Hi! I have had trouble motivating to do “match reviews,” and who knows how long that will stick? I also don’t want to watch full shows. But I do want to watch and talk about some wrestling so let’s do a compilation. You and me. Together. Let’s go on this ride, this journey.
Arn Anderson
Yesterday was apparently Arn Anderson’s 64th birthday. This is a great thing. I wrote a little about Arn before FanFyte died, though it got chucked into “uncategorized” because you simply cannot put labels on me. Arn has been one of my favorite wrestlers basically as long as I have had favorite wrestlers, so most of my 40 years on the planet Earth.
Chavo Guerrero vs Marty Lunde (Mid-South, Dec. 1982)
Arn, still going by his Christian name, had just debuted in the SPORT!! of professional wrestling about 10 months prior to this, where he wrestles the great veteran Chavo Guerrero, spelled “CHAVO GUERRO” on the TV chyron. I know a fair percentage of the people who pay attention to my “socials” or even consider reading things I write are a good bit younger than me and a lot of them have really not watched 80s wrestling besides maybe the big matches. This is early-80s so really the style here is still holding over from the late-70s American TV style.
Arn’s timing isn’t quite there yet but you can see the infancy of a lot of what he did in his career and would perfect — the way he throws the left hand, the way he stomps, the way he bumps on a dropkick. Chavo eventually lights him up because he’s the star here, hits a butt bump, hits a slingshot plancha, which is crazy highspot stuff of the time. Fun, short look at early Arn, and you get to see Chavo, who was also great, do his thing in bite-sized portion.
Dusty Rhodes vs Arn Anderson (NWA World Championship Wrestling, July 27, 1985)
This is from the “SuperStation Championship Challenge Series” which had various cool matches and whatnot. Dusty’s defending the NWA TV title and it is him and Arn, an underrated pairing because Dusty and Flair had the big main events at Starrcades and whatnot, and his feud with Tully was probably more heated, too, but Dusty and Arn circled each other for most of Arn’s career and they were in there plenty together, singles and tag. Arn has just a few years after his debut matured into one of the best all-around wrestlers on the planet, this is two-and-a-half years after that Mid-South match with Chavo and he’s just worlds better. You hang around big dogs like he wound up doing pretty quickly and it comes together.
Baby Doll’s in Dusty’s corner because he won her for 30 days by beating Tully. Eventually they got along because Dusty needed people to think he was pulling ass. Dusty works the knee a bit, Arn works the arm a bit, cheating with the hair pull. WTBS Studio into it because it’s the rare star vs star match in front of their very eyes. Lot of “mat work” but not in the slick, stylish way. Lots of struggle and sweat and grunting. Chinlocks and body part holds. Arn’s working with a bandage on his forehead because our wrestlers used to go out and bleed on the road. Anderson with bits of cheating, Baby Doll cheering him on and even helping distract the referee.
Arn’s arm work leads to Dusty going for a vertical suplex, but that left arm sort of gives out on him just as he’s going for the drop, and he comes down awkwardly and hits his head on the mat a bit, too. The match breaks down into a couple ref bumps, Ole Anderson getting involved, then Magnum TA running in to make an unofficial three-count with this leather jacket, which means nothing, but does allow Ole to jump him from behind, and the Andersons, National tag team champions, try to put the hurt on America’s Team. It doesn’t work. Dusty yells about “Hollywood wrestling” after the match. It’s an OK match, nothing special but a nice bit of nostalgia for people of certain ages.
Ole & Arn Anderson vs Buzz Sawyer & Terry Taylor (NWA World Championship Wrestling, Sept. 7, 1985)
Buzz Sawyer did his absolute best to shield us all from having to watch Undertaker matches and we don’t appreciate his attempt enough. Buzz and Arn always had a nice chemistry together, though Arn has also claimed, I think, that Buzz tried to get a little too rough with him once and he had to to sock ‘im. This would not be an unusual story. Buzz was an outstanding wrestler. He was an animal. But yeah even in wilder times, Buzz was a little too wild to ever have a single serious run. But he was someone credible you could bring in until he wore out his welcome or just dipped. Post-territory days just don’t have many of those guys. You did have some vagabond types who bounced around and always got at least a little push — Sid, Bam Bam Bigelow — but they weren’t quite Buzz types.
