A Show of FORCE: Morinville – FORCE Pro Wrestling Show Recap

by Jeff on August 25, 2011 at 3:12 pm
Posted In: Blog

A SHOW OF FORCE: MORINVILLE
Cultural Community Centre, Morinville, AB
August 20th, 2011

While officially titled “A Show of FORCE: Morinville,” the inaugural offering from FORCE Pro Wrestling could easily have been billed as “Card Subject to Change.” Despite substantial changes to the card, the show managed to exceed expectations and deliver an action-packed night to the raucous crowd in Morinville’s brand new Cultural Community Centre.

William Saint vs. Nightmare

Nightmare makes William Saint think about that bad ride he's about to take. Photo courtesy Trident Photography.

The first match in FORCE history will be remembered as a good one. William Saint started things off by yelling vigorously at the crowd, which only served to increase the volume of chanting in support of Nightmare. Nightmare started off with a very technical offence centred around the erstwhile headlock, which gave Saint a lot of difficulty in the early part of the match. After Saint was able to solve the headlock, he and Nightmare traded suplexes, a stalling vertical suplex by Nightmare and a snap suplex by Saint, and other high impact offence in an attempt to put each other down for the three count. Nightmare was able to land the biggest move first, nailing Saint from the second rope with a Taliban Backpack (a leaping variant of the lungblower), which was enough to keep Saint down for the three count and allow Nightmare to chalk up the first victory in FORCE history just shy of the twenty minute mark.

Winner: Nightmare via Taliban Backpack.

Following the Saint/Nightmare bout, Cam!!ikaze was welcomed to the stage by ring announcer What About Ivan. Cam informed the audience that he had seriously injured his knee a couple of days prior to the show, which would prevent him from wrestling Johnny Devine in the main event. He continued to say that he was incredibly sorry that he wouldn’t be able to perform, but he was able to secure a replacement. Miss Danyah came out onto the stage and accused Cam!!ikaze of faking his injury to get out of the world of hurt that Johnny Devine was going to put on him. She also mentioned that her own opponent, scheduled to be KC Spinelli, was even more scared than Cam, because she didn’t even show up. She then entered the ring and demanded that referee Kevin Sane raise her hand since she had just won by forfeit, as far as she was concerned. Sane was reluctant to do so, since she hadn’t actually done anything, but eventually relented and raised Danyah’s hand in victory… only to eat a clothesline from her free hand. Danyah pulled the poor referee’s shirt up over his head to feed him some short punches, then threw him out onto the floor where FORCE’s other official, Vijay Shankhar, was waiting to check on his colleague. Sane brushed off Shankhar and tried to storm the ring, but was held back while Danyah taunted him from inside the ring and the crowd screamed for Shankhar to “let him fight.” The decision made for him by the fans, Shankhar allowed Sane to get into the ring and called for the bell.

Miss Danyah bodyslams a small child. No, sorry, that's Kevin Sane. Photo courtesy Trident Photography.

Miss Danyah vs. Kevin Sane

Sane started off like a house of fire (once he finally got started, which took several minutes of being thrashed to take effect) putting the overconfident Danyah back on her heels with a flurry of offence. With the crowd solidly behind him, Sane countered Danyah’s size advantage with speedy moves like a tilt-a-whirl head scissors and hurricanrana, but was eventually felled by the incompetence of his own brother-in-arms, Vijay Shankhar. Danyah used her body to block Shankhar’s view as she mule-kicked Sane, then gave him another shot to the peninsula south of the equator for good measure. A big splash later and that was all she wrote for the fighting referee.

Winner: Danyah via Big Splash.

Chucky Blaze vs. Mr. Fantastic

Chucky Blaze entered the arena to a huge ovation from the Morinville crowd, which was only heightened when he charged up the bleachers in an apparent effort to high-five the entire population of the town before stepping into the ring

Referee Vijay Shankhar hustles to make the count as Chucky Blaze pins Mr. Fantastic. Photo courtesy Trident Photography.

to take on the masked Mr. Fantastic. In a wild battle that spent nearly as long on the floor as it did in the ring, Chucky Blaze pitted his fast-moving and high-flying offence against Mr. Fantastic’s arsenal of high-impact throws and slams. Blaze seemed to have things well in hand after hitting a death-defying suicide dive that resulted in both he and Mr. Fantastic sprawling into the front row. Chucky strung together several of his signature moves in sequence, including a flying knee strike in the corner and a springboard cross body block, but Mr. Fantastic proved to be remarkably resilient, and responded with a double overhook suplex. After a series of reversals, Chucky escaped a back suplex attempt and caught Mr. Fantastic off-guard with a super kick, which finally kept the masked man down.

