWE tried to give Bray Wyatt his gimmick, even before Matt rejoined WWE.

So here's some of them I liked... I'm not going to do a top 5 or Best/ Worst or anything. In no order.

  • Goldust vs Roddy Piper Hollywood Backlot Brawl: I liked this because it seemed a lot more like a real fight than anything else the WWE was doing at the time. And because it was a tribute to They Live which is a class movie. Everything up to Piper getting in the Ford Bronco was a really good fight. Everything after that was just silly. First half violent fight, second half comedy match, where Piper forgets to tear his wrist tape and it unspools continuously until it's all over everywhere.
  • IWA Bath House Matches: Hard to work out what the rules exactly were with this one, but they liked the first one so much, they did another. Tarzan Goto and Mr Gannosuke vs The Headhunters, and then Goto and Gannosuke vs Shoji Nakamaki & Keisuke Yamada. Two guys wrestle while their partners sit in a hot tub and await the tag, but they keep putting extra logs in the fire so the heat becomes unbearable. Meanwhile they're Wrestling on a mat on the ground, but you don't win by pinfall or submission... but if you score a pinfall that gives you the right to go through the door into the Women's section of the bath house, and they brawl around their while loads of naked women scream and run away. It's weird.
  • Eddy Guerrero vs John Cena Parking Lot Brawl: Because the WWE style is basically about frequent hard bumping, especially when the babyface is making their comeback. But in a match on concrete, surrounded by metal and glass, you can't bump that much, so you have to work a different style. Which sometimes the fans really appreciate a break from the homogeneity of everyone in the company working the same style in every match.
  • Big Japan Market Stall brawl. In which the Japanese Kendo Nagasaki and his veteran friend beat up four of their trainees (including a young Ryuki Yamakawa, who has to go to hospital halfway through because his elbow gets fucked up) for half an hour. They go through the whole town, in and out of shops and they trash everything.
  • Dustin Rhodes vs Blacktop Bully, King of the Road Cage Match. The only match to be censored on WCW Uncensored.

* nb: At our primary school for some reason, they used to play the song Streets of London by Ralph McTell a lot. I don't know why. Perhaps they were trying to indoctrinate us kids into a Socialistic political philosophy. Perhaps they were trying to make us think London was a Godless hellhole, I don't know. But I heard it a whole lot of times. This has led me to thinking that it's a super well known song and that everyone will get a reference to it.

Maybe I overrate it a bit because I'm a Foley guy but for me the original Boiler Room Brawl is my personal favorite of these kinds of matches.

The House of Horrors with Orton/Bray also gets a nod for it's unintentional comedy value. The same argument could be made for that crazy junkyard match at WCW BATB 99, but that's more of a "lol WCW spent how much?" kind of thing than any intrinsic value to the match.

A more recent one I enjoyed was Chuck Taylor vs. ZSJ in a bar somewhere in I think Brooklyn, but I guess that was more of an ironic, art installation comedy kind of thing, but I had fun watching it and there were some pretty creative spots.

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There's hundreds of matches from micro Japanese indys that took place on mats without a ring.

Survival Tobita made his career out of wrestling Ken the Box and monsters on mats in front of 40 fans in SPWC.

Ice Ribbon's first couple of years were events on mats in a small venue in front of 25 fans.

WALLABEE also matches on mats as they don't have a ring.

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1 hour ago, CreativeControl said:

The one that immediately sprang to mind for me was that daft WCW scrapyard fight for the hardcore title. Fit Finlay nearly lost his leg IIRC

I'm only chiming in because I always thought the same thing until re-watching that horrible match recently.  Finlay actually got out of the junkyard match fine.  It was a botched table spot at a house show weeks later that did it.

 

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1 hour ago, Edwin said:

There's hundreds of matches from micro Japanese indys that took place on mats without a ring.

Survival Tobita made his career out of wrestling Ken the Box and monsters on mats in front of 40 fans in SPWC.

Ice Ribbon's first couple of years were events on mats in a small venue in front of 25 fans.

WALLABEE also matches on mats as they don't have a ring.

Survival Tobita is the man.

I feel like I have seen a clip of Generico and Ibushi wrestling in a forest? Was this real? DDT maybe?

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37 minutes ago, Ultimo Necro said:

Survival Tobita is the man.

I feel like I have seen a clip of Generico and Ibushi wrestling in a forest? Was this real? DDT maybe?