Terry Taylor was a hell of a technician and all that. Arn and Ole are Arn and Ole. This is another “SuperStation Championship Challenge Series” match for the Andersons’ National tag belts. Both the Andersons drove great knees into the chest. David Crockett is about 0.7 nutting for a lot of the exchanges in this match, which is a solid but not exceptional David nutting score. Sawyer absolutely rules in this match, just a wild man, biting faces and thumbs and legs, showing off his athleticism and quickness, laying in the shots. The heat on Taylor is pretty good, the heat on Buzz is great. Ole’s frustration with Buzz is excellent, he is a man who cannot be dominated. Ole throws Taylor over the top for the automatic DQ because they are reeling once the Rooster gets the hot tag. Really good stuff, higher-end for the TBS studio.
Arn Anderson vs Wahoo McDaniel (NWA World Wide Wrestling, May 24, 1986)
For Arn’s TV title. This has one of those great Crockett territory crowds, high-pitched and loudly reacting to everything the babyface does well. One big Wahoo chop sends Arn reeling, they go nuts. Wahoo takes out the leg and grabs a toehold, they go nuts. This is sort of like the prior Dusty match in that there’s nothing super standout great about it, but it scratches an itch and it’s well-executed, and the hot arena crowd makes it even better. People just bonkshit for Wahoo to whip Arn’s ass.
Wahoo using a single chop as a highspot or to turn the tide in a match is a lost art sort of thing. And I get it, I’m not complaining, really; things change and tastes evolve. Wrestling is not a unique entertainment medium in this way. But it is striking (ha!) to go back to that when you’ve had years of the Young Bucks’ superkicks being treated as space-filling weak right hands.
There used to be a lot more focus on the champion’s advantage in the TV wrestling, and we have it here with Arn openly stalling for time, asking how much has expired, as he’s perfectly content for a time limit draw and to retain his title. He doesn’t have to win to keep his status, and he’s not going to risk losing if things aren’t fully in control, and of course they are not. Wahoo does get a three-count, but Arn had his foot on the rope, and Tommy Young catches it after hitting the three. Immediately, Arn backdrops Wahoo over the top for the automatic DQ. This is cinema. This is art.
Ole & Arn Anderson vs The Rock n’ Roll Express (NWA World Championship Wrestling, July 19, 1986)
This crowd is insane for the Rock n’ Rolls. When Ricky (or Robert, but mostly Ricky) tells you that they had the people going mad in a way that barely anyone else did, if that sounds silly to you, it really isn’t. He’s not exaggerating. Well, not terribly, compared to average wrestler exaggeration. I often talk about how behind the times wrestling tends to be with current pop culture, but to be fair to everyone since, the 80s “rock n’ wrestling” era did a lot of catch-up work, coming roughly 30 years after rock n’ roll became a culture-changing commercial force.
There is some good story coming into this one, as Ricky was recently victim of a brutal Horsemen attack, which led to a series of matches with world champ Ric Flair, which were as good as Flair’s big matches with anyone. Flair said Morton was so good it wasn’t even like working. The crowd is absolutely insane for two good ol’ boy rednecks with Joan Jett haircuts, long before anything happens in this match itself, not going crazy for a big comeback or rally, just going crazy. Morton and Gibson had a hold on the people few could rival.
You have to bring the crowd down from there, of course, to have the meat of a match, but you don’t want to bring them down too far, and the Andersons and Rock n’ Rolls are great at keeping them simmering before letting them boil over again, and managing to repeat this a few times, because this is a match of fairly substantial length, it’s not a little 10-minute affair.
This here is a truly great match. The Arn/Tully pairing gets the majority of the love Out There, but there is a very easy argument to make on actual evidence that Ole/Arn was the better tag team. It’s hard to convince some people because Tully was a better singles wrestler than Ole and brought a different, more immediate sort of energy and character, but I think Ole/Arn is the better team, which is no knock on Arn/Tully, they’re both great tandems.
