Segunda Caida

Phil Schneider, Eric Ritz, Matt D, Sebastian, and other friends write about pro wrestling. Follow us @segundacaida

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

70's Joshi on Wednesday: Hagiwara! Hanawa! Yokota! Fujimi!

5. 1978.08.XX - 01 Mimi Hagiwara vs. Seiko Hanawa (JIP, Month Guessed)

MD: We come in JIP here and get about seven minutes of action to the finish. Right from the start it’s already more measured and methodological than what we’ve seen so far. That doesn’t mean they ever really stop, just that it’s a little more hold driven and mat based to start. After escaping from a couple of Hagiwara’s holds (like a fairly nicely entered cross-armbreaker) Hanawa took over by chaining a cross toehold into a nasty surfboard into a seated bodyscissors with thudding drops and then finally into a leg nelson. It was all pretty well done. Hagiwara fired back after getting knocked outside but I get the sense she was still working things out on offense. Her punches and neckbreakers didn’t have a lot behind them. Hanawa came back after dodging a flying cross chop and hit these great short rope-assisted fireman’s carry takeovers. She landed a few big back body drops but Hagiwara snuck in a small package out of nowhere for the win. Hagiwara’s best stuff at this point seemed to be her pin attempts (Victory Roll, Sunset Flip, etc.) but she had ok fire and we should get to see her develop in the footage to come. Interestingly, the commentators were talking about an “industrial event” in Hawaii and how well received the Beauty Pair were upon arrival and I wonder if we can find out anything more about that.

K: Mimi Hagiwara is an unusual wrestler. She's also an actress best known for playing Choko in the original Kamen Rider TV series, a rare case of an AJW wrestler already having some fame before wrestling. She did her tryout under a mask to stop the media finding out she was trying to become a wrestler. She also debuted at the age of 22, which is very old by their standards. Seiko Hanawa is best known as Rimi Yokota's partner in the 'Young Pair' tag team, she disappears from footage by late 1979 so not much else to say about her.

The match is JIP. There's a funny moment at the start of this where Seiko is holding on to the rope to try break Mimi's submission, but the referee just kicks the ropes so she loses grip. The rule on rope breaks here is that you must secure the rope to get the break, not just touch it, so the ref kicking it is just testing to see if you've secured it or not. They're both just working very basic holds here. Mimi is a bit slower on executing things but she has the right idea and sells underneath ok. Mimi gets kicked out of the ring, when she returns she starts her comeback with punches. They don't look very good but that she punches hard is part of her gimmick we're just supposed to accept. Seiko takes back control with a lot of repeated moves which are a bit boring, but then Mimi rolls her up out of nowhere to get the 3 count.

Not much of a match.

6. 1978.08.XX - 02 Rimi Yokota vs. Victoria Fujimi (Month Guessed)

MD: Alright, this seems to be a broadcast from Hawaii, apparently from the Civic Center in Hilo, Hawaii. We’ll see if Kadaveri has any more info on it as I’m getting to this first. It’s our first look at the future Jaguar. She had a cape with “Rimi” on it and worked at least de facto heel here. Fujimi had a karate gimmick including the gi and early kicks and over the shoulder throws though she settled into more conventional offense later on (a figure four, a butt butt, and then these nasty dropping goardbusters down the stretch). If you told me that Rimi got the Jaguar nickname for biting people, well… this match would be good evidence. She got out of a tough bodyscissors that way and later, after taking over on the outside and starting on the arm, gnawed on Fujimi’s hand while she was in control. She balanced a bunch of dropkicks and cross chops with that mean armwork, the brutality on the outside, or just a running forearm down the stretch. This had a great comeback at the end with Fujimi shedding her gi jacket as if she was Lawler dropping the strap and rushing the ring. She hit a huge Thesz press and then this giant ‘rana with the legs locked around the arms in a unique way, and then those goardbusters. Yokota bullied her way back into it but Fujimi hit a sunset flip out of nowhere for the win. I wasn’t too sure about the heel/face dynamic here but I thought the transitions worked really well.

K: I’m pretty sure this is the chronologically the first Joshi match we have in full, so very fitting that has it has Jaguar/Rimi Yokota in it, who is still wrestling full time to this day. This is all her era. She is introduced as part of ‘Young Pair’ and Victoria as part of ‘Golden Pair’, her tag team with Nancy Kumi. This is the era where rather than having stables almost everyone is put into tag teams. And a note to Matt on how she got the name ‘Jaguar’, I’m not 100% sure this is THE reason but it seems the most likely explanation. The AJW roster used to travel separately in three buses, in August 1980 they were given stable names after which bus they travelled in. The girls who rode the ‘Jaguar’ bus were called the Dynamic Jaguars, Rimi was one of them. This was their entrance theme as a faction:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=U0FgzA7oLhw By mid-81 she’s being called Jaguar Yokota.

The opening is just them exchanging moves, the back and forth signifies that no one is really getting an advantage. There’s a fun moment where Rimi stands on Victoria’s foot to stop her from dodging a strike which knocks her over, but when Rimi goes to run the ropes she gets tripped by Victoria still on the ground. This sets up Victoria locking in a bodyscissors to gain the advantage, which Rimi tries to counter with BITING THE TOES AHHHH. People generally wouldn’t call her a ‘heel’ as she’s not part of the Black Legion official heels, but in terms of working the match she’s the heel here it’s just slightly more subtle.

Rimi dominating most of the match builds up to Victoria taking off her gi and jumping into the ring to get a comeback in and we get some back and forth excitement. Victoria eventually wins on a sunset flip before doing a very pleasing backwards roll into an arm-raised leap of delight. If we’re being objective this was no better than average quality wise, but it’s a lovely match to have.

**

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Monday, March 25, 2024

AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/18 - 3/24

AEW Dynamite 3/20/24

Kazuchika Okada vs Eddie Kingston

MD: So here's a fun thing. If you view the blog on the web, you can see tags. If you click on the Kazuchika Okada tag, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and go all the way back to 2015. If you did Kingston, you'd probably just get a few months. What I'm trying to say is that when people were writing about Okada, we weren't. I'll take it a step further: when people were watching Okada, I wasn't. I was watching Houston arena footage daily or figuring out lucha through the obviously very correct lens of 2010 Jon Strongman Andersen vs Hector Garza. I'm not actually super familiar with the guy! I was familiar with Phil and Eric's 2017 take on Omega vs Okada though (http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2017/01/2017-doesnt-make-list-six-star-edition.html and http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2017/01/i-also-watched-omega-vs-okada.html respectively). So I am sort of coming in with an open, beginner's mind as I watch Okada, but also sort of not because there's a reason why I wasn't riding along with everyone on the NJPW train. 

All of this, if I'm being honest, has me feeling a little bit on my heels, since I write a lot about this stuff and do so in a fairly aggressive, direct manner. I want to be able to back it up. Ok, here's another thing. Eric and I are very close in many of our opinions. That wasn't really intentional. We read each other's stuff, often after the fact. We communicate, but we don't consult, except for that I have a pretty good sense if he's going to like something and I'll throw it his way. Where I tend to be a little more forgiving than Eric and especially Phil is on execution. 

Wrestling is symbolic. The thought, the narrative, the theory, the consistency matters more than the execution. There are a lot of correct paths to the same destination. Where it becomes an issue is if there's a discrepancy between how something is presented (or perceived by conventional wisdom) and how something looks and feels. It's when it affects suspension of disbelief that we really have a problem. That can happen a lot of ways and most of them are tied to selling. Wrestling doesn't have to be realistic. It does have to be believable within its own reality though. There's lots of ways to accomplish that, as I said. Older Andre can just put his hand out and you'll buy that it could crush a mountain because he's so big and has such presence and has been established over time and in how his opponents react to him. Baba could do a head chop and because the crowd buys into it and the wrestler who he's facing wants his paycheck and sells so big for it, over time a consistency of meaning is created. Or, you know, Terry Funk can just legitimately punch you in the face and that works too. 

I'm walking my own winding road here to say that Okada's stuff really doesn't look so great and it bugged me here. Maybe it bugs me more because he's Okada and he's been put on a pedestal for the last decade and a half? Maybe it bugs me more because he's facing Eddie and because of the people Eddie has faced over the last year? Maybe it bugs me more because I'm comparing it to the other Japanese wrestlers who I've written about recently? Maybe it bugs me because I'm also watching Fujiwara and Choshu go at it on the side? We're just days off from watching Shibata Tenryu Punch Danielson in the face, right? Maybe it bugs me because there's a lot in this match that I actually did like. I don't know how NJPW TV was structured or how much ROH TV Okada worked, but there are different constraints for weekly TV wrestling than for other sorts, and while I imagine it wasn't for everyone, I liked the pacing. I liked the methodological control. I liked the sense that he was dismantling Eddie. I liked his reactions to what was happening and to how the crowd was responding. So much of wrestling isn't about move A or move B but about what happens between A and B, and there was confidence and energy and life in that regard. It just kept leading to things (strikes and especially cutoffs) that I wasn't feeling. He'd throw a knee to the gut or clubber down to try to break a hold, and watching it I sort of ended up making the same face Okada makes when he sells, a perfectly fine expression to express dismay. Eddie is a guy who will absolutely lean into offense, but he won't jump headlong into it. That was what was apparently required here and maybe PAC is a guy to make that happen. I'm ready for Darby to get back and challenge, because he'll make all of this stuff look good without making it look absurdly over the top. 

Okada came off as someone who is very good at all of the most artificial "live theater" elements of pro wrestling (truthfully the elements I love the most) but strangely lacking in that fairly necessary visual element that assists in creating a simulated reality, at least relative to how he's portrayed (again, it's the portrayal that causes the issue in general; more on the issue in specific in a moment). It's like imagining a Jerry Lawler (and this is just an example, not a direct comparison) who could sell, who had his timing, who could connect with the crowd through his expression and body language, but just didn't have that punch that put him over the top and tied it all together by taking your worries and cares away and allowing you to buy into the fantasy of the moment. In some ways, him coming so close and then missing that one crucial element makes it worse, because you end up judging him on the curve of what might have been.
 
I think I had a bigger problem with it here because it was Eddie and it was Eddie losing his title and because I'd love to have been able to write about it as if it was real and focus on the narrative of Eddie's dream of a Triple Crown being torn apart just a few months into it by someone who didn't necessarily represent the Japanese lineage Eddie clings to so vehemently but instead that has a certain flamboyance, that went to the eyes and played dirty, etc. There's a lot to flesh out there, but I just wasn't feeling it in the same way. I wasn't immersed. It's a me thing. It's an Eddie thing. It's a long, stable bridge that had been built by his last many matches and that bridge felt a bit more wobbly here. I'm still curious to see Okada vs other guys on the roster. He's great at emoting but struggled here with immersion. I think he has upside and that the weighty and deliberate artificiality he brings is something the product could use more of. Let's just see him against Darby and Cassidy and Dustin and Garcia and whoever else and maybe not against people who require just a little more physicality like Eddie or Mox or RUSH. 

