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Secret Santo Holiday Season 2020


Matt D

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1 minute ago, Octopus said:

Lol, shamefully I only know Kerry. That area is a big blind spot. Hit me up if you have some must watch David and Kevin matches. 

One of the best moments of WCCW is when Jimmy Garvin loses a match and has to work for David on the Von Erich Ranch. 

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5 minutes ago, Wyld Samurai said:

One of the best moments of WCCW is when Jimmy Garvin loses a match and has to work for David on the Von Erich Ranch. 

Haha, so great! Thanks.

——

side note:

I loved reading Niko and Gordi talk about the 95 tag. That’s one of my favorites as well and I absolutely love the Kobashi crawling spot.

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13 hours ago, Octopus said:

 Oh boy, I really am behind. Time to get liquored up and watch some wrestling. Apologies to my friends on here, didn’t mean to blow you all off. Work and Derpin.

 

The Fabulous Freebirds vs Von Erich’s and Iceman King Parsons: 

recommended by the legendary @Smelly McUgly

 

Normally I’m a more a fan of matches with commentary, but with how unbelievably pumped this crowd is, I think this is better without it. Just laying on my couch I realize I’m wiggling my legs in excitement. All that happened is the good guys got all grabby and pushy and the Freebirds fled the ring. The crowd screaming, that’s all I need. I’m pumped up. Get ‘em, Iceman! Go on, get ‘em!

Michael Hayes’ strut selling is always a plus. As is anything Terry Gordy. I’ll be honest though, I’m ignorant on most of the Von Erich’s, so I’ll just say their trunk colors. Yellow Von Erich got his fight in early walking around Hayes, but the heart of the match came from him getting his beatings. After Red Von Erich won a Punch off with Gordy and Iceman Icemaned, it was up to Yellow to keep the momentum for his team, poor fella got picked apart. 

Great camera work on the close hot tags. Gordy pulling back Yellow’s neck as Yellow’s fingers were inches away from Red’s. Freebirds run in and ref misses the tag. Ref misses a second tag. Freebirds jump in to cheat but the ref stops Red. Wrestling is great. I Iceman finally gets the tag and it becomes an all out brawl. The good guys will clearly win, but Buddy gets an illegal punch in (I assume illegal?) and Terry gets the pin. Wrestling is great.

Thanks Smelly! That was fun, I’ve seen very little Freebirds and I’m going to seek out more.

 

Minoru Suzuki vs Tomohiro Ishii:

Recommended by @El Gran Gordi

 

What happens when an irresistible force meets the legendary love child of Mr Sinister and Fujiwara? You get some good slaps and light crowd play. I was pretty excited to watch these two murder each other and I’m very happy I did. The early goings of the match played up Ishii’s brawling and Suzuki’s stretching. But throughout the match it was such a delight to see Minoru have such fun working the crowd and messing with the ref. Suzuki doesn’t need to be constantly peaking apart body parts, he can just stand there and smile and he’s an intimidating man.

Mid match has Suzuki working over Ishii’s leg. It became more apparent that it wasn’t fully as a method to force a submission, but to make Tomohiro unbalanced so Suzuki could easily work over his head. Ishii fights back and we get a second strike segment. Suzuki being the sick animal is enjoying it.

The endgame was very much the struggle to pull off the finisher. Ishii kept successfully using his weight to fight out of the Gotch Piledriver and Minoru would use sly veteran tactics to delay a sitting closeline. Ishii is eventually successful and then brainbusters Suzuki after a series of mean slaps to his face. 

——

rec time:

@AxB, ima give you this:

Stunning Steve Austin vs Dustin Rhodes. 

This is technically last week, so no worries if you don’t have time for this and your one this week. My bad, bud. You’re a cool dude and sorry to drop the ball for ya.

@NikoBaltimore, you degenerate radical you. Gonna give you...

Degeneration X vs The Radicalz

 

I was looking for a different match and was surprised to see this end up on Dailymotion. 

 

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On 1/18/2021 at 6:46 AM, Matt D said:

 

@El Gran Gordi, this is what you need in your life this week:

 

@Matt D

I was delighted to see the SC crew review a match featuring my boy Konaka = Pale One!