Ricky’s off his ass on the long sell, as always, and the recent Horsemen beatdown gives everyone an easy base for that, just battering his nose and jaw. More than just being great selling and bumping and whatever, he was an absolute master at perfectly balancing the almost making the tag, over and over and over again. People didn’t give up on him or lose interest. Here, Robert Gibson finally gets sick of watching the beating and just interferes, and then referee Tommy Young just starts making counts on Gibson pin attempts. I went back over it, there was no legal tag of Robert Gibson.
There’s lots of near-falls and stuff from there, then the bell sounds and it’s a time-limit draw that probably doesn’t match any specific time, because no one cared about dorks keeping time of the match back then. There were so few of them that it didn’t really matter, and the ones who did weren’t gonna stop watching on a flub; they weren’t gonna be, like, “Well, I’m not sure this is on the level! I’m out!” But this is a fantastic match, great displays by both excellent teams, truly worth watching. 4.5/5
The Brain Busters vs Demolition (WWF Superstars of Wrestling, Nov. 4, 1989)
The Busters are just about to take a hike from the World Wrestling Federation, they’ve got the tag team belts and they are about to make a very, very rare title defense on TV, taking on the team they’d beaten for the belts earlier in the year. Arn and Tully made a very strong run in the WWF for the year they were there, didn’t really have to sacrifice anything about what had made them who they were elsewhere, their only “cartoonization” coming in the form of being paired with Bobby Heenan, who was truly great so, you know, that’s fine.
They also never did get entrance music, which was very rare for the WWF at the time for name guys. Rick Derringer’s “Demolition” song was better than “Real American.” Adjusting from mid-80s Crockett to ’89 WWF is really something. There are strengths on both sides. Here, you’ve got the Busters going for a fast start, trying to catch Demolition cold, and that means you get to the “meat” of the match really fast compared to the Southern style, where you get a bunch of fake-outs on when you’re really getting going before you actually start.
Arn and Tully were able to adjust well by sort of boiling down all their tricks and quirks into a tighter package. I can understand just thinking that sucks, but I’ve always liked taking things for what they were, the differences in how wrestling companies operate and present matches, until more modern day WWE just took everything remotely distinct about individual wrestlers and turned them all into slightly different flavors of vanilla.
Smash takes a short beating, Ax gets the tag and gets to it, scoops and slams, Arn takes a hotshot from Smash, and Blanchard gets hit with the Demolition finish, and we’ve got new champs just like that. It’s about a six minute match all in all, but they needed to do a title change, and they wanted people to be able to see it, so Superstars was the place to do it. I startled my cat doing a Vince Laugh because I have my headphones on and he didn’t hear the original, the world was silent to him other than the night insects outdoors, and then I went HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH.
Arn Anderson vs Samoan Savage (NWA Worldwide, Jan. 27, 1990)
When Arn jumped back over to the NWA, they got a Horsemen group back together and pretty much immediately stuck the TV title on him. He was a babyface, but mainly just because he was fighting heels, as old buddy Ric Flair was still mixed up with Gary Hart’s J-Tex Corporation. But Arn didn’t really change anything about being Arn; he was slightly more pleasant, but he still mostly wrestled like Arn Anderson.
Samoan Savage, aka Tama and Tonga Kid and other names, was, like many of his family members, a very solid wrestler, good but didn’t have that X-factor to take him higher than a midcard role. His brother Fatu took forever to figure that getting his big fat ass out and dancing would take him up the card, and that was sort of a turning point. Then came the Usos and Roman Reigns.
One dopey, un-Arn thing is he offers a handshake to a guy he knows won’t take it, and it gets him kicked in the side of the head. Savage obviously has a very hard head and punching him in it is no good. One of the little Arn trademarks is him driving an elbow into the back of the neck if you commit the cardinal mistake (bending over too soon after an Irish whip, setting for a backdrop).
Savage misses a flying headbutt or splash, Arn comes back with the spinebuster and calls for and hits the DDT. But he hesitates to pin and it’s the J-Tex boys, Buzz Sawyer and Great Muta and Dragonmaster, but then Flair and Sting come in for the save, and nothing much happens at all. It’s an OK TV match for 1990. You still didn’t want name guys just losing on TV, even if the name guy was just Tama.