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Sunday, March 24, 2024

2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Danielson vs. Rush

 

2. Bryan Danielson vs. Rush AEW Dynamite 2/8/23

ER: Whatever happens in the future for AEW, whether they go on to have a TNA-length run - only with actual success - or something bad happens and they lose TNT/TBS and wind up on Freevee, I think it will always be impressive in hindsight that they were the ones who best captured the Dream Match phenomenon that founded ROH in 2002. The Dream Match is something that should have a limited shelf life - and surely does - but AEW has made it seem like a fresher concept than anything since those early super indy years. Their fans respond to Dream Matches, AEW themselves know how to present them as Dream Matches, and the growing number of actual cool first time/only time matches that have already happened there is a surprisingly resistant list. Danielson vs. Rush wasn't really a match I had considered as a Dream Match, even though I've championed each man since early on in each of their respective career's. But the second Danielson ran down to the ring and Rush started stomping him out in dazzling gold boots and black attire, this felt like a Dream Match that I've wanted to see for a decade.

It's great. It's excellent. It's a match I literally never thought once about happening, and the second it was happening I wanted to see nothing more. Some Danielson matches have the tendency to play like favorite matches from my own wrestling history. Whether or not that's because Danielson and I have similar tastes in wrestling or I'm just projecting my own favorites onto him, who's to say, but Rush walking away from Danielson's tope only to get hit past the ringpost with an even harder tope is like Danielson distinctly showing us he's recreating El Hijo del Santo vs. LA Park from Monterrey and I don't think that's accidental. Danielson taking an overhead belly to belly to the floor is like a classic NOAH big show main event spot, except Our Pillars were almost never dripping plasma the way Danielson was while flying off the apron and certainly never splashed said blood across the camera lens on the way down. Because you see, Danielson started bleeding a lot really early on after Rush kicked him into a chair and the guardrail. It's arguably not the most dickish thing Rush even did, as he also kicked a bunch at his kinesio tape and chopped away at Danielson's pectoral that's connected to the kinesio'd shoulder, and he knows how to look like a real ass while doing it.  

A fun thing about the best Dream Match wrestling matches is when they make you wonder things like "Is Danielson the hardest kicker Rush has ever faced?" Nakamura wasn't kicking him as hard as Danielson does here. Or, "Is Rush the hardest chopper Danielson has ever faced?" I sure haven't seen Danielson shying away from chops 10 minutes into a match the way he did here against Rush, although I guess I don't know how damaged his shoulder or body was in other matches. How about, "Is this the hardest Rush has ever gone after anyone?" Maybe a couple dozen LA Park matches are in contention here but at worst this is Rush "not holding back" to the level of his best Park fights. The headbutt exchange coming so many years - literal decades - after the earliest Danielson concussion worries plays almost surreally. I've gone through more than one phase of "I don't want to see Danielson wrestle anymore because I am worried about his health" that by this point I have ceased to worry and have just accepted him as a Randy the Ram who merely knows how to present himself as "smarter and more elevated than that". Thus, I am now unburdened, free to laugh like a sicko at the way Danielson collapses after Rush asks him to punch him in the neck, and Rush hits him back twice as hard. 


2023 MOTY MASTER LIST


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Saturday, March 23, 2024

Found Footage Friday: PANTERITA~! WHITE WOLF~! WHITE WOLFIE D~! SHEIK WEINGEROFF~?! BRAVE EAGLE~! JOHNSON~!


Chief Brave Eagle vs. Karl Johnson Big Time Wrestling 1930s?

MD: We lose the end of this and I think the first fall is a little clipped too but it's over twenty minutes of action from very long ago and probably worth taking a look at. I'm not sure about the 1930s designation but the only thing I have to make me doubt it is that the commentator compared Eagle to Japanese sumo wrestlers and pro wrestlers because he was bald and barefoot and had a particular stance. He was billed from Canada and Johnson from Sweeden. They made a very big deal out ofthe fact that Eagle was 270 pounds and Johnson was 250. That was considered quite big back then apparently. The first two falls had more cautious approaches with cheapshots off the ropes by Johnson and Eagle trying to fire back. Finish to the first was Johnson pressing in with clubbering shots and getting a fireman's carry and a knock down shot in the first and then Eagle recovering and hitting his own shot after the fireman's carry in the second. The third was more hold focused with Eagle locking in a Stepover Toehold and Short Arm-scissors that felt like they'd be totally valid forty years later. The bald head of Eagle was apparently so novel that they played up Johnson being unable to grab the hair to escape (he grabbed the tights). The footage cuts off with Johnson with a rear cross toehold. Again, I'm not entirely convinced it was from the 30s but I don't see a big difference in the actual work between this and something from, let's say the 50s, even if the way it was filmed did feel different.


Hubcap on a Pole: Wolfie D vs. Sheik George Weingeroff Powerslam Pro 5/27/94

MD: Bryan Turner says this was '94 which is after we have any record of Weingeroff still wrestling. He was apparently pretty much blind by this point regardless. He does the Sheik gimmick with costume and praying before the match and a couple of mannerisms, but it's pretty out of place. The fans were behind Wolfie against him for the most part. This was a hubcap on a pole match but didn't really follow the sort of logic you'd expect. The presence of the pole usually works to set up transitions. If a babyface has control and goes for it too early, he's vulnerable to the heel. If the heel is in the midst of a subsequent beatdown and tries to go for the weapon, the babyface can have his comeback, etc. They didn't lean into that here. Part of the problem was that the hubcap fell down midway through and someone had to put it back up while they were working holds. There were a decent amount of those for a match with this gimmick, and not just due to the technical mishap. It ended like these usually do, with the heel getting the weapon but the face nailing him before he could use it. Wolfie took out everyone, including the manager, and including the ref by accident, and someone came out to sneak attack him so that Weingeroff could win and leave with the title. Post match, Wolfie got some revenge. The audio was rough on this so I'm not sure who we were dealing with but at least the gimmick was self-explanatory. The actual work was ok for a mostly blind guy working an out there gimmick. You end up kind of glad he didn't work a few years later to the point where people would have expected him to emulate Sabu more. 



Mask vs. Mask: Panterita del Ring vs. White Wolf Monterrey 11/22/98

MD: I'm trying to stick to the post-order on these so I don't get lost, but Roy posted an apuestas match and Phil rightly noted that I should probably prioritize it. Since there seem to be no matches in the build to this, I'm giving it a go. Lobo Blanco is Andy Anderson, aged 23, who would be in the WWF system not long after this, primarily working in MCW and then with a fairly lengthy run in Puerto Rico. He had a pretty elaborate Wolfman style mask here. Plus side is that it stood out. Downside is that even though he took a posting on the outside at one point, it wasn't the sort of mask you could rip and get color with. Anyway, this comes in right at the end of the primera with the ref (Cuate Guerrero? who I think was the mainstay Monterrey ref for a lot of this footage) clotheslining Panterita so that Lobo could sunset flip him to win the caida and I was kind of wondering why I wasn't watching Fabuloso Blondy in 1989 instead. Immediately thereafter, Panterita did something I'd never seen which made it all worth it though; he started to bug the local commissioner about getting a new ref. It didn't work but I admired the refusal to just accept this bullshit.

Lobo took the initiative to ambush him during this, but he ate a back body drop and the aforementioned posting. For the rest of this match, including a fairly back and forth and actually exciting tercera, whoever was in the studio for this one kept rolling fast and loose with things; they'd be so excited to do a replay of a roll up that we'd miss a plancha, that kind of thing, so you were eventually watching a string of replays. That included the roll up that won Panterita the segunda, by the way. We saw it in replay form (they were showing us Panterita accidentally pulling Lobo's mask off in replay form during the initial roll up). Like I said, the tercera was pretty back and forth and exciting. Anderson wasn't afraid to let Panterita dive onto him including a flipping senton to the floor. Eventually, Guerrero got what was coming to him, body an errant Panterita dive and a Lobo dropkick; Lobo got his phantom pin off of a splash mountain style power bomb, but there was no ref. When Lobo tried it again, Panterita got the win. This was pretty good for what it was even if we missed the primera and the rudo ref infection had overtaken things by 98. Panterita was certainly confident in his own skin by this point and milked everything as much as possible for the crowd which isn't a bad thing for a local hero.

ER: I didn't know Andy Anderson was working Mexico, but he's a perfect fit. It's like Todd Morton working Mexico, if Todd Morton was a guy with enough gall to embellish his size on Cagematch to 6'2" 266 lb. Nobody has gone out of their way to tell me to watch as much Lobo Andy Anderson in Puerto Rico as I can find, and one of you should have. It's possible one of you did, but this match is what's going to make me go and do that. We never got Todd Morton working outside the states, and Anderson is an excellent proxy to show us what that might have looked like. He is the White Wolf, and his attire is impeccable. His pants are a shiny black, with white fur down the legs; his mask is Ke Monito, had Ke Monito been a werewolf inspired by Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf rather than a monkey. It is a furry fluffy white mask which would look incredible matted with blood. Maybe there's a bloody match that led to this mascara contra mascara where we could see that bloody matted mask, but I doubt Anderson was walking around with more than one of these. 

White Wolf bumps exactly like Todd Morton, meaning he is an incredible bumper. He out bumps Panterita - except for one time - the entire match, taking a wild flipping Slaughter bump to the floor, a running backdrop on the floor, an excellent posting that would do Lawler proud, and countless more hard bumps into an ungiving ring. Panterita has a pescado with fine follow through and a slingshot senton to the floor that might have been 20% less effective than Super Calo's, but the drop was steeper and the Arena Coliseo Monterrey floor much harder than the WCW floors Calo was showcasing it on. Panterita and Wolf showed great strength in the way they integrated nefarious referees, somehow bumping subtly and with nuance for a Monterrey feature that is usually so broad and overplayed. There were a lot of great little things, like the way Panterita broke out of a low abdominal stretch with pointed elbows to the meat of Wolf's thigh...but then Panterita missed an insane flying shoulder block into the bottom buckle - into a chair - in an angle and trajectory I have never seen before, flying in like a dive knowing full well he was hitting a drained pool. The heat Wolf drew on his splash mountain showed how durable he could have been working Mexico for life. The fans he was egging on really hated him, and not just in the way you root against a man, there was hate in these men's eyes. But Andy Anderson didn't wrestle too often in Mexico, and he knows not what happens to men who attempt two Splash Mountain bombs. I loved this. 



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Wednesday, March 20, 2024

70's Joshi on Wednesday: Sato! Ueda! Romero! Kumano!