308267_10150404306010358_1856192642_n.jp

Here's another.

I'm gonna go right ahead and say that:

- This particular match is probably more up my alley that up yours. 

- It is somewhat atypical, compared to what one might expect from an Abdullah Kobayashi match.

- I doubt that this ranks highly on Jim Cornette's list of all time favourite matches.

Enjoy!

EDIT: 

309775_10150404305965358_1917670692_n.jp

Konaka = Pale One, Naoki = Pale One, and Yamada = Pale One vs. Apple Miyuki, Mio Shirai & Io Shirai. From my 46th birthday party (October 8th, 2011 - my birthday is Oct 7th). By chance, a bunch of guys from the  Cirque du Soleil KOOZA show were in attendance that day also. Imagine putting on a match that blows the mind of actual Cirque du Soliel performers and crew! Osaka Pro pulled that off! I will always love Konaka = Pale One for that.

302446_10150404305990358_874361466_n.jpg

 

Edited by El Gran Gordi
add some picture
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Ebessan & Kuishinbo Kamen vs Liger and Super Delfin.

Liger and Ebessan start it off with crowd chants and poses

The Ref gets a chant and poses too!

Two Big lockups end up against the ropes with a clean but disrespectful break!  

Ebessan however is dirty when he gets Liger on the ropes.

Arm ringer into dance into stand off into hand shake and finger point has the crowd goin banana.

Delfin and Kamen tag in and the pace quickens!
Kamen is not as good at the whole leap thing but we get the HOP!
Liger is confused why he hopped and complains to the ref before tagging back in

Kamen hits Liger in the back of the head and we get the clowns double teaming but not really and chuckles all around!

We try to Shotie! and Kamen gets hit with three chops to the dome coz miscues.

Delfin has a really good snap suplex, also it seems like hes the straight man in this match.  We get a funny half crab spot on poor Kamen, and he is the clown in peril!

Ebessan was gonna break up the Camel clutch but got scared

And this match is reminding me of earthbound fights where the enemies sometimes do random stuff

Ebessan with the HAWTTTTTTTT Tag and bodyslams for everyone

Until the Ref bodyslams Ebessan!

We get the fun everyone tie up everyone spot then a big knock down and a two count for both sides.

Deflin with a kick wham ace crusher to Kamen followed by a tornado DDT and we are kinda not doin shenaningans for a moment.
Kamen to the TOP! with a rana, then a moonsault to the floor!

Liger and Ebessan hook up and we get a finger poke into a handspring elbow into a firemans carry drop into a shining wizard for 2!
Liger is hurtin but Ebessan isn't respectin the legend, trash is being talked! Ebessan begs off but tries to poke the eyes again!

We get the Palm Strike, and a bulldog from Liger!

Kamen is being the best worst partner ever.
WE get poetry in motion from the clowns but on the second attempt Kamen messes up.
Kamen goes for the worlds longest throat cut taunt and pays for it.  Brainbustaaaaaaaaaaa from Liger wins it.

Kamen's chicanery costs the clowns the match!
Handshakes all around after though.

I love watching Osaka Pro stuff  

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WARHORSE vs. Gary Jay (Last Man Standing) - 1/27/18, Zero1USA

I have no idea who Gary Jay is. Warhorse (I am not capitalizing that over and over) I gave my thumbs-down to when he admitted in that retrospective on him that he didn't listen to music for a number of years in school. There's something wrong with you dude. Music isn't like drugs. "Hi my name is WARHORSE, I quit for a couple years but broke the edge and these meetings are really helping". Especially as a fellow metalhead that makes me mistrust him. But that's him as a person and I don't mind watching his matches. 

