Curt McGirt

Another great entrance as Perro's wearing his giant sombrero. Crowd heat is already molten. Perro jumps Chicana before he can even get in the ring and these guys are just duking it out. The ref is desperately trying to get some order but they continue to throw haymakers at each other. Perro posts Chicana and beats him with a box, then wraps his fist in a towel and punches him more. Then he actually rips off the Corona baseboards to use as a weapon! Holy shit. Finally Perro flies into the post and out of the ring and Chicana gets some payback. Great suspense with a faked foule and a missed senton before Chicana hits his 1000 MPH tope. Then they trade nearfalls for an hour and after the final rollup, I shit you not, the ENTIRE ARENA floods to ringside. No cueballing shown, and this was a little long in the tooth, but what a match.

All the little kids rushing up to touch Solitario and Lizmark, with Solitario wearing this huge black feather thingy strapped around his shoulders, is cool. There's a lot of clipping but it doesn't disguise the work. These guys work fast and snug and it looks great. Ref takes a big bump right before the end of the first fall but he makes the pin anyway -- there's a mask on the line, no time to be hurt! Wagner snaps, ripping Solitario's mask then posting him and chairing him and it's psychotic. Damn clipping; we miss a posting and a dive. This should be a whole lot higher than it'll end up. Also the first unmasking I've ever seen where the guy isn't a scarred up, ugly old guy!

I haven't seen it in years, but recall Don't Torture A Duckling being a nice little indictment of superstition and small town idiocy. The chain whipping scene is just vicious, and the end is good too. I don't know how much of a giallo it is, it's way more like a historical drama with some serious violence. Which Fulci always was big on. For a real giallo from him, check out Lizard in a Woman's Skin, or the hyper-nasty/misanthropic/misogynistic The New York Ripper.

Another chaotic one-shot from the ringpost position. Blanco Jr.(I think? he's the one with the mask right?) and Fernandez have a super fast exchange for a minute and it is just fantastic. Sangre trying to skin the cat over and over again to get rid of Mil is equally great. Clipping and VQ are murdering this one but then you see Fernandez's mule kick and boxing and are won over again. Granny decides to do a Sangre bullfighting dance... what the fuck?! This ends up super hurt by the clipping and Angel Blanco exposing his face in plain view if I am not incorrect toward the end, but it's still great. Some of the clipped/fucked up matches on this set are way better than the kind of staid title matches that are aired in full with perfect filming and I am greatly disappointed.

I just lost it for the Eskelator costume. Holy FUCK is that great. All he needs is muscles and a staff with a ram's skull on it and he'd be all good. Or he'd just be Antichristo. He further sells the gimmick like a total wimp, just like Skeletor. Don't really mind the clipping much as Espanto and Santito are super fluid and gel perfectly, taking it to the mat amateur-style for a second and then just bringing it. Three nut shots unseen by the ref is a bit much. Eventually things go completely sideways and the tecnicos lose due to a ref bump, but Black Shadow Jr. pastes him anyway and raises Santito's hand. Then he dropkicks Eskeletor off the apron and I lost it again. Then he kicks the piss out of him AGAIN! Everyone's scrotum ends up getting punished, Santito leaves on someone's shoulders and I am a very happy man. Dunno whether it's the post-side camerawork, insanity, or my childhood love for He-Man, but this is one I absolutely love.

Talisman's neon green and purple gear is about five years ahead of its time. Robert Williams who painted the first Guns N' Roses cover (before censorship) said that was the most off-setting color clash ever but to me it just brings back memories of the early '90s when I was a kid, and I love it. Actually the more I watch it looks like yellow and purple. I've got a bit of color-blindness and the video is only for this set fantastic so I'll pretend. Una caida is pretty nondescript. There's a nice submission to end the second that I've never seen. It sounds like Dr. Morales calls it a Gory Especial but that is clearly not it. The dive sequence with both men getting in at the nick of time due to the fast-counting ref is nice. Rocca finally puts on some kind of fucked-up sub and the crowd explodes. Even in a match that seems so inconsequential, the response to it is fantastic and seeing Rocca wearing the belt that actually has "TALISMAN" engraved in silver on it is awesome. Perfectly fine match but not gonna finish high.