4. 1978.06.XX - Chabela Romero/Mami Kumano vs. Jackie Sato/Maki Ueda (2/3 Falls, Date Approximate guess based on when Romero was in Japan)

MD: It’s amazing how much they fit into thirteen minutes over two falls here. It’s not even that it’s a sprint. I wouldn’t call it that. It’s just so dense. It’s not even back and forth. There are momentum shifts. It’s just that whatever team that is on offense is filling their time with a ton of stuff. To start, it was the heels controlling on Maki. They had some double teams but the best part of the early going was when they were yanking her arm out of her socket; Romero was especially good there. Eventually Sato made it in but things would frequently spill to the floor and it became like a lumberjack or handicap match with everyone getting involved.

The end of the first fall was full of interesting stuff. Mami had the flip out powerbomb and an attempt at calf branding. Both of the Beauty Pair would use this sort of slingblade type hair yank down. Maki had a butt butt and I really like her standing vertical suplex which has the hand between the legs to make it almost a hybrid power slam. And then Sato, after leaping off the top with a splash, ended it with this crazy high angle belly to back.

Interestingly, even though Romero got pinned, they let Mami start the second fall; that’s different than France, Houston, or Portland when it comes to two-out-of-three fall matches. The match shifted here as she started to play hide the object with a spike and then actually hung both of the Beauty Pair with the dangling hangman’s choke like she was Brody King trying to murder Darby Allin. Sato and Ueda would fight their way back in and set off a finishing stretch that included a thudding drop out of a belly to back suplex position without going down from Sato and an very unexpected giant swing from Maki, before things spilled out again and Maki slipped in towards the end of the count to score the win. There’s a match in some year in some place where they just kept working and working Maki’s arm until a hot tag, but it wasn’t here. This had a feeling of just being everything and more, a constant battle that shifted from one style of match to another: it was that dogged southern tag and then became a brawl on the floor and back in the ring to be a sprint and then a hide-the-object Memphis heat segment. Just wild stuff.

K: It looks like we come into the match in progress, but from how everyone's positioned it's possible the tape just starts a few seconds after the bell rings or something. A neat thing I'll just note is the Japanese rolling text at the bottom is an advert for wrestler tryouts, giving requirements that applicants must be aged 16-20 years old and at least 160cm (5 feet 3 inches) tall. Part of what makes AJW an unusual company is, at a time when wrestling was mostly an "invitation-only" closed business, they were just openly advertising to millions of fans on TV how to enter the business.

This is our first look at Chabela Romero. She's a veteran Mexican wrestler (debuted 1955) who pops up in this era of AJW every now and then as a foreign heel. It's also the first time we're seeing Mami Kumano, who by this point will probably have taken Shinobu Aso's spot as Yumi Ikeshita's partner in Black Pair (hard to say for sure with the dates being unknown).

Right at the start Mami and Chabela are inflicting a relentless beatdown on Maki Ueda. Lots of double teaming that the referee tries to get a handle on but fails, but he also turns a blind eye to Jackie coming in to even the odds for a moment. Chabela gives us a bit of focus targetting Maki's right arm, and Mami follows along. There's a nice move where she stretches Maki's arm out and then headbutts her on the shoulder. Someone should steal that. The hot tag is a little weird. Chabela has Maki in a kind of hammerlock and is pushing her towards the ropes for Mami to hit her, but Maki turns her over, does a backwards roll towards her corner to tag in Jackie.

Jackie's a real good hot tag. Great dropkick. At this point all hell really breaks loose as they're fighting on the outside and people are getting slammed into tables. It's hard to follow what's going on exactly.  We're soon back in the ring with Mami dropping Jackie with a powerbomb like move, except instead of driving her down she just drops her to the side. Jackie has a really cool thrust kick move, where it looks like she's pushing someone away from her with her boot rather than trying to actually hurt. It looks disdainful. That gets followed up by her great proto-slingblade move, which the commentary call a "neckbreaker." Mami takes it high angle on her neck.

The pacing of this is so constant. Even when Chabela tries to get away for a moment Maki goes chasing her to the outside and we get another outside brawl with people getting choked. It always gets a double countout but they're back in at 18. Jackie does the move Nanae Takahashi would call the 'refrigerator bomb' in the 00s, but here they call it the 'Beauty Special'. Jackie follows this up with a great backdrop suplex that drops Chabela right on her neck to get the pin on the 1st fall.

We get a bit of a rest period in between the falls, which is really the only time in the whole match we get any chance to breathe. Once the bell rings Jackie flies straight at Mami hitting her with suplexes and her neckbreaker, then pins in Maki who unloads in the same way. The tables are turned though when Yumi Ikeshita comes to the outside and does some kind of distraction which allows Mami to whack Maki in the face with a wrench. Jackie is furious and goes to rip her head off but gets knocked down by the wrench as well. All the while Mami is hiding it from the referee in kinda comical ways, but the crowd sound very angry. She keeps changing direction while choking Jackie with the wrench so he can't see even though he's clearly aware something nefarious is going on. When hiding the wrench clearly isn't going to be possible anymore Mami just hands it back to Yumi on the outside and then things get totally deranged as she starts swinging Jackie & Maki one at a time by the neck on the outside in a not exactly safe looking way. Lots of screaming going on throughout all this and Yumi is throwing people around at ringside if they look like they're trying to stop this madness.

Eventually Beauty Pair manage to isolate Mami and double team her a little bit before Jackie hits a really nice backbreaker. Ikeshita tries to run in to interfere (I don't know where Chabela is right now in this chaotic scene) but gets taken out. Maki hits a Giant Swing on Mami of all things before we get another wild brawl on the outside with more throwing people into chairs and over tables who aren't even in the match. Maki Ueda gets the win by countout to give Beauty Pair the 2-0 win in this very hectic match.

My overall thoughts are this is both the pacing and the chaotic nature of this feels like an escalation on what we saw from Jumbo Miyamoto a couple of years earlier. A hotter crowd also helps. You might compare this to the Abdullah The Butcher & The Sheik matches happening in All Japan around the same time, I imagine there is some influence with the hiding the weapons spots. But there's a feeling of things going off the rails here that those matches don't quite reach, and none of those are as frantically paced. The flaw here though is the spots don't always flow together, and it feels like there's a lack of payoff for certain elements. For instance there's never really any comeuppance for using the weapons, and their use doesn't really escalate throughout, they're just thrown in. It's not a bad thing as such, but there's more than could be done with it.

This is the first match we have where I feel there's enough to give a star rating, which I generally do when reviewing things, so here goes:

***1/2

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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Dustin vs. Claudio

 

37. Dustin Rhodes vs. Claudio Castagnoli AEW Rampage 8/24 (Aired 8/26/22)

ER: Matt already wrote this gem up at length when it originally aired, but I wanted to add a few perfunctory thoughts years later just to officially add it to our MOTY List. I have such fond memories of that brilliant but brief era in WWE where Cesaro and Goldust were among several of my favorite guys producing great weekly tag matches. I think of that window so fondly that it's hard to believe that was a full decade ago now. Cesaro and Goldust matched up a lot over a 6 month stretch from late 2013 to early 2014 and the matches were always given ample time to deliver. Most of them did. But were weren't getting Goldust singles matches during that era, just letting the best hot tag-slash-best face in peril in the world play to his strengths in perhaps the last best era of WWE tag team wrestling. 

So now, nearly a decade later, we finally get one of the singles matches that would have slotted perfectly into that era and excites me just as much today. Dustin is older and doesn't have that same gas tank, but the pairing is no less intriguing. I love a Veteran Who Has Lost a Step match story, and Dustin is great at playing that story. The way he misses his high crossbody and blogrolls all the way to the floor or hits his head on the bottom rope taking a shoulderblock, these are spots that mean more when done by Old Dustin than Young Spry Dustin. Falls are more serious to us old people. Claudio is the perfect guy to take advantage of Dustin's slower step, and Dustin is great at firing people up by regularly seeming he was about to go on a tear before Claudio could shut it down again as quickly as it began. 

Regal says on commentary that Claudio is the only person he's known who can throw an uppercut as hard as Dave Taylor, which is the coolest kind of compliment Regal can give someone. But more than that, Claudio is capable of working spots on Dustin that nobody else could do, while catching Dustin spots that nobody else could catch. He's arguably the perfect modern Dustin opponent. He catches the cannonball safer than anyone while making it looks like catching a 240 pound medicine ball, and I can't imagine Dustin trusts anyone on the roster enough to leap off the top rope with his rana. Claudio's giant swing is one of the great wrestling spots, but perhaps never better than performed on Dustin. Claudio is the guy who is actually capable of swinging the big man, and it looks so great because nobody has legs longer than Dustin's. AEW's top down angle of that swing and how much of the ring surface area they were covering was perfection. All of Claudio's displays of strength only imply that his crossface grip has the power of a trash compactor, like it's shifting Dustin's teeth in his gums. 

I really couldn't care less about the "Is this Dustin Rhodes' last attempt to win a World Championship?" story they kept trying to push on commentary, and seemingly only on commentary. Dustin's approach in this match, to me, didn't feel any different than it has in any other high profile singles matches. What does the ROH World Championship actually mean to anyone in 2022? This is a belt Matt Taven held for half a year, what is it really supposed to mean for Dustin Rhodes to hold this specific title? Would it really have been any different than giving him a nice Lifetime Achievement watch? I guess one difference is that the watch would actually mean something to Dustin. Dustin potentially winning the World Title of a company he never worked for in a company that is financing the company he never worked for doesn't really carry a lot of emotional weight for me. Of course Regal has to tell me that the ROH World Title is a Title that is "coveted by every single wrestler in the world"; they need to say those things, but none of it sounds convincing in any way. 

What I did buy into was Dustin's fatigue down the stretch: his red face swelling in Claudio's crossface, the way he almost bailed on a piledriver, tossing Claudio off to the side rather than sit back on it, the way it felt like he couldn't totally hold Claudio down on pinfalls. It led perfectly to the finish of an out of breath Dustin unable to duck Claudio's leapfrog, running face first into Claudio's balls, but also being tired enough to be incapable of capitalizing. Claudio momentarily compartmentalizes his ball pain and uppercuts Dustin's body out of the air, a final shot to the hull of an old ship. 


2022 MOTY MASTER LIST


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Monday, March 18, 2024

AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/11 - 3/17

AEW Dynamite 3/13/24

Darby Allin vs Jay White

MD: Obviously now, a few days after the match we're well aware of the injury that happened very early when Darby hit a dive and hurt his foot. Definitely a strange occurence considering that there was a post match ankle injury angle to write him off. I'm all for guys being written off but it was maybe a little weird considering he was climbing Everest. It should give White plenty of heat doing a "I Broke Darby's Foot" or, alternatively "I Shattered Darby's Dreams" deal. Given the weighty promo Darby made they've been walking a fine line where they admit that it was on the dive but also point out the post match chair shattering. This is rare ground; it's not every day someone gets hurt in the same place that they were supposed to get hurt to be written off screen and put heat on the heels, while also substituting the reason why they were written off for the actual injury. And it's not every day that the reason they were originally written off is due to climbing a dangerous mountain. Wrestling is at its most serene when it's at its most honestly bizarre sometimes, I guess?