Winner: Chucky Blaze via Super Kick.

Intermission. Normally I don’t mention the intermission in show recaps, but I wanted to point out that the intermission ran longer than intended to accommodate the large crowds that formed when several FORCE stars set up shop at the merchandise tables to meet fans, take pictures, and sign autographs. The crowd was still fairly substantial when the show was scheduled to resume, so the call was made to extend intermission so that everyone who wanted to could meet their favourite wrestlers and get an autograph.

Handicap Match
C-Block w/ Officer Gordon vs. Strife

Originally scheduled to be a tag team match, Strife’s partner failed to arrive and thus left Strife to battle Officer Gordon’s uncaged animals on his own. Strife started off well, nullifying Slammer and Ugg’s power advantages with technique, but once the cons started cheating, things went downhill fast for the lone warrior from the Orient. Officer Gordon attempted to get involved to turn the tables, but after choking Strife across the middle rope and being admonished by the referee, he attempted to choke Strife again (this time with his back turned in an attempt to use his bulk to block the referee’s view), only to strangle the life out of Slammer before realizing what was happening. After being launched across the ring with a capture suplex by Ugg and a combination sidewalk slam/Yakuza kick, Strife shocked C-Block by refusing to stay down for the three count. Officer Gordon got involved again, this time far more effectively, by removing his helmet and cracking Strife in the head with it. With Strife stunned, Slammer applied the Billy Goat’s Curse, setting Ugg up to nail the defenceless Strife with a thunderous leg drop to the back of his head. The three count was academic. After scoring the pinfall, C-Block continued the assault on Strife until Officer Gordon was able to subdue them, handcuffing Slammer and choking Ugg unconscious.

Winner: C-Block via combination Billy Goat’s Curse/Leg Drop.

Once C-Block were en route back to Arkham Asylum, hometown hero Sgt. Hazard made his return. He got on the microphone and praised the crowd who came out to see him, but then regretfully informed them that his scheduled opponent for the night, Bill Yates, had run into travel problems and wasn’t present. At this point Hotshot Johnny Devine made his presence known, claiming that he was the main event and that Sarge being from “Moron-vile” wasn’t anything worth bragging about. While Devine verbally ran down Hazard and his home town to jeers and boos from the fans, astute observers noticed that one fan was wearing elbow pads and approaching the ring. As the man climbed into the ring behind Hazard, Johnny Devine informed Hazard that just because Bill Yates couldn’t make it didn’t mean he didn’t have an opponent. He introduced Livewire Matt Richards just as Richards introduced his forearm to the back of Sarge’s head.

Sgt. Hazard makes Livewire Matt Richards regret jumping him from behind by making him experience involuntary flight. Photo courtesy Trident Photography.

Sgt. Hazard vs. Livewire Matt Richards

Richards used the element of surprise to his advantage, but Hazard was quickly able to regain his bearings and make Richards regret his underhanded tactics with a hip toss that in other venues may have seen Richards collide with the ceiling, as well as a flurry of powerful punches. Richards, not prepared for Sarge’s heavy artillery, remained in the floor for several moments after being thrown through the ropes by Hazard. Richards regrouped while referee Vijay Shankhar warned Sarge to make sure that he didn’t throw Richards over the top rope, which is an illegal move in FORCE. Richards came back in, with similar results. Sarge ducked an attempted cross body block, which sent Richards sailing over the top to the floor. Despite Hazard not having actually thrown Richards, Shankhar issued him a yellow card; one more infraction would earn him a red card and a disqualification. While Sarge argued that he hadn’t actually done anything to Richards, the Livewire jumped him from behind and began to work him over with an offence highlighted by an excruciating flipping neck snap that Sgt. Hazard was, shockingly, able to fight through to remain in the match. Vijay Shankhar found himself the unfortunate recipient of an attempt at a corner avalanche, which led to Richards bailing out to grab some furniture. He set up the chair to perform a double jump moonsault, but the slightest miscue on Richards’ part allowed Hazard to get his knees up and knock the Livewire silly. With the fight gone out of him, Richards decided that a win was a win, no matter how he got it. As Vijay Shankhar started to recover, Richards handed the chair to Hazard, then flopped onto his back and lay still. Shankhar, seeing Hazard standing over Richards holding a chair, issued a red card – Sarge was disqualified. His hometown fans went berserk as Richards scuttled away, but Sgt. Hazard would eventually get the last laugh.

Winner: Livewire Matt Richards via Disqualification.

Hotshot Johnny Devine suplexes Andy Anderson during their main event clash. Photo courtesy Trident Photography.