Indie Trash
CM Punk & Jason Kronan vs Adam Pearce & Chuck E. Smooth (MAW, Oct. 20, 2000)
Back in 1999, with wrestling booming, there were a few indie shows in southwest Michigan where I grew up, an outfit called Real American Wrestling (RAW). I saw the Iron Sheik there, and I saw Koko B. Ware and Typhoon, and I saw some indie guys I’d read about in the magazines like Skull Ganz and “Beef Stew” Lou Marconi. I also saw a young kid named “X-Rated” Jason Kronan who really stood out as a potential cruiserweight star, and he never took his career much beyond the Great Lakes region, but he had a little run there for a minute.
Anyway, there’s not a ton of footage of him out there, because he wasn’t around long. I heard he became a school teacher. But here he is in West Allis, Wisc., teaming with a young CM Punk against Adam Pearce and Chuck E. Smooth. Two of these guys are on national TV 22 years later — well, one of them still is, the other is in a TBD spot at the moment — and the other two, uh, are not. Kronan apparently had his last match in 2001, while Chuck did a couple matches again in 2019 after not having wrestled since a couple matches in 2011, and before those, he hadn’t wrestled since 2006, and his real “peak” run was probably 2001-02. Chuck was part of the Gold Bond Mafia, which is an ancient relic thing for aging indie heads.
Most of Punk’s budding character was built around being straight edge and liking Pepsi. It made people very mad. Chuck wasn’t a natural babyface but that’s the role he’s got. I feel like I’m gonna have to gloss over some slurs here, as was the style of the time. Yep, there’s one, but from the crowd.
Early we get a valiant attempt by Pearce to get the crowd to not chant “you fucked up” by slamming Punk down hard as fuck and then shouting “FUCK PEPSI,” but it does not work, because Punk had slightly “fucked up” on an Irish whip to the corner, and a few dudes were not going to let it go.
Very much a Great Lakes region (if you say “midwestern” some dork in a Dakota or Nebraska will always get mad) young guy indie match of the time. Dave Prazak does some good work in the heel corner, jawing and seeming like he’s part of things without being overly involved. Pearce is probably the best Worker of the four at this point in time, Kronan probably the worst and also the guy with the least personality. The other three guys (and Prazak!) are loud and Kronan’s just not loud. Punk takes some nasty bumps on his skull, including a sunset flip bomb in the corner from Chuck.
Pearce’s loud personality leans a lot on CUSSIN’, but so does Punk’s. They hadn’t really developed much and that was an easy way to get people to pay attention and notice you and react. It’s cheap but it largely works for the live audience. Also like matches of this sort, this is a good bit longer than it needs to be, artistically, but it’s easy to forgive because these guys are trying to learn and having more time allows them to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. But yeah, man, like, quality-wise, this is way too long.
Skull Ganz vs Larry Destiny (CWF, Apr. 29, 1997)
Mentioned Skull Ganz, here he is in a CWF match from Warren, Mich., in 1997. Destiny’s a guy from Windsor, Ont., Canada, and those dudes usually wound up working around the Great Lakes area plenty. This match has some of the best bad commentary you’re ever gonna hear. They’re really trying to sound like the wrestling they have heard on the TV, which really is what indie wrestling was always designed to be, people trying their best to repeat what they’ve seen on TV, what inspired them to be there, in an effort to get to the TV.
Look, this ain’t good, but it’s a certain time and place and style and way it’s not good. And the commentary, while not technically any good, is keeping me paying attention. There’s one high angle cam over the ring that looks like a Nintendo game or something. I think the ringside guy’s shit went out because they’re staying with this one. It’s kinda neat, though. It’s like fan cam with commentary. You should know that at one point Larry Destiny does what is called a “Northern Lights suplex, of sorts.” Anyway this ends in a DQ when another man comes into the ring wearing a mask, and it turns out to be ALEXIS MACHINE! And then THE PRODUCER! Folks, these are people!
Donovan Morgan vs Michael Modest (APW Night of the Return Match, Oct. 3, 1997)
The referee is a young Vinnie Massaro. I’ve probably talked about this before but I’ve never been wild about California indie wrestling. There is just a sort of sunny optimism about California indie wrestlers that you don’t find in the midwest, south, or east coast. That really came out in the PWG era of California indie wrestling, but this predates PWG, of course, and Morgan and Modest were both hot indie names and Modest in particular was a notable prospect who was featured in Beyond the Mat. Never quite made it in the U.S., perhaps in part because of the way the U.S. business shrank so badly in 2001. I mean, he was short, but so were lots of guys who got deals, and he could work. He did have a run in NOAH with Morgan, though, which lasted a few years of tours.