Originally, I was going to write about consequence, focusing on the injured/lacerated back and how great a job they did making what happened to Darby against the Bucks resonate. That was present right from the get go. Darby, of course, has a history with headlock takeovers, but the one that White hit him with at the start was made to seem particularly devastating. This is a good thing. If wrestling is trying to create a suspension of disbelief over time, then having consequences last after one match and into the other is not just something to aim and strive for, but also actively helpful in situations like this where you have people of similar hierarchy and want to realistically put one over the other while still protecting the loser. It was presented as valiant (and crazy) that Darby was out there at all. He was bandaged. Every slam or bump or crash into the corner or prone press to the mat for a pin attempt was presented as painful. We'd seen the blood. We see the bandages. We could imagine the pain. Wrestling getting us to imagine pain is a great way to help us to suspend disbelief and more thoroughly immerse ourselves in what we're watching.

What's astounding here is how thoroughly they leaned into it even after the foot injury. Immediately thereafter, Darby hobbled across the ring to hit the tope. He followed it up by eating the half and half into the chair. I think back to Danielson/Okada one and how they adapted with the injury. Here, they didn't, and that felt like the right move since they were still selling the weight of a spot-of-the-year type crash through glass. The overarching story was that Darby was already a step slow. It made sense that as the match went on, he might be two steps slow. One injury creates the possibility of another. Vulnerability begets vulnerability. This is all basic pro wrestling storytelling; it can be done more or less gracefully, but early work on one body part so often opens things up to shift to what the wrestler really wants to work on. It's all a matter of whether it is coherent and compelling. This wasn't quite that as White never targeted the foot/ankle, but after comeback attempts and cutoffs and multiple times dodging the Blade Runner, Darby took too long to hit the coffin drop and then missed entirely when he tried to course correct once White rolled to the apron. That was basically the finish, as Darby valiantly beat the count only to get hit by the Blade Runner. I don't necessarily know if I have a unified thesis here other than the notion that Darby's one of the best in the world at portraying that most important element of pro wrestling, consequence, and here it was multiplied multifold considering the bump through the glass preceding the match, the weight of Everest over their heads, the legitimate injury early on, and the injury angle post match. In that regard, it was an unquestionable counterbalance to...

Eddie Kingston/PENTA/PAC vs Young Bucks/Kazuchika Okada

MD: Hey, did you guys see the PENTA vs Action Andretti match from Rampage a week or two ago? It was like there was a metal plate in Andretti's head and a giant magnet in PENTA's boot. He just kept zooming headlong into superkicks. It was the funniest match I've seen in a while. It's amazing when you think about it, that someone trained their body to be strong and fast and supple enough to twist and fly and contort all to the end of crashing into someone else's foot seven times in one match. Pro wrestling is the wackiest thing, really.

AEW Collision 3/16/24

Bryan Danielson vs Katsuyori Shibata

MD: The biggest red flag in this match is the strike exchange. It's at the end and we're at the beginning, so let's leave it ahead of us for now. There's a sort of comforting, lazy casualness to putting these dream matches on Saturday nights on free TV. They're all X amount of years after they should be (even, arguably, the Hechicero match! We were watching him fight Black Terry in 2014!). The stakes are low. Ultimately, there's a level of pride, the fear that this won't be enough, the worry of injury. On the other side of the scale is perspective; we understand that it's a near-miracle that we're getting these matches at all. And they continue to be interspersed in Danielson's 2024 journey, one where he is finding peace with himself and the path before him.

This match could never give us everything we hoped for. By its very nature, it made us hope for too much. What it did give us, however, was wonderful parallels and, truthfully, so, so much of what we were looking for. It certainly gave us what we needed and only a little that we likely didn't. Considering we were dreading shoot headbutts between the two, the match ended up not just a miracle and a joy but also an absolute relief.

They started out with a feeling out process and some matwork that was tight and gritty and based around opportunities and openings while still feeling tricked out. It felt like it was bordering on shoot style at times, not quite UWF but more UWF in 86 NJPW with that firm pro wrestling patina. Everything felt earned and it was all interesting. They played into the parallels (first on commentary mentioning the head injuries and then in the match itself) with both wrestlers getting bow and arrows.Danielson went to strikes first but that just let Shibata play stoic in the corner. More often than not, it's Danielson going into that well, not his opponent, so this let him play up against a different sort of paragon. Danielson realized he wasn't going to win in a standup at this stage of the match and went to the leg. That opened up the arm and other holds, including him stomping on the elbow. Shibata was able to get him out and hit a PK on the apron though, sending things to the break.

During the break, Shibata pressed the advantage on the floor, but Danielson trapped him in a chair and hit him with a running dropkick. He wasn't able to press it back in the ring, because Shibata, trapped in the corner, turned it around and started throwing these killer pokey Tenryu-esque punches. In his control, he was able to dropkick Danielson in the corner and step on his elbow. Parallels abound.

They went into a false finishing stretch there. Shibata wins matches with the sleeper into the PK and he tried the sleeper here. Danielson fought out and they traded ankle locks, with Danielson turning it into his ankle-hooked German, followed by a Shibata STO. This really felt like a finishing stretch, with both wrestlers down, Shibata recovering for the death valley driver, and Danielson reversing the ripcord forearm attempt into the Busaiku Knee and the LeBell Lock.

It doesn't work though. You see false finishes, but you rarely see a false finishing stretch that feels so fully formed. AEW house style often has a shine/heat/a finisher teased right before they go to the commercial break, but this went further than that. In doing so, it made the strike exchange that was to come more palatable to me. Yes, they'd ultimately be asking to get hit, but it was after they brought the match to a logical conclusion and it simply wouldn't end. Yes, I say this fully understanding why strike exchanges like this happen, the cultural significance, how they played out in the 2010s. I still don't love them. I get that fans want them. I get that they're expected. Later in the show, during the Keith/O'Riley and Claudio/Archer matches, they were even more egregious because this one felt like it was a special moment and it ended up being not even a once-in-the-night (or twice-in-the-night moment; guys were asking their opponent to hit them all night!).

But I won't punish this match for what came later. Here, at least, it did feel special, with Shibata sitting cross-legged first, with the two trading boots after he rolled to his feet, with Danielson dropping down and showing that they were equals, with both cross-legged and firing away. There is no rule of wrestling so universal that there isn't some situation where it makes sense to break it. For strike exchanges where people just ask for it, this was probably it. Danielson won it (when he couldn't earlier) and to me, it was because he had already hit the knee once. That's when they went into the real finish, with Danielson failing on his second knee, Shibata locking the Octopus, and the two going into roll ups. Maybe it was my own expectations. With these two, I was expecting that extra level of excess and we only got the normal level of it, placed at the right point in the right match to make it resonate. If they had worked the whole match that way, it would have frustrated me, but a couple of minutes of the ultimate parallel, the willing strike exchange, in a match built upon the notion of two so equally matched mirror-image wrestlers, well, what can I say? It worked for me.

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Sunday, March 17, 2024

Jim Duggan's Best WWF Match

 

Jim Duggan vs. Shawn Michaels WWF Raw 5/10/93

ER: I think, from other wrestling writers, when reading a lead such as "Jim Duggan's Best WWF Match" you might think it was some kind of trick. Then you read the review and it's just talking about the 1992 or 1988 or 2009 Royal Rumble and Duggan is barely mentioned and you realized you have indeed been duped by Sensational Pro Wrestling Headlines That Are Technically Correct. I'm not here to trick you. You know that by now. I'm not interested in tricks. I'm just here to talk plainly about Jim Duggan's Best WWF Match, and regardless of your interpretation of that statement I think you will be satisfied. This is both a) Duggan's Best WWF Match, b) The Hardest Duggan Worked in a WWF Match, and c) The Best Duggan Ever Looked in a WWF Match. Whatever definition of "Best" you came into this with, I think I will have your bases covered. 

Admittedly I am higher on Duggan than most, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses that he brought to the last 30 years of his career. But even as a supporter of his strengths (and someone who was even a fan of his 2006-2008 WWF comeback) I can admit that often the best WWF/WCW Duggan matches were due to his opponent. That doesn't mean that Duggan brought nothing to these matches, but I would say the vast amount of "From WWF On" Duggan matches that I enjoy are due to an opponent working around Duggan as an opponent. Duggan is often more of an obstacle to work around than a guy to work with. This was even more true by the time he was in WCW. Regal vs. Duggan, Craig Pittman vs. Duggan, even Roadblock vs. Duggan, these are match-ups that were entertaining due to fun wrestlers working around a large obstruction. Jim Duggan was not someone who was interested in having Great Matches, and I love how durable and popular he remained by working a safe style. He was clearly a smart man, working as a stupid man. 

So I have no idea what got into him for this one match. I can't think of another WWF match he had anywhere close to this match, the longest recorded singles match of his entire WWF tenure. We're not really buying the accuracy of the supposed 20-25 minute house Savage matches, anyway. Until I see video evidence I think it's far more likely that whomever reported those numbers was actually watching a 15 minute match that felt like a 25 minute match. This match was an actual long TV singles match that goes through two commercial breaks, not some house show fantasy. It's a lumberjack where all the lumberjacks - Bam Bam Bigelow, Mr. Hughes, Typhoon, Terry Taylor, you know the real big guys - save Yokozuna were actually wearing flannel shirts. It's absurd, and their appearance made me assume before the match started that the lumberjacks would be heavily involved in cartoon fashion. And yet, the lumberjacks were hardly a factor, except for Yokozuna's very important involvement in the finish. 

Oh, well then surely Shawn Michaels was the one covering for Duggan! This was a long singles match that was clearly made palatable by the great Shawn Michaels slipping on banana peels! Nope, that's not it either. Michaels bumps like a normal man, still taking great bumps, but not as one bumping in service to himself as he often does. Did he take one of the highest backdrops a man could possibly take? Getting vaulted up higher into the air as Duggan shoves his already-high-in-the-air-knees up and over even higher, resulting in one of the highest non-Rick Rude backdrops in company history? Yes. Michaels was great in this match. But I think Hacksaw was even greater. 