Show already survived falling off the Cobo Arena so I don't think a fall off a trailer will phase him.

That may just be the bloodiest wrestling photo I've ever seen. I'm really regretting we don't get to see los Brazos until the last disc on the lucha set now.

Oh man, I didn't catch the significance of that line either. Thanx for pointing that out. We got two really great, tense/violent sex scenes in this one, both prefaced by great moments: Patricia Arquette duking it out with Nucky before reprising the phone booth scene from True Romance, and Michael K. Williams delivering the absolutely hateful line "He's just a nigga with a dictionary." Even though it came from a character who can't read, that was vicious.

What the hell?! I support both of these names completely.

Greatest Rivalries: All Japan/New Japan. DO IT.

Wait so that's DDP behind Hall? I thought it was Mr. Perfect. Who's the extra sleazy skinny guy?

Death Wish 3 is hilarious and awesome and I will not have it insulted here... goddammit!

This is even better. He gives dude a backbreaker!

i think this nails it right on the head. Without Deano bridging the gap, WCW's burgeoning cruiserweight division would've been DOA. Perhaps this is why WWE was never successful with their own division. you had "real wrestling" and then you had "flippy wrestling". Dean wrested the "real" style in the "flippy" world, which made it work. I always thought the big problem with the WWE's cruiser division was that, much like their women's division and at various times the tag division, nobody existed within the division except a champion and a top contender. Taka vs. Brian Christopher....then the next month BC stops being on tv and it's Taka vs. Scott Taylor...then the next month Scott Taylor joins Christopher in the "where are they now" file and someone else shows up to fight Taka. The division failed because there was no division. In WCW you had a whole group of guys fighting and having matches away from the belt. It made it seem like the belt was something worth fighting for and not just a merry-go-round of random challengers. You hit the nail on the head here. Even as a kid, it felt like there was Taka and then nobody. Kaientai had a fun little run but that was vs. heavyweights as well. They just never got behind the division enough to make it matter like WCW did (or just let them because they weren't paying attention and the wrestlers were getting over without permission).

Yeah, it was a solid match but it's one of those things where you just don't want to see obvious best friends wrestle. I think Funk said the same thing in his book about his match with Dory. With the Malenko Bros. match, it was just two technicians going face to face and there wasn't some angle made up to try and sell the match.

After looking up ABSCAM I'm shocked that nobody did a movie about it until now. The only time I had heard about it prior was in Donnie Brasco. I don't want to hex the film, but this looks like it could be the next Goodfellas or Casino.

They never did have a singles match together, did they? In their prime that would have been glorious. As it was they totally brought the hate in the tags they were in.

What did he think about the helmet when they gave it to him? I can see him thinking "what is this shit". Did anyone ever try and shoot on him in Japan? What was it like meeting Lou Thesz, and whatever happened to the belt he gave him in UWF? Favorite worker in UWF?

Let's not forget about his work in All Japan with his brother. They even had a match against each other which ruled, and you would think that might end up an Arn vs. Flair level disaster.

Apparently a girl in the crowd gave Ig a mockup of the cheetah jacket and he wore it for a song onstage recently. The original was given to Stan Lee from the Dickies for drugs, of course.

Yeah, that is really what his hand looks like. On a side note I found out that there is a Mexican hardcore punk band called Mocho Cota and I really have to find out what they sound like.

Dutch totally looks like Mocho Cota. (sorry if that's too big)

Jim looks like he's gonna go jump off a bridge. And jesus is Shane big.

I love that just when you think this thread can't get any better, someone will post a picture of Finlay on a horse holding a rifle. EDIT: And wearing a track suit!