Morgan has a lot of that fuckin’ California silly-billy to his game. They do a neat thing here where Morgan goes for a second consecutive leapfrog and Modest says fuck that, headbutts him right in the thigh meat and takes over the match. Modest with a nice lariat, sets for a dragon suplex but Morgan’s not weakened enough to go over so more punishment must be done. Modest is nasty on the offense here, kneeing Morgan in the face, stepping on his throat. Lots of that mean-spirited shit I love. Morgan is not nearly as good as Modest at this point; Modest had a hand in training him and had five years on him as a pro, and Morgan had only been wrestling a little over a year so it adds up. It’s not a forever slam on Morgan, he’s raw as hell here even though he’s APW champion or whatever. This is also only their second singles match together as best I can tell, the first coming a month prior when Morgan beat Modest for da strap.
Anyway, I really liked Modest here, and he did his best to get the most out of a young Morgan. Modest’s finishing bit with a couple wicked suplexes and a nasty ass Death Valley Driver rules.
Chris Hero vs Trent Baker (IWA Mid-South, Jan. 12, 2002)
Chris Hero and CM Punk and IWA Mid-South got me truly into indie wrestling in 2003 via tapes, and then we’d get old tapes because we wanted to know more, and “Rugby Thug” Trent Baker was one of those “other” guys on the shows I’ve always had a soft spot for, in league with the likes of Adam Gooch and Cash Flo, Todd Morton/Michael Todd Stratton and Hy-Zaya, Rollin’ Hard and Mean Mitch Page. IWA Mid-South was its own little world. Always was, in every incarnation or period.
This is when they were still down in Charlestown, Ind., at the House of Hardcore. Baker is waiting at the entrance with a chair as Hero takes forever for 3 Doors Down to get to the point. Right at the point he’d come through the curtain normally, Hero comes up from behind and takes it to Baker, and the fight is on. Back in these days, British wrestling was in such a deeply flaccid state that we had guys like Ohio’s Baker representing the British, much like Ian and Axl Rotten had before. British wrestling was dead as shit for quite a while. And then we let it come back, which was a terrible mistake, it turns out!
Hero by 2002 is already really, really good, and in my favorite style he ever worked, as he was a guy who continually evolved and never wanted to get stuck doing the same things forever. I think he hit the peak of this style in about 2003-04, and then by mid-2004 and definitely in 2005 you could see him switching the gears just a bit, which would lead to the more strike-heavy years, where he was every bit as good as ever and eventually a totally different wrestler than he had been.
Baker is just a rugged little guy, laid in the shots, good wrestler, always enjoy watching him. He’s throwing some crossface shots here that don’t look technically sound but like wild, passionate blows, like he hates Chris Hero and wants to hurt him. This is shot with one hard cam from an “eagle’s nest” style position, which can be cool, it gives you the feeling of being there in a fixed position of a seat at the venue, you see it from the angle you see it. This works best with no commentary for me, and this does not have commentary.
This is one that still holds up for me 20 years later. It’s a pretty tidy 10 minutes of just fighting, no lulls in the pace, and Hero out-foxes Baker with a cradle for the W. Post-match, that wild SOB Bull Pain hits the ring with a ball bat to do some damage on Hero and talk some shit about a Texas death match with Hero. And call the fans “stupid pieces of dogshit.”
Grab Bag
Koko B. Ware & Paul Roma vs The Hart Foundation (WWF Superstars of Wrestling, Sept. 6, 1986)
The chyron still has Bret with an extra T. Koko and Roma get the entrance with the Hart Foundation in the ring; Koko’s new, and Jesse Ventura is curious if he can wrestle or just dance. Vince tells us he is a dropkick specialist. Then, suddenly, Bruno Sammartino starts talking. Paul Roma is a young man who is really climbing his way to the top as of late, apparently.