Duggan takes an actual furious attack to Michaels and keeps the attack going nearly the entire match. It is the most energetic I have seen Duggan in a WWF ring and it's a sight. His strikes have purpose, he drops elbows with weight, he does a vertical suplex! This man doesn't just do a vertical suplex, he does a delayed vertical suplex! Think about it. Explore the Hacksaw corners of your brain, and try to recall if you've seen Jim Duggan do a vertical suplex, let alone hang onto one for awhile. This was a match for a title, and Duggan was fighting like a man who really really wanted to win that title. Michaels had shown up for the match in street clothes on crutches, trying to duck the challenge, and here's Duggan ripping clothes off Michaels back. This proves the theory that, If Jim Duggan Is Ripping Another Man's Clothes Off During A Match, You Are Watching A Great Duggan Match. He looks incredible. His Johnny Ramone shag was his best ever haircut, and his large American flag singlet-covered belly hangs down like a pregnant dog's. When he misses his Old Glory kneedrop, he misses it like a man who doesn't care about his knees. 

Michaels is a guy who wears cowboy boots whenever he gets the chance, but this match is the match where he finally takes one of those boots off to do the best thing you can do with a cowboy boot in wrestling: hit a guy with a big belly directly in the head with the heel of that boot. But Jim Duggan has a similar-but-different asset to black wrestlers and islanders: His head is not so hard as to be impervious to headbutts, but it is a head that is so empty that the heel of a cowboy boot cannot began to damage it. The same goes for Michaels desperately trying to lock in a sleeperhold and chinlock: You are only expending your own average trying to cut off blood flow to the man who already has limited brain activity. This was the last big Duggan match. Duggan went on to have a US title reign the next year and a TV title reign during the Russo era of WCW, and neither of those actual title wins felt like anywhere close to as big a deal as this title challenge. The US title reign felt like something written into Hogan's contract, the TV title  run was written as "who would be the funniest guy to put a literal garbage title on"; this match was the last time Duggan felt like he was actually fighting for something. 1993 WWF is the easiest year to re-book in hindsight. This match, ending when Duggan is thrown to the floor and flattened by Yokozuna, leading to Mr. Perfect going after Michaels for the DQ, clearly set up programs that never got satisfyingly paid off. Duggan should have challenged Yokozuna for the World title on PPV, Perfect should have challenged Michaels for the IC title at King of the Ring, Crush should have slammed Yokozuna on the Intrepid after Duggan softened him up, etc. The Luger turn ruined everything that the first half of the year had been building to...

but somewhere in all that mess we got an actual great Jim Duggan WWF match.    


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Friday, March 15, 2024

Found Footage Friday: SOLAR~! IN~! JAPAN~! AZTECA~! JIRAIYA~! DRAGONS~! SKULL REAPER~! URA~! ITO~!


Hiroaki Ura vs. Yusaku Ito Sportiva 2/6/19

MD: Sebastian sent this one on to us. He described Ura as in his black trunks roookie stage but very talented. That tracked. He started out with very basic holds to just try to contain Ito and I had the sense Ito was taking him lightly and letting him sow his wild oats a bit, ready to shut him down when he'd had enough. Ito didn't turn things around early enough though. Instead, Ura was able to pry a leg off and start to do real damage with it. Throughout the match, especially after the tide turned back the other way but even before, I had the sense that Ura was like the dog that caught the car at times; once he got it, he wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. He was going off desperation and instinct and throwing anything he could. It meant that when he shifted away from the leg and to broader offense. It didn't work so well for him. Ito, on the other hand, was entirely deliberate. If he couldn't get a hold, he jammed an elbow down onto Ura's skull once and then took it. He'd block him and turn him right into a hold. The finish is him shutting Ura down with a decisive motion to hit a Michinoku Driver. The damaged leg is a wedge that Ura could use to get back into things though. He also had a potent explosiveness able to zoom across the ring while Ura was stumbling in his selling. When they moved into strike exchanges, it had fighting spirit how I particular like it, with staggering and recoiling, and a struggle to push forth and some really spirited screaming from Ura. This was inevitable, of course, but they did a very good job in not quite making it look so. 



Solar I/Dragon Yuki vs. Azteca/Jiraiya KAGEKI 7/13/13

MD: This had been thought lost but it's just been out there where no one knew to look for it. I think it was on the Azteca 20th anniversary show. Here, you have Solar in his most exhibition-y, touring mode, but somehow more so. He's so over the top here with poses and flexing and pandering to the crowd that it's almost transcendent. Especially because he backs it up. It's in one fall so the structure is kind of loose, in as you get exchanges early with a lot of motion and everyone getting to pair with everyone else, things building to some relatively big dives including a huge Yuki flipping senton off the second rope to a grounded Azteca on the floor, and then the matwork which actually gets some room to breathe, with the pairing of Solar and Jiraiya particularly great. It was a little weird to go into the matwork after the dives but what I was watching was so enjoyable I didn't mind too much. It both gave rationale for no one to break things up as Azteca and Yuki were still recovering and also sort of felt like a tercera where teams trade submissions once they were there to save their partners. In a lot of ways, this was Solar at the very height of his old man powers, completely confident in his own skin almost to the point of bombastic parody. But he still went hard to celebrate Azteca.



Solar I/Azteca vs. Azul Dragon/Skull Reaper A-ji KAGEKI 7/14/13

MD: I was a little worried this was going to be more of the same but it really wasn't. Dragon and Reaper came in full rudo, ambushing to start and using their second to cheat to take back over when the opportunity arose. It meant that there was a lot more heat. The previous match was celebratory but in a good way, certainly structured like a real match. This didn't have anything quite as tricked out but there was a lot more animosity to draw upon. When Solar and Azteca fought their way back, there was some of that posing and pandering (but in the best way, of course), but the rudos kept it from going overboard by keeping the pressure on. That's not to say it wasn't without levity. The commentators (and Azteca) watching it back got a real kick out of Skull Reaper nonchalantly taking out the ref to break up a pin. It all built to Solar quebradors as you'd imagine followed by a simultaneous Solar submission and Azteca splash. Fun stuff but I did miss the matwork of the other match.


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Thursday, March 14, 2024

El Deporte de las Mil Emociones: Ninja Quest

Week 19: Ninja Quest

Leo Burke has had a notable January. His first title defense of the newly won Universal title was against former champion Carlos Colon. That match ended with controversy, as Chicky Starr got involved by ringing the timekeeper’s bell and cost Carlos Colon what looked to be a title victory. A rematch was held due to this and this time Carlos brought in his trainer Barba Roja to neutralize Chicky. However, Burke still managed to keep the Universal title when fellow stablemate Manny Fernandez ran in to save Leo’s title and in the process severely injured Barba Roja. With Carlos Colon’s attention diverted by the Barba Roja injury, Leo then participated in a Ruleta Rusa match and (through cheating) was able to cost TNT his face paint. Now Leo Burke has an enraged TNT after him, with the karate ninja wearing a mask and vowing to avenge this humiliation. TNT is on a quest to defeat Leo Burke and pay back the humiliation.

However, TNT was not able to initially get his revenge against Burke, with Leo managing to eke out a countout victory despite TNT beating him from pillar to post. Burke and Chicky Starr thought they had gotten the better of TNT but Carlos Colon ceded his upcoming Universal title shot to TNT, allowing TNT another opportunity to avenge his humiliation (and give Carlos a chance to go after Manny Fernandez for what he did to Barba Roja). The Universal title match between Leo Burke and TNT took place on January 27 in Guaynabo and it resulted with no clear winner due to cheating and issues with the referees that resulted in Invader #1 getting involved. Due to this controversy, a rematch was ordered  February 3 with a special referee appointed to prevent any further chicanery taking place. The special referee was boxer Alfredo ‘El Salsero’ Escalera, someone who has previously dabbled with wrestling in the early 80s. Chicky was not happy about Invader’s involvement in the January 27 match or with the special referee appointed for February 2  

That second title match ended in a disqualification win for TNT when Chicky again got involved. Although TNT won the match, he had not yet pinned Burke. Once more, due to the results of the match, it was decided that there would be one more Universal title match between Leo Burke and TNT. The match will be held on February 10. As for Chicky Starr, due to what happened between him and Alfredo Escalera a match has been signed that will see a boxer vs a wrestler also for February 10. Will TNT be able to complete his quest for vengeance? We shall soon see. But before getting to that February 9 match between Burke and TNT, there is one more thread we need to wrap up for January.

That last thread we need to catch up on before passing into February is the saga of ‘Tough Guy’ Eddie Watts and his challenge for the World Junior title. As we have talked about previously, Watts has been brought in by Chicky Starr as the newest Club Deportivo member with the goal of winning the World Junior title. Eddie had wrestled Super Medico for the title, but the match ended in a disqualification victory for Medico when he was tossed over the top rope by Watts. A rematch was signed for January 27 and let’s go to Guaynabo for that match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIw8N7l4pZE

This is from the February 10 Campeones airing, so we get the commentary team of Hugo, Carlos and Chicky. We also get some comments throughout the match about that night’s card (which includes discussion about both the Universal title match between Burke and TNT and the boxer vs wrestler match between Alfredo Escalera and Chicky Starr). Hugo mentions this isn’t the first time Medico and Watts have faced off for the World Junior title and that Chicky wants to add the title to his stable of champions. As the ref checks both participants, Carlos says that he hates to admit this but Chicky has quite the prospect in Eddie Watts, one of the better junior heavyweights to have come to Puerto Rico (something Chicky brags about after Colon’s comment: “The tough guy may not be the biggest but he’s got an ability and intelligence that few can match”). Hugo starts getting at Chicky for once again using the word intelligent to describe his wrestlers, with Chicky saying that in his organization there are only intelligent people. Carlos sarcastically goes: “Hugo, El Club Deportivo is composed of geniuses apparently”. Hugo clarifies they must be geniuses of evil., but one has to admit they are going through their best period with all of the champions they have right now. Carlos says that will change tonight because he’s feeling good about TNT’s chances tonight. Carlos also mentions Chicky’s match vs Alfredo Escalera, saying that he’s given some pointers to Escalera (with Chicky being annoyed by this). I’ve made all these observations about the commentary because Watts has been taking his time in getting into the ring to start the match.

Back to the match, as Watts finally locks up with Medico (almost two minutes in). Medico backs Watts into the corner and breaks, with Watts complaining his hair was pulled (looks like he’s been studying Leo Burke).  Hugo mentions that historically, fans side with the wrestler in a boxer vs wrestler setting, but he has a feeling that tonight the fans will be firmly in Escalera’s corner against Chicky. Eddie Watts is backed again into a corner after a lockup and stays there after the break, stalling once more and complaining about his hair being pulled. Chicky at ringside also complains to the ref, which Hugo makes mention of on commentary (Chicky: ‘Of course, I’m right there and saying what happened; Hugo in a sarcastic tone: ‘The man who always tells the truth, Chicky Starr, an honest man’; Chicky: ‘Definitely, now you’re talking correctly’).  A third lock up leads to Watts shoving Medico and then falling to the outside after a punch by Medico. He really is doing the Leo Burke playbook here. The commentators put over the Canadian guillotine maneuver as Watts recovers and gets back in the ring.