Gary Jay is a tall skinny dude with big red beard who is wearing his own banner as a cape. He looks almost exactly like Sami Zayn. Warhorse, surprisingly, is not in his metal gimmick; instead he's clean-cut besides a goatee and is dressed up basically like Kojima including big cape with single shoulderpad thingy attached. They immediately get up in each other's business, and start stiffing each other, so boil some water because we got a lot of potatoes to put in the stewpot. They basically wander around ringside blasting each other with shots and yelling at the crowd to move because they have no common sense. One guy gets bowled over and just lays there like a flipped over turtle grinning. Some of the shots are funny; Gary goes for a chop and pops a sitting Warhorse right in the belly, another time he gives him a low crossbody into the ropes. Gary blows snot in Warhorse's face so he gives him a Half-Nelson suplex right on the apron and some goober sneers "DANGEROUS" like he's Gabe. Then Warhorse decides "fuck it I'm taking the ring apart" and proceeds to work as fast as he can to remove the apron, the cover, the first layer of pads, the SECOND layer of pads, to finally get down to the wood. Gary has to sell outside for an absurd amount of time. They do a superplex on the boards and I notice there actually is commentary coming from somewhere but it's completely drowned out by the (very hot) crowd. There have been plenty of counts if you were wondering, since this is an LMS match. Jay has to have the ref help him take the top rope off and he uses the bolt to fishhook Warhorse's mouth. He's bleeding but gets back in the ring, tosses a chair at Jay a bunch and breaks one of the legs. He tries to set it up for a move but it ends up around Warhorse's neck and Jay uses that to double stomp his face into the seat and gets the ten count and whichever belt Warhorse was holding. 

That was fun if a little too long. The ring stuff just took way too long and the match wouldn't have been significantly different without it. There was only like one bump on the planks anyway! Just cut out all that shit but keep the rope removal and there you go, a lot less wasted time. Both guys pasted each other the whole time though and that's what really matters. 

Hey, loved doing this again! Maybe another one around Summertime? 

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@El Gran Gordigave me Abdullah Kobayashi and Grandpa vs Konaka = Pale One and K666(666). First of all, huge props to Konaka = Pale One. As Gordi noted, we saw a tag with him in the last week or two as Jetlag has been diving deep into Japanese Indies and the work in that match had been just excellent. Some really fun tricked out matwork. This was a complete polar opposite and I'm all for a wrestler that can show such amazing range. I've seen an old man character in CHIKARA once or twice but less so in Japan.

Here's the deal. I'm ok with almost anything that believes in itself and that makes effort to create a seamless reality. I occasionally have issues with things that break reality for the matches around it, like Brock matches or breathless spotfests, but ultimately, a lot of that lives and dies on not enough selling, not too much selling. Too much selling (or an inordinate amount of selling for something that doesn't seem to deserve it) is almost always possible to rationalize and forgive. If the wrestlers believe in it, the crowd will believe in it, and if it doesn't completely devalue all of the wrestling around it, I'm generally ok with it.

And they believe here. They take great efforts to craft a reality where Grandpa is somehow able to grind everything down to his level, one where he's only to pick back up the pace when he loses his cane. The footage starts with laughter in the crowd and that's generally a great sign. As they got into it, a lot of the same tropes and spots still worked, like the feeling out before a double knucklelock test of strength, just slower and often seated. And they sold. Things had effect. They had impact. They mattered within the confines of the match. Actions had meaning. They might not have been entirely the meaning you would have expected, but they were unquestionably meaningful. I don't get why the crowd didn't react more to the deathlock attempts with Abdullah Koyabashi. I thought that was pretty funny with the foot not fitting into the hold.

In total, this was fun, had a lot of creativity and knew when to be fully committed to the gag and when to let things breathe just a little before going back to it.

Gordi, I think there's some interest in dipping our toes a bit more in this stuff in general. I know Jetlag already found a bunch of other matches that we'll look at sooner than later, but if you think there are things online from a few years ago or more that are a bit closer to the tag we reviewed with people you know that you feel no one's ever given a real look at or fair shake, I'm sure we'd look at it eventually. New footage is fairly flexible.

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@Matt DThanks for organizing this!

My apologies to everyone, I'm a week behind and not likely to be able to catch up with the two viewings until the weekend. Will have write ups by Saturday. Outside life went a little meat-grindery the last 10 days.

Thanks to everyone who has widened my horizons, professional grappling-wise. 