“Mechnically, there’s not a better wrestler in the world than ‘The Hitman’ Bret Hart,” Jesse says. Then we get a PIP promo from Koko Ware, who hadn’t been told about the “B.” yet. The match ends during that because the Harts just beat Paul Roma’s ass. The actual story of this match is about the bad refereeing from Danny Davis, who was en route to a short-lived in-ring heel run after being removed for being too bad at refereeing. Koko does get to dance some after the match and Bruno decides he is good.
The Briscoes vs The Headbangers (ROH TV, Dec. 1, 2012)
The Headbangers had done some ROH work in 2012 as the Guardians of Truth, but this was their TV return as their old SMW/WWF gimmick, and they challenged the Briscoes. Commentary notes the Briscoes “make no apologies,” which is in fact untrue, as Jay had to very famously make an apology once!
Headbangers would get a few shots in WWE again in 2016, but this was the last match they had for ROH. They aren’t bad, but I mean, it’s likely this is short and simple for a reason. What were they gonna do, have a 2012 Briscoes match? A real one?
The Steiner Brothers vs Mike Awesome & Al Green (NWA Worldwide, Oct. 21, 1989)
A rare Mike Awesome job guy appearance. Mike’s a big guy but as would happen when he got to WCW as a star later, he doesn’t look huge next to the Steiners or partner Al Green. Which is OK because they are also big, but Awesome in ECW and Japan was booked as this giant, because there weren’t that many guys he’d work with his size. Green gets ragdolled a bit by the early stage Steiners because they were elite tier job guy abusers.
But Green fights back on that; not fights so much as puts his foot down when Rick wants to give him some suplex or slam from the second rope and Green just fucking refuses. So Rick pops him with a couple right hands and wrecks him with a Steinerline. Scott comes in with a reckless short clothesline of his own. Scott’s still in the trunks, no singlet yet for him. Jim Ross clearly likes Mike Awesome’s look and size. Awesome gets suplexed, tries to yell about his trunks being pulled and Scott kicks him, suplexes him again, and just pins him. Job guys weren’t supposed to be randomly vocal like that. This match is a weird little struggle where Awesome and Green didn’t seem on page with the Steiners at all.
Lance Cassidy vs Brooklyn Brawler (WWF Wrestling Challenge, Nov. 29, 1992)
Lance Cassidy was the name given to Steve Armstrong for what wound up a very short-lived run in the WWF, lasting between Sept. ’92 and Jan. ’93. I have a real affinity for little runs like that, where it was probably never gonna work, didn’t, but you can still figure it could have. Like, Steve Armstrong wasn’t gonna get a great spot on the WWF roster ever, but he was a good worker and could have cashed some nice checks on the weekend shows and house shows for a while.
Brawler gets a fair bit in here because Armstrongs aren’t really squash match specialists. Bill Alfonso is the referee, so this is a real all-star affair. Lance gets a PIP promo and he’s all, “Howdy, folks, I am in the Dubyadubyaeff.” He says it’ll be a “long, fun ride.” It was not! Bobby Heenan calls him a hayseed and a hick. He hates Lance Cassidy. Steve Lance hits a flying clothesline for the clean win which is the bulk of his offense in the match. “We’re gonna be seeing a lot more of this youngster.”
Steve Austin vs Tracy Smothers (WCW Main Event, Nov. 17, 1991)
Speaking of Steve Armstrong, here’s his Young Pistols/Southern Boys tag team partner Tracy Smothers in action against WCW TV champion Stunning Steve Austin. Austin still has Lady Blossom. Smothers is still Young Pistol Tracy. Austin still has a ponytail.
This is two excellent wrestlers in an environment where they’re encouraged to perform, so this is really good right way. People romanticize Tracy Smothers and I always wonder if younger people who only knew him as an older indie guy with a reputation realize how good he really was. Tracy Smothers was the real deal, the guy could go. He was not built for major singles stardom in the WWF or WCW, but he could have a good match with basically anyone and he was perfect for a place like Smoky Mountain, and could have done more in ECW than he did. There are some fan cam matches from ECW house shows where he got to work instead of just be a comedy FBI guy.
Tracy gets his really good offense in, has the match won, but Lady Blossom distracts the referee, Austin hits his Stun Gun, and that’s the match. Austin had major trouble, but he manages to sneak out. Tracy Smothers by all accounts should be the TV champion from this match. But wrestling, like life, is not fair.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
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