At this point the match settles into moments where each man gets a few moments of advantage, with Medico and Watts each working a side headlock segment. A rope running segment leads to Watts leapfrogging over Medico and celebrating, resulting in Medico punching him. Watts once again exits the ring as Chicky complains about a closed fist. We go to commercial break as Medico flips Watts back into the ring and come back with Watts in control. Hugo on commentary mentions that Watts can thank Chicky Starr for helping him gain control, it looks like Medico had Watts in a jam but Chicky has been able to distract the ref. Watts is on the attack, but a throw into the corner is reversed by Medico. Super Medico is slow to get up but manages to scoop up Watts for a slam attempt. However, Medico can’t hold Watts up and falls, allowing Watts the chance for a pin attempt that gets two. Medico is able to get a sunset flip but the referee is tied up with Chicky and Watts escapes the pin attempt. Chicky on commentary starts justifying why he’s talking to the ref.

Watts attacks Medico on the outside, ramming Medico’s head onto the ring apron. An attempt to ram Medico into the ringpost is countered and Watts ends up hitting the ringpost instead. Watts is busted open and Medico unloads a series of punches on the outside. Medico throws Eddie back in the ring and another punch combination results in a pin attempt that gets two. A headbutt sends Watts to the outside, with Medico giving chase and attacking Watts near the crowd (including ramming Watts into the guardrail). Watts staggers back to the ring and Medico comes off the rope with a headbutt that knocks Watts down. A pin attempt gets two. Medico has things well in hand, but both men knock heads coming off the ropes. This sends Watts to the outside but he remains on his feet staggering around. Chicky points Watts to the direction of the ring and, as Watts gets on the apron, he is met by Medico. Eddie headbutts Medico in the midsection and jumps over the ropes with a sunset flip. Medico counters by grabbing onto the top rope for leverage and sits down on Watts for the pin (remember his feud with Brett Sawyer and how Medico didn’t like that this was done to him?). Chicky immediately jumps on the apron to complain to the ref about Medico holding onto the ropes, telling the ref to check Medico’s hands for blood (since Watts was bleeding the ropes would have been covered by the blood). The ref checks Medico, finds blood and restarts the match. Chicky on commentary is happy justice is done, but Carlos brings up how Leo Burke used a foreign object to defeat TNT in the ruleta match and that the decision wasn’t reversed then but here it is (which Carlos thinks is unfair). Watts briefly has the advantage but Medico uses a series of punches and headbutts to regain control. Medico goes up top and goes for a senton, but Watts rolls away. Medico lands hard and Watts makes the cover for the three count. We have a new World Junior champion. El Club Deportivo now has four of the five singles titles.   

MD: This is a very complete stadium match (shown, I think, the next week to hype up that week’s matches) though we lose the point of transition due to a commercial. I’d be interested to see how Watts took over but it was probably just an eyerake or something. Watts is not someone I’m terribly familiar with. He worked Stampede before this (including losing at least once to Morrow and Cuban Assassin in 89) and had a mask match with Atlantis and Lizmark in late 90 as Animal II. He feels like a perfect guy to have been in the GWF Light Heavyweight Tournament to lose to Jerry Lynn in the second round or something. He sort of grew on me as the match went on, starting with some stalling which really paled to what was going on in the territory with Leo Burke (though Chicky being with him helped) but you couldn’t help but enjoy watching him move backwards step by step around the stadium with each Medico punch. That was actually a solid chunk of the match. And he ate some nice headbutts (with the proper transferal of blood onto a white mask) after blading. They went out of their way to protect Medico here, with a phantom pin and a false finish when he accidentally had his hands on the ropes after a sunset flip. Watts finally won it after Medico missed a leap off the top (and they went out of their way to show Chicky telling Watts to move). I don’t know about you but I enjoy watching Medico jab people in the face.   

EB: Let’s see Eddie Watts in a tv match as the new champion. His opponent is the masked La Sombra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2ee_aT-xgk

Watts seems pretty hyped in showing off his new championship as the video starts. Chicky seems to fake out Sombra as Watts is taking his jacket off, likely to prevent Sombra from jumping Watts early. This is a short match and one that further establishes Watts for the tv viewers. It’s another solid if basic showing for Watts, with the big spot being the Canadian guillotine finish (Watts covered some distance across the ring there). A rematch between Medico and Watts would take place on February 3, with Watts retaining the title. We’ll have to see what challenges arise for Eddie Watts as we progress into February.

MD: This was ok. The most memorable moment is Watts stepping back to dodge a dropkick and end Sombra’s one flurry of offense. He won with the legdrop off the top again. Basically, he’s workmanlike and competent, but not magic

EB: As February began, some changes continued in terms of the roster. One area with notable turnover was the tag team division. As mentioned in our last post, a new version of Los Mercenarios made their debut the first weekend of February. This new combination of Angel Acevedo and Rambo Ron Starr defeated the Youngbloods for the World tag team title. In addition to the new Los Mercenarios, another team arriving for some appearances is the team of The Hunters (or Alaskan Hunters). This tag team had a previous run in CSP in 1987 and it appears they're heading back to the territory. But while the rudo side seems to be reloading, the tecnico side is losing two of their stalwart teams. The first team leaving are the Youngbloods, who are finishing up this latest run with CSP after their title loss on February 4. Let’s take one last look at the Youngbloods with a throwback match from 1987, one that also allows us to take a look at the Alaskan Hunters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkRqsqYv-mk

This is from a Campeones episode that aired in January1990. This match was airing since The Hunters were on their way back and this served as a reminder to the fans who they were. The commentary mentions that the scheduled opponents for the Hunters were originally Huracan Castillo and Miguelito Perez but they had not yet arrived, so the Youngbloods are taking their place. The Alaskan Hunters (composed of Dale Veasy and the Bob Brown that is not the Bulldog) had a good run back in 87, winning the World and North American tag titles in the summer to fall run they had. The Youngbloods are able to counter an initial attack by the Hunters into an offensive flurry that sends both Hunters outside to regroup. You can see Chicky Starr is their manager back in 1987, but when we next see the Hunters that may not be the case. Carlos on commentary talk about how Chicky cost him the Universal title the previous week against Leo Burke by ringing the bell prematurely and interrupting the match (it appears this episode aired the same weekend as the rematch with Barba Roja in Colon’s corner, as Carlos says he has a surprise to counter Chicky tonight).  The Youngbloods control the first part of the match  to the crowd’s delight, although both teams could confuse the ref if he’s not paying attention by switching out their team members. The Hunters take control by sending Mark into their corner and working him over. The latter half of the match is one where the Hunters are in control, including a member switch when the ref’s back is turned. We go to a commercial with Mark trying to counter the Hunter in the ring with some chops but come back with Mark in a bearhug trying to fight out of it as Chris is trying to rile up the crowd. The Hunters continue attacking Mark in the corner (with some quick crowd shots shown throughout including a kid that looks to be sucking his thumb). Mark gets a couple of pin counters but the Hunters continue with the advantage. As Mark is being worked over with a reverse chinlock, we see Castillo and Perez arrive in street clothes. They proceed to jump in the ring and attack the Hunters, which the referee allows. It looks like they’re taking over for the Youngbloods. Present day Chicky on commentary can’t believe they’re allowing this (and in this case I’d have to say he has a point) but the fans cheer as Perez and Castillo make quick work of the Hunters for the win. We’ll be seeing the Hunters again soon, although if they look the same remains to be seen. .  

MD: This is from 87. The Youngbloods were replacing Perez and Castillo who had a transportation problem (Maybe a “four flat tires” situation?). The Hunters (Veasy and “Not Bulldog” Bob Brown) come off like the Outrunners, a perfectly genuine parody of 80s pro wrestling. They’re bald, energetic muscle guys, with a bearhug and a tendency to get redirected into one another. Youngbloods clown them early only to get dragged down in the corner. Right when they’re maybe starting a comeback (or at least have some roll-up hope spots), the Express hit the ring in their street clothes and get a counted pin that surely didn’t count.

EB: The other tag team the tecnico side is losing is the team of Huracan Castillo and Miguelito Perez. While they are not leaving the promotion ,the two are going to focus more on the singles title division for the time being and not be a full time team. Let’s also take a look at them in action, first with two matches from late fall of 1989 and then with one from our present day 1990 chronology where they take on the Universal champion Leo Burke and his manager Chicky Starr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6CYH6AiJIw

This first match is from late fall of 1989 as we get Perez and Castillo taking on El Exotico and El Gran Mendoza. Castillo and Mendoza start off, both men being familiar with each other from a previous rivalry they had over the World Junior title in 1987. We get a nice hold exchange and counter sequence from Castillo and Mendoza, which ends up with Mendoza missing a charge and ending up going through the ring ropes to the outside.  Exotico goes over to help his teammate but Mendoza is not happy about the attempted backrub. Mendoza rolls back in but gestures to Exotico to get in and makes the tag. Exotico gestures to Castillo to meet him in the center of the ring but the exchange does not go well for Exotico. Castillo tags Perez in and they hit a couple of double team moves on Exotico. Perez continues in control of the match, faking out Exotico on a leapfrog and then taking him down with an armdrag. Castillo tags back in but a missed elbow drop allows Exotico to tag Mendoza back in. Mendoza maintains control on Castillo but decides to tag Exotico back in, who promptly misses an elbow drop. A punch exchange is actually won by Exotico and he knocks Castillo down with a clothesline. Another successful clothesline sees Exotico start to dance a bit, but the overconfidence allows Castillo to counter with his own clothesline when Exotico attempts a third one. A neckbreaker gives Castillo time to tag in Perez, and Perez goes on the attack, with Mendoza and Castillo eventually all coming into the ring. The rudos try to ram Perez and Castillo into each other but they counter and instead attack Mendoza and Exotico. This leads to a powerslam on Exotico for the pin. 


MD: Perez and Castillo have matching Zubaz-type gear. It’s funny that Castillo is the one with the top instead of the hirsute Perez. Mendoza takes a slow-mo Hamrick bump early and then gets annoyed as Exotico tries to rub his back. Exotico has these fun preening short arm clotheslines but it gets reversed on the third and they go into a finishing bit with the Perez powerslam.

