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Straight-up Squash Matches

Gordlow
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Gordlow

Gordlow

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I don't know what it is but life during The Plague really seems to be doing a number on my attention span. I've been having a great time watching the matches that people are posting up on the Clubbering and Secret Santo and Wrestling Machine threads... but a lot of those matches are getting into 20-minute-plus territory and, sadly, I generally can't maintain focus for that long any more. (Maybe once or twice a day, at best).

However, I still wanna watch a lot of wrestling,.

The last couple of days, what has really been scratching that itch for me is those delightful bite-sized one-sided matches that used to make up the majority of America's televised pro wrestling content. Watching squash matches online is a pretty damned good pandemic time-killer! There are a lot of squash matches up online, and they can be entertaining in so many different ways. So in the (kind of selfish) hope that other people will join in and post some of their favourite squash matches, and in the (less selfish) belief that there are probably other people on these boards who are experiencing attention deficit issues and who might enjoy getting their fix four or five minutes at a time... allow me to present ten or so of my favourites, and invite you to add some of your own:

 

1) You have to love this (not really, it's OK if you don't): The WWF version of Koko B Ware was an all-time great Jobber to the Stars, and here he faces an all-time star among jobbers. It's also got that classic WWF squash match structure where the jobber gets in a bunch of offense, slips on a banana peel, then gets destroyed. Also; Check out who the ref is!

 

2) Sometimes a squash can be extra-fun because of what or who we know the jobber eventually becomes. Also: The very beginning of the Pringle-Taker relationship?

 

3) Certain squash matches can become pretty well known as part of a pro wrestling  hall-of-famer's backstory. 

 

Edited by gordi
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Gordlow

Gordlow

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4) Sometimes a squash can be the best way to revisit a bit of wrestlecrap, to see an infamously terrible gimmick in action and to get a sense of a crummy wrestler's moveset in case you are making a bunch of obscure CAWs or something.

 

5) Speaking of moveset, I love this particualr British Bulldogs finisher, which pops up in some of their squash matches:

 

6) Sometimes squash matches are a fine source of schadenfreude, as when Vince and Jesse spend half the match ragging on a jobber's poor physique and making Steve Reeves jokes!

 

Edited by gordi
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Gordlow

Gordlow

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7) Would you like to see all-time-great jobber Lee Scott (wearing tiger stripe tights) slap Terry Funk right in the face then run away? I have some good news for you:

 

8 - And look at the moonsault Muta hits in this one!!

 

9) Colin Delaney gets a whole backstory for this one:

 

10) If there are no jobbers in a match, can it still be a squash? Yes. Yes, it can.

 

 

Anyway, please enjoy and please feel free to contribute. I'm sure people here will come up with some doozies.

Brief comments explaining why you like a particular squash would be very much appreciated.

Edited by gordi
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Curt McGirt

Curt McGirt

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I open the gates to an army of Finlay squashes. Feast, my friends...

EDIT: Okay so maybe there isn't an army of them out there, but I've got the name brand version of Finlay/Lorenzo. "Watch his nose!"

EDIT II: 

The short-arm lariat into the double stomp. OUCH. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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Guest Edwin

Guest Edwin

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One of the nastiest squash matches ever. Gekkou who is Masao Orihara under a hood and some colorful ring gear vs. Gosaku Goshogawara who would later wrestle as gosaku all lowercase with a gimmick similar to the Sandman in FMW. Orihara tears up Gosaku really bad with some of the nastiest kicks I've ever seen. I thought there was a background to this and I even remember asking BAHU about this, but he said there wasn't any and it was just Orihara being unprofessional.

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Jiji

Jiji

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Yeah, that was gross. Orihara was pretty greedy during the WAR/NJPW/HI feud too.

Edit: also gross was the Kanemura bump into the spider net glass box in the co-main. You don't too often hear wrestlers scream out in pain like that.

Edited by Oyaji
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Shane

Shane

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There is the slightly (or very) uncomfortable squash where things are booked to or just genuinely get out of hand. Can't say I like this match, but Brock Lesnar absolutely decimating Zach Gowan was the first thing I thought of. If you're sensitive to chairshots, you'll want to avoid this one, as Brock just friggin' *pastes* him with one.

 

 

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thee Reverend Axl Future

thee Reverend Axl Future

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Dammit, Umaga was so fucking good. In his short career he had a run of effective matches that got everyone and everything over like no one else. I was genuinely interested to see how he evolved, and then...

Anyway, a classic that is still talked about. I did grow up with it but the W/WWF squashes really got those heels over -

Dr Sigmund Ziff where are you,

RAF

Edited by thee Reverend Axl Future
stoopid fat fingers, no poking stick
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(BP)

(BP)

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This one isn’t significant in any way beyond to me personally, but it always stuck with me because I was rooting for the guy and he got abjectly humiliated. JR Ryder was an indy wrestler who had won a pre-Tough Enough MTV contest special for a shot in WWE. They’d set up a ring in the TRL studio and hopefuls cut promos and had a match or two. It was similar to OG NXT. Foley was the judge. Anyway, I thought Ryder was great and I was stoked when he won, but it felt like months and months went by and Ryder wasn’t mixing it up in the title picture with Austin and Rock like I’d expected. In fact, he wasn’t anywhere to be found.

One night I’m watching Heat and the Godfather strolls down to wrestle, and Ryder’s already in the ring. Huh, that’s funny, it’s like he’s enhancement tal...shit! Anyway, the match itself isn’t anything to write home about, but The Godfather psyching him out by offering and rescinding the Hos, and then Kevin Kelly(?) saying Ryder was going to go home and fuck a bar of soap really did a number on me. The celebratory crowd reactions to The Godfather winning are something else.

Ryder did some more jobs on Shotgun Saturday Night, Jakked, and even Super Astros. He had one match in early TNA getting squashed by Styles, and then it looks like his career fizzled out. 

 

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Tim Evans

Tim Evans

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The Moondogs run in 1992 USWA just destroying jobbers is legendary. The match is really short but they beat the hell out of the jobbers with chairs and even Dave Brown's table. Only the Road Warriors are in their leagues of destroying jobbers

 

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LP Steve

LP Steve

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10 hours ago, Southside Jim said:

I THINK this was Tatum & Victory's last match before jumping to World Class, please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Either way, this is the very definition of a Bill Watts "get the fuck out" beatdown:

 

 

Jesus Christ, what a size queen Jim Ross is! 

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Shane

Shane

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4 hours ago, Tim Evans said:

The Moondogs run in 1992 USWA just destroying jobbers is legendary. The match is really short but they beat the hell out of the jobbers with chairs and even Dave Brown's table. Only the Road Warriors are in their leagues of destroying jobbers

 

The Horror of the Moondogs playlist is top notch. Also, aptly named. 

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clintthecrippler

clintthecrippler

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1 hour ago, LP Steve said:

Jesus Christ, what a size queen Jim Ross is! 

I grew up on Ross in WCW, but I genuinely have a hard time listening to him on commentary from UWF and his first couple of years in WCW. He has the same issue as Mauro in that there are way too many matches where he is always ON and never uses his "inside" voice. It honestly reinforces to me that it's his Attitude Era run that truly made Jim Ross a true "Hall of Fame" announcer.

Like this example here, I get that it was a tag team title match, but every move is called like it's the hottest angle in the promotion, when at the end of the day it's still just Wild Bill Irwin and Leroy Brown vs. Jack Victory and John Tatum in a heel vs heel match that the live crowd seems to have little investment in.

40rvp7.jpg

 

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