Falls Count Anywhere

08-02-08

Oh, Hugo, you tease...

Now, I’ve been around the world with wrestling and MMA this week. It all started with the second Royal Rumble that came from Netflix. It’s not a bad early PPV.

The match that really hit me was King Haku vs. Harley Race. It was one of the last matches of Mr. Race in the WWF and it was a decent, hard-hitting one. Those two work really well together and they’ve both got great reps as tough guys. It was one of those very rare 1980s matches where they actually do a clean ending with Race missing a clothesline and taking a Superkick from Haku. That was really nice.

The Royal Rumble was OK, with a lot of heat-getting work. Opening with Demolition facing one another while they were Tag Champs and actually going at each other was a nice touch. Shawn Michaels, 20 years ago when he was about 22 or so, was already looking like a Superstar. He was bouncing all over the place, much like Mr. Perfect, who was also there.

I counted up all the dead guys on this show and it shocked me. 8. There was Andre the Giant (dead in 1993), Sensational Sherri (2007), Big John Studd (1997, I think), Curt Hennig (2005), Rick Rude (1998), Gorilla Monsoon (1999), The Big Boss Man (2003ish) and Dino Bravo (1996 or so). That’s a big number, you know.

I followed that up with a show on CBS. The EliteXC MMA show was out of Stockton, and though I couldn’t go (there was Vintacon in Santa Rosa that weekend) I did get to see the Main Event of Robbie Lawler vs. Steve Smith.

It was a really good fight, much along the lines of their first fight in May that was stopped when Lawler accidentally poked Smith in the eyes. The first round was great, even though Lawler was back-peddling and throwing range punches early on and then they started throwing leather. Lawler managed to get Smith in trouble with a good high kick and then followed up, but Smith got away with a few jabs in return.

After that, Smith hit a good kick and then moved in and had Lawler rocker all over the place. He managed to get him against the cage but he managed to get out of it and make it to the end of the round. This was a back-and-forth, fast, exciting and entertaining round.

The second round saw Lawler dictate the pace, getting Smith with a few good kicks and punches early, but Smith managed a couple of elbows that actually pusted Lawler open on the top of his head. Lawler managed a couple of solid bodykicks, a clinches and a couple of knees that put Smith down on the ground and allowed Lawler to wail on him from above and behind that forced the ref to stop the fight. It was exciting and if it had a bigger audience (the estimate is that it did about 1/2 the audience of the first show in May) Lawler would have been a big star.

There was a woman’s match with Chris Cyborg (or something like that) where she won an exciting fight and is now the other Woman Fighter against Gina Carano (Crush from American Gladiators) and that’ll lead to what could be a very good fight and a real test for Carano (if she can make weight).

Actually modern wrestler Azumi Hyuga -- trained by Devil Masami

I then finished it off with a blast from the 1990s Japan. The match that I focused on was from the 12-21-1995 Yokohama match between Devil Masami-Combat Toyota and the team of Aja Kong and Megumi Kudoh. The match was really good and long and Kong and Masami are both really awesome and Kudoh was always underrated as folks saw her as only a part of the FMW Garbage wrestling scene. Masami is awesome and in the match, she was easily the best thing.

Watching the big women, Toyota and Kong, try and be all Big Woman Wrestler on each other was incredible. Masami was the one who really started the movement to have Japanese Women Wrestlers working into their 30s as the dominant promotion of the time, All Japan Women’s Wrestling, had their girls retire around the age of 25. Masami started Jd and had her women work as long as they thought they could. That led to various other promotions and nowadays it’s not unusual to find the same woman who were stars in the early 1990s headlining shows today.

So, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s wrestling in less than 4 days. That’s a big swing of years and styles. What’s good about that is that wrestling has never been one thing. Watching an FMW Woman’s match is a fast-paced, well-worked style that slips through quick. There was the 1980s WWF style that is slower, less hard-hitting and far from fluid. You had faces who tended to be either jacked-up guys who didn’t move well but knew how to talk and sell enough to make it look good and get heat for the littlest things the heels do. And the heels either are hulking giants who beat down the faces or the ones who work with the big slow guys who make every piece of Face offense look good by bumping like a Superball. There was modern MMA that was great fighting and draws heat like wrestling did in the 1980s.

It was a good week.

Chris Garcia