EB: Let’s go to our second match from late fall of 1989.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgYCR2aNbkU

Mendoza is again facing Perez and Castillo but he has Abudda Dein as his partner in this go around. Dein and Castillo start off with armbar exchanges and seem evenly matched. Mendoza on the ring apron keeps trying to take some swipes at Castillo every time he circles near the rudo corner. Dein takes control with a knee to the midsection but Castillo counters with a monkey flip out of the corner and a dropkick. Dein tags in Mendoza, who seems ready to go after Castillo. However, Mendoza circles around once and then tags Dein back in without engaging Castillo, Another exchange ends with Castillo getting an atomic drop that sends Dein into his corner and into Mendoza. Dein regroups and has a strategy conference with Mendoza, but does not tag out. Perez is tagged in for the first time this match and Dein does not fare any better against him. The rudos are able to gain the advantage when Mendoza reaches over to grab Miguelito by the neck when he’s coming off the ropes. Mendoza tags in and works over Perez briefly before once again tagging Dein back in. Dein briefly maintains control but a belly to belly suplex off the ropes allows Perez to tag Castillo back in. Dein also tags Mendoza in at the same time and now it’s castillo and Mendoza fighting in the ring. Castillo hits a flying knee and this leads to all four men fighting. In the chaos Castillo ends up getting rammed into Dein, which briefly allows the rudos to attack Perez two on one. However, an attempted double team backfires when Mendoza hits Dein with a kick when Perez gets out of the way, allowing Castillo (the legal man) to jump off the top turnbuckle with a bodypress onto Mendoza for the pin. 

MD: In cutting this footage up, Dein’s shoes have been a big help. He’s probably on the way out here as he needs Mendoza’s help (a nasty head grab as Perez was coming off the ropes) to take over and then eats a belly-to-belly to set up the comeback in short order. Mendoza takes the fall after some miscommunication however.

EB: We go to our present time as Perez and Castillo (who are being identified more by their team name of The Caribbean Express) are facing the Universal champion Leo Burke and Chicky Starr in tag action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xgG-Cop2bE

Castillo and Burke start the match off as Eliud Gonzalez on commentary talks about how proud Perez and Castillo’s fathers are about how their sons careers are going. Castillo knocks Burke down with a dropkick, which sends Burke looking for relief in the corner. Burke goes for a side headlock but Castillo manages to take Burke down with a couple of armdrags. Castillo works the arm as Chicky yells at the fans. Hector Moyano on commentary mentions that the tecnicos’ speed has been the difference so far. Leo breaks the armbar by sending Castillo into the ropes and hitting a knee to the midsection. Chicky tags in but falls victim to an armdrag takedown. Chicky breaks out of the hold but a nice exchange leads to Chicky once again being trapped back in the armdrag. Burke tries to come in to help Chicky but the ref stops him. While the ref is distracted with Burke, Perez switches out with Castillo and continues to work on Chicky’s arm. The ref asks Castillo if he tagged out and the crowd cheers in affirmative when Castillo points at them. Chicky manages a headscissor counter but the attempt to charge at Perez backfires and Chicky ends up getting dropkicked out of the ring.

Castillo throws Chicky back in and Perez and Castillo continue to maintain control on Chicky. Burke breaks up a pin attempt with a kneedrop, which gives Chicky enough time to make the tag. Burke attacks a dazed Castillo. Perez fires up the crowd as Burke hits a neckbreaker on Casitllo. A second attempt at a neckbreaker sees Burke slip to the mat when Castillo grabs onto the ropes. Perez is tagged in and cleans house on Burke and Chicky. All four men briefly end up in the ring, with Chciky rolling out and Castillo being told to leave the ring by the ref. Perez hits a powerslam on Burke, but with the ref’s back turned, Chicky stomps on Perez. This gives Burke the opening to send Perez into the ropes, where Chicky grabs onto Miguelito from behind when coming off the ropes, snapping his head back. Burke takes the opening to put on the figure four and Perez tries to fight out of it. It looks like Perez might reach the ropes but Chicky moves over to yank the ropes away (something he had been doing while seconding Burke against Carlos Colon). The ref warns Chicky to back away but it’s enough for Perez to finally give up.  

MD: They’re in and out in under six minutes here. Burke is an absolute workhorse paired with Castillo to start, rope running, feeding, hitting a cheapshot or a cut off, and then feeding again. Chicky takes his share of damage too. Brief, brief heat here as Perez jams a neckbreaker attempt by holding on to the ropes and the heels feed some more. There’s an awesome matter-of-fact pin breakup in the stretch with Chicky just sauntering in with a nonchalant stomp. Finish has him catching Perez from the outside which lets Burke put on the figure-four.

EB: We’ll have to see if any new teams step up to fill the void left by these two tecnico teams. Speaking of open spots, with Gary Albright wrapping up his run in CSP, there was an opening for a new wrestler in El Profe’s Real Academia. El Profe has brought in another power wrestler in the form of Carl Styles. Styles first appears in the available CSP results on February 2, taking on Mark Youngblood. Let’s see him in action against Nick Ayala and learn more about Carl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hesb-lQweFQ

The announcers talk up the young Ayala and mention that he’s up against a man with an impressive physique in Carl Styles. As Styles knocks Ayala down with a clothesline, Eliud Gonzalez starts mentioning that Styles was a collegiate champion at the University of Tennessee, was three years intercollegiate champion in bodybuilding and he is from Georgia. As Styles continues with the advantage, El Profe moves toward the announcers table and yells ‘As you can see, what I bring here is quality, the cream, so watch and learn’. Eliud remarks that so far Carl is backing up Profe’s words. Ayala briefly looks to start a comeback but an eyerake stops him. Carl continues showing off his power with a delayed shoulder breaker. Carl’s offense seems to be focused on the neck and shoulder area of Ayala. A gutwrench suplex leads to an attempted pin but it looks like Styles decided to lift Ayala up. The commentators continue talking up Styles and his bodybuilder physique (so they’re giving Styles a similar presentation as Albright, although focused on bodybuilding instead of amateur wrestling). A powerslam sets up a full nelson (that explains the neck and shoulder based offensive attacks) and Ayala gives up. An impressive win for Carl Styles. 

MD: Styles feels like he’s taking Albright’s spot on the card. He feels like a guy who should be dressed up like Super Freddie or Jason the Terrible to me. Ayala tries to punch back but just gets powered over with a shoulder breaker, a gutwrench, a power slam, before finally being put away with the Full Nelson.

EB: As has been the case with other newcomers, sooner or later they will be tested by some of the more established tecnicos. In this case, let’s see how Carl Styles does against Super Medico.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOFzaYbZ0VI

The match starts with Styles hitting some clubbing forearms to Medico’s back. Styles then hits an overhead press slam on Medico before posing for the crowd and going for the pin attempt. Medico kicks out at two. He then counters Styles with a sunset flip attempt for two. Styles goes back on the attack, hitting a snapmare and then a chinlock on Medico. A slam leads to an elbow drop miss by Styles and Medico tries to take advantage with his punch combinations (or as Eliud calls it his ‘maquinita de golpes’ or hit machine). A backdrop and a slam gets a two count for Medico. A shoulder tackle knocks Styles down, but Carl is able to get to his feet and grab Medico coming off the ropes, leading to a hotshot onto the top rope. That is enough to give Carl the opening to put on the full nelson and get the submission win. Styles refuses to break the full nelson and holds on until forced to break. It looks like El Profe has brought in another potential power threat for the tecnicos. The video ends with Carl trash talking the crowd and the camera guy.

MD: We come in JIP here, hard to say how deep. Styles shows off his power more with a press slam, then puts on a chinlock. Medico works up and yes, I do like watching him punch people. Styles takes it with big flailing arms. He cuts off Medico with a hotshot (pretty varied set of offense from this guy) and locks in the full nelson for the win.

EB: Besides the roster turnover, we also have the existing issues between the Club Deportivo members and El Ejercito de la Justicia. We talked about Leo Burke and TNT earlier, but what about Carlos Colon and Manny Fernandez? Well, the week after the attack on Barba Roja, Carlos was absent from the Campeones episode, meaning it was just Hugo and Chicky on commentary. Throughout the show, they talked about what had happened and how Carlos was out for blood against Manny. Chicky said that Carlos was not going to be able to do anything to Manny while Hugo said Carlos was going to go on a rampage. They would face off on January 27 and then again on February 2, but no clear winner was had either time (with the February 2 match ending in a double countout). The feud between Carlos and Manny is far from being settled.

Still, Manny is also the Puerto Rico champion and he is facing challengers for his title. Let’s go to a JIP title defense against Miguelito Perez.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFUgm8FJEdY

We join the match in progress with Miguelito on the floor outside of the ring, right by the lighting rig. The referee is administering the ring out count as Manny Fernandez is on his knees recovering. Outside is Chicky Starr,  who is watching Perez attempt to stand up. Inside the ring Manny is able to stand up and gets tied up with the ref, allowing Chicky the opportunity to attack a vulnerable Perez on the outside. Hector Moyano on commentary mentions that Manny had rammed Miguelito’s neck against the lighting rig pipes and that Chicky appears to have hit Perez with something just now as well. Perez is able to stagger back to the ring but he is easy pickings for Manny. Fenrandez hits a corner clothesline on Perez but a second attempt results in Miguelito charging back with a clothesline of his own. Miguelito starts getting fired up and knocks Manny down with a second clothesline. Several punches lead to a dropkick for a two count. Perez hits an irish whip and a charge into the corner. Perez tries for a slam but Fernandez counters with an inside cradle for two. A punch exchange leads to a criss-cross rope running exchange between the two men. Perez manages to drop down as Manny passes through but Manny catches Miguelito with the flying forearm off the rebound and gets the pinfall win. A successful Puerto Rico title defense for Manny Fernandez.

MD: We just get the last three minutes of this, starting with Perez on the floor. That lets Manny distract the ref so Chicky can get a cheapshot in. What pals. Manny’s swagger was in full display when he was in control. Perez is able to reverse a second corner clothesline and fire back. Finish is rope running with Manny hitting the flying forearm out of nowhere. Looked like it was probably a good one.

EB: Harley Race is also one the champions in El Club Deportivo, holding the Caribbean title. So far he has stayed out of any direct feud with El Ejercito de la Justicia but that is soon to change. First, let’s look at Race in action against Chris Youngblood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2weqnRrhsc

Last post we saw Mark Youngblood take on Harley Race, let’s see how brother Chris does. The ring introductions are made and Race gets a side headlock of the lock up. Chris counters by sending Race into the ropes and hitting a chop. Another lockup leads to a break in the corner, where Race attempts to cheap shot Chris but his punch is blocked and Chris counters with a double overhead chop. An irish whip and clothesline gets a two count for Chris. As both men circle one another again, Chris starts clapping to get the crowd into it. Youngblood gets a side headlock on Race and works if for a few moments. Race sends Chris to the ropes, but misses a punch, allowing Chris to hit a slam for a two count. Chris starts pumping up the crowd and doing a war yell on the turnbuckle as Race tries to collect himself. Hugo on commentary mentions there may be a potential upset here, which has been happening all over including boxing (I’m guessing this means Tyson vs Douglas happened already, so this is from a mid February tv airing even though the match was likely taped at the end of January). Race uses a knee to take over for a moment, leading to a pinfall attempt for two. Chris is able to get a sleeperhold on Harley and it may be an upset. However, Race manages to counter by ramming Chris face first into the corner. A piledriver sets up the fisherman suplex and Race gets the win. You can’t give Harley these openings, he’ll end it quickly with that fisherman suplex.