Ah, yes. Good call on that one.

There's also several DDT no ring campsite matches with the likes of Sanshiro Takagi, Kota Ibushi, Gota Ihashi, etc.

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2 hours ago, sydneybrown said:

I'm only chiming in because I always thought the same thing until re-watching that horrible match recently.  Finlay actually got out of the junkyard match fine.  It was a botched table spot at a house show weeks later that did it.

 

Yup, but several other people got hurt in that match (I think Mikey Whipreck suffered a concussion for one). Even better is that the lighting was so poor nobody could see anything so these guys were killing themselves for nothing. Even better was that it was in a real shitty neighborhood and several guy's cars got broken into.

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Pro Wrestling Illustrated upped the 'Female 50' to the first 'Womens 100' this year. Typical all over the place PWI list rankings for the most part =


1. Ronda Rousey
2. Alexa Bliss
3. Charlotte Flair
4. Io Shirai
5. Asuka
6. Shayna Baszler
7. Carmella
8. Nia Jax
9. Mayu Iwatani
10. Kairi Sane
11. Becky Lynch
12. Sumie Sakai
13. Su Yung
14. Sasha Banks
15. Tessa Blanchard
16. Allie
17. Bayley
18. Kagetsu
19. Toni Storm
20. Natalya
21. Ember Moon
22. Rosemary
23. LuFisto
24. Nikki Cross
25. Naomi
26. Nicole Savoy
27. Charli Morgan
28. Kris Wolf
29. Mercedes Martinez
30. Dakota Kai
31. Ruby Riott
32. Momo Watanabe
33. Sarah Logan
34. Hiroyo Matsumoto
35. Saraya Knight
36. Taya Valkyrie
37. Chihiro Hashimoto
38. Mia Yim
39. Kelly Klein
40. Shazza McKenzie
41. Vanessa Kraven
42. Mickie James
43. Tsukasa Fujimoto
44. Madison Eagles
45. Cheerleader Melissa
46. Meiko Satomura
47. Delilah Doom
48. Jordynne Grace
49. Deonna Purazzo
50. Kimber Lee
51. Starlight Kid
52. Chelsea Green
53. Liv Morgan
54. Viper
55. Santana Garrett
56. Zoey Skye
57. Nicole Matthews
58. Faby Apache
59. Ivelisse Velez
60. Hana Kimura
61. Jungle Kyona
62. Candice LeRae
63. Rhea Ripley
64. Tenille Dashwood
65. KC Spinelli
66. Jessicka Havok
67. Kiera Hogan
68. Leva Bates
69. Mandy Rose
70. Dalys La Caribena
71. Britt Baker
72. Sonya Deville
73. Risa Sera
74. Madison Rayne
75. Mari Apache
76. Kaitlin Diemond
77. Jinny
78. Shotzi Blackheart
79. Sammi Jayne
80. Bea Priestley
81. Kay Lee Ray
82. Rhia O'Reilly
83. Xandra Bale
84. Brandi Rhodes
85. Bianca Belair
86. Karen Q
87. Melanie Cruise
88. Nevaeh
89. Kikyo
90. Rachael Ellering
91. Gisele Shaw
92. Peyton Royce
93. Alicia Fox
94. Hudson Envy
95. Veda Scott
96. Zoey Lucas
97. Alexia Nicole
98. Samantha Heights
99. Jewells Malone
100. Skylar

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8 hours ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

Maybe I overrate it a bit because I'm a Foley guy but for me the original Boiler Room Brawl is my personal favorite of these kinds of matches.

The Taker match was way too long for my tastes. The beginning of the match is pointlessly repetitive, and the Paul Bearer turn was way more drawn out than it needed to be as well. The whole thing could've been done in 10 minutes, but it went for 30. The best part was the live crowd having to watch on tvs being wheeled out on those carts just like elementary school.

On the other hand, the Foley/Big Show BRB (Backlash 99) was a solid 10-minute attitude style brawl and has a really cool spot where Foley is crawling around leaving bloody handprints everywhere.

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Did Inoki start the no ring Wrestling match concept, with his Island Death Match(es?) from the 70s?

Eddie Edwards and Sami Callihan had their big payoff to their blood feud in the woods. Although they didn't really give it a final resolution as such. Although it kind of was a fight to the death angle, so they had to not resolve it, because you can't actually have Wrestlers murder each other on camera.

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