Hotshot Johnny Devine vs. Andy Anderson

Hotshot Johnny Devine entered first with Miss Danyah by his side. Cam!!ikaze came to the ring, at which point children in the audience implored him not to wrestle so he didn’t get hurt. Johnny Devine agreed with them, then attacked Cam!!ikaze. Cam was able to escape to the floor, where Danyah landed a few kicks while Johnny Devine taunted him from the ring. Devine turned around to find, to his horror, that Cam!!ikaze’s replacement had arrived, and was standing right behind him. Andy Anderson, “the Lone Wolf,” a similarly experienced international wrestler, had hit the ring while Devine was busy berating Cam. Anderson lit up Devine with a series of right hands, a Manhattan drop, and an atomic drop before Devine took a powder to regroup on the outside.

Devine returned to the ring and immediately went to work on Anderson’s left arm, catching him by surprise with a variation of the shoulder DDT. Despite weakening Anderson’s arm, Devine still had to resort to breaking the rules in his attempt to keep his surprise opponent down for the count. Danyah didn’t pass up the opportunity to land cheap shots, and Devine had some sort of foreign object (which can best be described as small and gougey) with which he would jab Anderson whenever the referee’s vision was obscured (which was a lot, as Devine has had plenty of experience cheating). Despite Cam!!ikaze’s myriad attempts to point out the wrong-doings to the referee by telling him where Devine had hidden the object, but Devine always managed to move it before the referee checked him. Anderson proved to be incredibly resilient, however, and even Devine’s rulebreaking wasn’t enough to sap his will to win. Devine and Danyah both realized this, causing Danyah to subtley toss a chain into the ring while she distracted Anderson and the referee. Devine wrapped the chain around his fist, then waited for Anderson to turn around to meet him with a cracking shot right on the button. Anderson stayed down for the three count and beyond, but Sgt. Hazard quickly made his way to ringside. Hazard, who had been watching from the entryway, saw Devine hide the chain in his singlet, and convinced referee Kevin Sane to check. This time, Sane was able to find the chain, and asked the audience if they wanted the match restarted. Of course they did, and said so as loudly as possible.

Shortly after the match was restarted, Danyah attempted to intervene with the chain again, but this time chaos ensued. While referee Kevin Sane and Cam!!ikaze attempted to get Danyah out of the ring, Sgt. Hazard made his presence felt. While Devine was wrapping the chain around his fist, Hazard spun him around, which startled the former X Division Champion into dropping the chain. Anderson quickly scooped up the chain and, with referee Sane occupied by spanking Danyah (who had been pushed over his knee by Cam), blasted Devine square on the chin, cooling off the Hotshot and earning the pinfall victory after nearly twenty-five minutes of gruelling action.

Winner: Andy Anderson via Chain Shot.

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HEAT in Dead//Life

by Jeff on August 9, 2011 at 8:57 pm
Posted In: Blog

I forgot to mention it in Saturday’s news post, but Rudi Gunther of Dead//Life has started a new story arc which features a crossover of sorts with HEAT! I say “of sorts” because none of the main cast of HEAT actually appear, and I didn’t actually do anything other than provide him with some design drawings of Wrestletron 5000 (he’ll be appearing in HEAT at some point in the future, but I don’t have anything written for him yet).

Anyway, the story features Beerman forcing Dr. Von Rudenstein to accompany him to a HEAT wrestling match between Wrestletron 5000 and Black Decker (who Rudi came up). You can read it from the beginning right here!

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PWA Summer Heat 2011 Show Review

by Jeff on August 4, 2011 at 9:24 pm
Posted In: Blog

PWA Summer Heat
Saturday, July 30th, 2011
Century Casino Showroom, Edmonton, Alberta

PWA's new-look ring. The ropes and apron are red now.

The PWA is back in the Century Casino after last month’s detour into the NAIT Gymnasium (which I was, sadly, unable toattend). The incredibly comfortable office chairs have been replaced with ballroom chairs, which are both kind ofuncomfortable and far more numerous, which only made the place look more empty, especially since the attendance seemed visibly lower than usual. There was also only one referee present, so the beleaguered Ritchie Howard worked double the number of matches he usually does, which also meant he took double the abuse from the crowd that he normally does.