MD: It’s interesting to think that the Sports Club at this point was Race, Burke, Manny (and yeah, Watts). That’s quite the group. This had Race skidding to the ground for Youngblood’s chops early, thudding him down in the middle, and then cutting off the comeback with a piledriver and the laying fisherman’s suplex. Didn’t quite have the time to be anything more. Race could still take a few bumps early though.

EB: Earlier we mentioned that Invader #1 had gotten involved in the January 27 Universal title match. After Invader's interference, Chicky Starr promised on tv that Invader would pay for sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. This resulted in Chicky asking Harley Race to take care of Invader.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GslZxj_K_LI

The video opens with Invader heading towards the announcers’ table where Harley Race and Chicky Starr are standing and appear to have been ranting and raving moments before. It looks like Harley and Chicky had come out and issued a challenge to Invader. Chicky wants Harley to teach Invader a lesson for interfering in the Universal title match. Invader addresses Harley and asks if he understood correctly that Race was challenging him. After Harley and Chicky make it clear that they want Invader right now, Invader says to give him 5 minutes to get ready and he’ll face Harley. But before Invader finishes talking, Race decks Invader with a punch as Chicky yells ‘Right now!’. Harley rams Invader face first into the ringpost and grabs the table to attack Invader, as Chicky eggs Harley on and runs down Invader on commentary. ‘I’ve taken over the official commentary for this encounter, as you can see the Invader is finished, you can see the blood is flowing! Harley Race, the champion, the only man that will finish with Invader. This is for sticking his nose into what didn’t concern him’. Chicky gives back the mic and joins Harley in yanking Invader’s dress shirt sleeves in order to make a straight jacket of sorts. Harley and Chicky taunt the defenseless Invader and Harley continues hitting Invader at his leisure. 

Eventually the trio of Castillo, Perez and (I think) a masked TNT arrive to help Invader, with Harley and Chicky getting into the ring. Race challenges Castillo to get in the ring with him as Invader is helped to the back by the other tecnicos. Inside the ring the bell rings, and Castillo immediately is on Race with a series of punches and a clothesline. A slam sets up an elbow drop, but Race dodges it. Race gets up before the stunned Castillo and immediately hooks in the fisherman suplex for a quick pinfall. Race has another quick victory, but more important, he’s set his sights on Invader #1.

MD: This is a great angle, with Invader wanting just five minutes with Race and getting cheapshotted, tied up, and bloodied up for his trouble. It leads to a match with Castillo where Race made short work with him. I know that there were short matches on TV even with names sometimes, but Race’s feel even shorter, which makes him come off as particularly dominant. It may be because he couldn’t work longer matches or at least not frequently but it was probably effective in giving him a bit of extra aura.

EB: Invader #1 and Harley Race would face off on February 2 in Humacao in a tag match (with partners Carlos Colon and Leo Burke, respectively) and in a singles match on February 3. This match ended in a disqualification win for Race, but the rivalry is only heating up. They are scheduled to face each other again on February 10. We’ll talk about some of the other happenings of the February 10 card next time but we’re closing out this week’s post with the Universal title match between Leo Burke and TNT. Although the rematch has been ordered by the wrestling commission, this is basically understood to be TNT’s last shot at Burke and the Universal title. Because of the repeated cheating by Burke and Starr, Carlos Colon has offered to serve as TNT’s second for the match. And in another boost for TNT, a decision has been handed out by the wrestling commissioner. After a few weeks of review, it has been decided that due to the way Leo Burke won the ruleta rusa match, the stipulation of TNT losing his face paint has been rescinded and TNT can legally wear his face paint again. Let’s go to Caguas for the match.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgq0PHDMTBE


TNT is back in the face paint and Carlos Colon is seconding TNT in order to counter Chicky Starr. This is from a Campeones airing a week after the match took place, so we get the interesting dynamic of the two seconds being on commentary along with Hugo. Carlos mentions on commentary that he had been saying that this year they weren't going to keep taking any more underhandedness from Chicky Starr and El Club Deportivo and it was going to be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. TNT and Burke are near one side of the ring, with Burke arguing and pointing that TNT needs to head to the opposite side of the ring to start the match. Carlos is watching from the ring apron but Chicky is still in the ring and also motioning that TNT should move to the other side of the ring. The ref El Vikingo has his hands full, telling TNT to move to the other side but also going after Chicky and telling him to get out of the ring. As TNT moves a bit to the other side, Burke immediately moves towards Carlos and starts pointing and telling him to get off the apron. TNT moves back near Burke and,as Burke turns around from yelling at Colon, TNT unleashes a kick that scares Burke away. The match has begun.

Burke starts begging off in the corner but TNT stands his ground. (Wait, did someone throw a smoke bomb near ringside?) Burke tries a kick but TNT blocks it and counters with a chop. Burke staggers back up but TNT follows up immediately, not giving Burke the opportunity to try his usual rolling out of the ring and stalling playbook. A lock up leads to a TNT chop and Burke again staggers away but is grabbed by TNT. A blow exchange occurs but TNT comes out with the better end of it. Burke finally is able to leave the ring and stall a bit to slow down TNT’s momentum. Chicky on commentary says that he’ll say one good thing about TNT, he’s one of the young lions in the sport and has made an impressive showing so far in his career, but he’s in there with the master in Leo Burke and has no chance of winning. Back in the ring, TNT and Burke circle each other, with Burke jabbing his hand into TNT’s face. As TNT recovers and goes back after Burke, Leo puts the ref in between them to stop TNT from getting at him. Burke again gets away to the outside and the ref stops TNT from going after him.  

Back in, Burke again circles around and slaps TNT in the face. He is really trying to goad TNT into making an angry mistake. TNT charges again  but Burke once more hides behind the ref, using him as a shield. AS TNT is backed away, Leo kicks TNT from around the ref’s side. Burke works the advantage with punches and a turnbuckle ram, leading into a side headlock. TNT counters by sending Burke to the ropes and hitting a slam for a pin attempt, but Burke gets his leg on the rope. TNT immediately kicks Leo’s leg and takes him down with a headlock. After working the headlock on the mat, TNT continues with the advantage as we go to commercial break. Back from the break and we see TNT lying partly on the top turnbuckle as Leo is yanking TNT’s left leg. As Leo keeps applying pressure, TNT is able to kick the back of Burke’s head in order to break the hold. Both men tumble to the mat. TNT is limping as he gets up and Burke immediately attacks the injured leg. You can tell Leo is probably thinking about the figure four already. TNT sends Burke into the ropes but collapses after a leapfrog counter, his leg unable to support his weight. Leo goes for the figure four but TNT manages to kick Burke away, sending him into the corner with Burke hitting the back of his head on the top turnbuckle pad. Burke is first up and hits a neckbreaker that gets a two count. A back suplex by Burke gets two. Both men are showing signs of fatigue but Leo maintains control with some punches and a kneedrop. Burke gets a sleeperhold on TNT in the middle of the ring and this may be enough to put TNT away.

TNT struggles in the hold and starts to fade, but is able to ram Burke back into the turnbuckle to break the hold just when it looked like TNT was going to collapse to the mat. TNT hits a couple of back elbows but an irish whip charge is countered by Leo into a sunset flip pin attempt. TNT kicks out at two and immediately counters with his own cradle attempt for two. TNT hits  a spin kick off the ropes and both men are down. Carlos starts clapping and cheering TNT on. Both men get to their feet and try to gain control but they end up colliding heads off a Burke shoulder tackle and are down again. Carlos gets up on the ring apron in a kneeling position to cheer on TNT, causing the ref to move over to make sure Colon does not get involved. On the other side of the ring, Chicky takes advantage of the ref’s attention being diverted and slips a foreign object to Burke. Chicky on commentary once again is having monitor problems and doesn’t see what Hugo is talking about. Burke tries to hit TNT but is sent flying by a backdrop to the mat. Leo loses the foreign object on impact, with it landing right by Carlos Colon. Carlos sees the object and points the ref’s attention to Chicky, who is on the apron. As he does this. Carlos grabs the foreign object. The ref now moves towards Chicky Starr and tells him to get off the apron. In the confusion, Burke chop blocks TNT’s leg and starts his attempt at putting on the figure four. Seeing this, Carlos decides to get in the ring with the object and decks Burke with it. Carlos immediately jumps out of the ring and hides the object in his sock as Chicky is arguing with the ref. TNT crawls over to make the cover and the ref turns around in time to make the three count. TNT has done it! Chicky Starr is not happy about the outcome as Carlos jumps into the ring to celebrate. Carlos helps TNT up and hugs him as Chicky on commentary says that the WWC cannot accept this win. As Carlos continues raising TNT’s arm in victory, Chicky starts wagging his finger indicating  that this should not be. The ref goes to give TNT the title belt but Carlos grabs it to present it to the new champion. As TNT grabs the belt, we see Invader #1 and Huracan Castillo arrive to celebrate with TNT. Invader and Carlos help put the title belt on the new Universal champion as TNT and Castillo share a moment. The tecnicos leave the ring as Chicky continues waving his hand around, with Carlos on commentary saying that he did what he had to do in order to ensure that Chicky and Burke did not get away with it again.  

MD: Great moment here. As always, I love seeing Burke do his thing early, trying not to engage, ducking out of the ring, hiding behind the ref. He tried to sneak a kick in that way but it didn’t do him much good. TNT controlled the first half. We lose the transition and presumably a chunk of Burke’s control due to the commercial as we come in on TNT hope spots as he’s limping around. For someone who did come off as quite dangerous, TNT was very good at portraying vulnerability. Here, he did a leapfrog but immediately crumbled due to the knee and wasn’t able to capitalize after the spin wheel kick. Lots of hooha at the finish, with Chicky giving Burke a weapon, TNT dodging and hitting a back body drop as Colon was complaining to the ref, Burke clipping the leg, and then Colon hitting Burke as he was going for the figure-four as the ref was distracted by Chicky. Huge, warranted celebration as TNT rolled over for the win.

EB: TNT has become the Universal champion! He is the first El Ejercito de la Justicia member  that is not Carlos Colon to become the champion. But you can bet Chicky Starr and Leo Burke will be complaining about the match ending. Will there be a rematch?

Next time on El Deporte de las Mil Emociones, some ‘new’ tag teams make their debut as we also get a new manager joining the rudo ranks. Plus, TNT begins his reign as the Universal champion, but an old foe may end this reign before it’s really begun.

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