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On 1/21/2021 at 3:20 AM, Matt D said:

 

Gordi, I think there's some interest in dipping our toes a bit more in this stuff in general. I know Jetlag already found a bunch of other matches that we'll look at sooner than later, but if you think there are things online from a few years ago or more that are a bit closer to the tag we reviewed with people you know that you feel no one's ever given a real look at or fair shake, I'm sure we'd look at it eventually. New footage is fairly flexible.

I'll keep my eyes and ears open. There's been a real dearth of interesting/unusual Japanese indie footage being posted recently (where I can find it anyway).

The Real Hero had an absolute ton of Osaka Pro footage on his archives. That was a huge loss. Wish I'd taken the time to download it when it was up. 

Senor LARIATO's dailymotion channel is a real treasure trove of interesting stuff, but he hasn't been posting new videos recently. 

 

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On 1/18/2021 at 6:46 AM, Matt D said:

 

@El Gran Gordi, this is what you need in your life this week:

 

I am not a podcast guy. I am a reader. I just prefer reading about wrestling (or sports or games or movies or whatever) to listening to people talk about it. So, my opinions about Jim Cornette's podcast hot takes are mostly second-hand or based on little clips people have posted online. Still, I feel like I could pretty easily go a few thousand words on how disappointing it is that this man, a living fountain of pro wrestling information, knowledge, and experience, apparently finds it more profitable to spend his time riling up the worst kind of pro wrestling grandpa.

The tl/dr version of those thousands of words would be that I genuinely dislike what Jim Cornette apparently stands for these days. Any time he accuses anyone else of "killing the business" by doing entertaining or goofy stuff, someone should rub his nose in this video.

That being said, this was a pretty cromulent little match. 

Reportedly, Cowabunga the Ninja Turtle was played by Brian Hildebrand/Mark Curtis, and it's plain to see that he was pretty darned good in the ring. And Cornette is absolutely the greatest at playing a spoiled delusional chickenshit. 

The best part of the match is the first five or so minutes, where they do not even touch but nonetheless succeed in riling up the crowd something fierce. Cowabunga taunting Cornette is absolutely first rate pro wrestling. 

The finish was also pretty spectacular and satisfying.

In between we get some nice chain wrestling, a decent Turtle in Peril segment, and a nice Turtling Up spot where Cowabunga takes off his shell as a kind of "dropping the strap" moment. 

There's a very good comedy spot where Cowabunga gets slammed and sells like he's a turtle who has been turned over and can't get up. That's some Osaka Pro type commitment to the ridiculousness of the gimmick. It got a completely legit laugh out of me.

As much as I dislike how Cornette currently comports himself online, I have to give him credit for being a great and entertaining heel back in the day. He and Hildebrand worked together really well and they pulled this ridiculous crap off about as well as anyone could have.

I sincerely enjoyed watching this. 

Edit: @Curt McGirtI mostly used to use sketchy downloading websites and hope that my malware protection was strong enough. Recently, though, those sites haven't been functioning well for me w/r/t videos (still work great for audio files, thhough).

I'd also like to know what everyone else does to download YouTube videos these days.  

Edited by El Gran Gordi
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Guest Jimbo_Tsuruta
6 hours ago, El Gran Gordi said:

The tl/dr version of those thousands of words would be that I genuinely dislike what Jim Cornette apparently stands for these days. Any time he accuses anyone else of "killing the business" by doing entertaining or goofy stuff, someone should rub his nose in this video.

I really enjoy MX and Cornette in full flow but I bet if Strangler Lewis had ever clapped eyes on them he would have dismissed what he saw as comedic and exposing the business. Cornette telling stories about Danny Hodge? I'm clicking. Cornette whining about Omega for the 191815143rd time? I'm skipping. 

Edited by Jimbo_Tsuruta
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@El Gran Gordi, I knew what I was trying to do with that one and I'm glad you liked it, even despite itself. I think you were spot on with your feelings there. It's a good example of how expansive wrestling can be while still making use of a lot of the traditional tools, but not being entirely beholden to them. Certainly there are lessons there for one of the participants to look back upon.

Thanks again, everyone, for another good run. I know I enjoyed both the matches I was given and reading everyone's thoughts. If you still owe reviews, get them in at some point, no rush.

 

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