William Saint vs. Nightmare #2

Saint’s theme music (“Last Resort” by Papa Roach) makes no sense for a face. I don’t really have a greater point to build to with that, as it effects nothing in the match, I’m just sayin’. Things started off with a handshake between the two babyfaces, then a series of headlocks and reversals into other headlocks. A certain portion of the audience went nuts over this and started chanting “we want headlocks” whenever any other move was used. Most of the match was solid technical wrestling with a good pace to it. It’s also the first time I’ve gotten to see Saint actually do moves, since his last match was a six minute squash against Dylan Knight. Turns out he’s basically Dynamite Kid with a few tweaks, in terms of his moveset. One of those tweaks involved killing Nightmare with Angel’s Wings (which I have video of on my YouTube channel). Nightmare managed to kick out, which frustrated Saint, who followed up by whipping Nightmare into the corner. He followed up with a shoulder charge, but Nightmare used the top rope to hop up over Saint and take him over with a sunset flip for the pinfall. A visibly frustrated Saint rolled out of the ring, then regained his composure and encouraged the fans to applaud Nightmare’s victory.

Bobby Sharp vs. Cam!!ikaze

Bobby Sharp comes out and cuts a promo, which I don’t think I’ve heard him do before. It was okay-ish. His delivery wasn’t bad, but all he really had to say was that he wasn’t teaming with Scotley Crue anymore and that wrestling singles matches was all he needed to succeed. Which was a weird phrasing. He was announced as “The Atomic One” (what?) and ended his promo with “and that’s atomic!” Double what?  Then Cam!!ikaze (who does, in fact, have two exclamation points in his name) came out and Bobby Sharp eventually got into the ring to fight him.

Cam!!ikaze is upside down. I can't remember why. It's probably not going to go well for him.

This match was the classic style clash between the faster, more athletic Cam!!ikaze and the larger, more powerful Sharp. Things started off with chain wrestling which led to Cam going for a lucha libre transition from an arm-wringer to an arm drag (the Essa Rios move where he jumped onto the top rope, dropped down to his butt and flipped backward into the arm drag), but Sharp just kind of stood there like he thought there was more to it. Cam essentially pushed him over with a reverse gutwrench kinda thing. Awkward. Sharp gained control and kept Cam!!ikaze grounded using holds like the Sharpshooter. Cam made his comeback and hit a Michinoku Driver (his finisher), but Sharp kicked out. Cam’s jaw practically hit the mat, then he scooped up Sharp and tried to hit the driver again, but was countered into a small package for a two count. Cam hit the Michinoku Driver a second time and that’s all she wrote.

T-Bone Jack Sloan vs. Chucky Blaze

Remember when T-Bone Jack Sloan was the PWA Heavyweight Champion? Yeah… then he meandered about the card until he ended up with the Mayhem Title, then he lost that, and now here he is. The fans engaged in their customary “T-Bag” chants, eliciting the usual angry response from T-Bone, and HILARITY from the middle-aged woman sitting behind me who said, without even the slightest hint of a joke, “oh, I hear t-bags are good for the yes.” I don’t think she understood why I suddenly started laughing.

T-Bone does not like being called T-Bag. It makes him want to injure Chucky Blaze's internal organs.

This match wasn’t mind-blowing, but it was a solid example of two very good workers putting on a good midcard match. There were no slow spots, and whenever it seemed like things might start to lag they busted out something interesting to get the crowd back into it. Even the one botched spot still mostly worked, when Chucky attempted a springboard body press and missed the second rope. He luckily landed on the bottom rope and was still able to execute the move without hurting anybody.

After a bit of back-and-forth and some near falls, Chucky caught T-Bone square on the chin with a superkick, which the former PWA champ barely managed to kick out of. While Chucky stared at referee Ritchie Howard in disbelief, T-Bone tried to bail out of the ring. Chucky managed to catch T-Bone’s leg and drag him back into the middle of the ring, but T-Bone grabbed a fistful of the apron and it ended up coming with him. While Howard took a moment to shove the apron back into position, T-Bone took the opportunity to kick Chucky south of the border and roll him up with a small package to “earn” the victory.

PWA Mayhem Championship “Fast Break” Match
M © vs. Andrew Hawks

As soon as I heard the phrase “fast break match” the wheels in my brain started turning to try and churn out an idea about what the hell I was about to watch. The PWA makes up strange stipulations for matches on a semi-regular basis, and apparently that time has rolled around again. A fast break match has a 10 minute time limit (the usual for a PWA match is 20), and no holds… allowed? What? At first I thought the ring announcer flubbed his line, but no, that was right. No holds allowed. Only striking and moves (which, it could be argued, are also holds, since you can’t suplex a guy with getting a hold of him) were allowed. Naturally, Andrew Hawks immediately put M in a wristlock, causing referee Ritchie Howard to remind him that he can’t do that.

The pace of the match was pretty quick, which is unsurprising due to the rules. While it was interesting seeing a match without holds, it also highlighted how important holds are in controlling the pace of the match and making big moves really stick out. When Hawks can hit M with a sit-out powerbomb that’s spun out of a torture rack and I can forget that it happens until I look at my photos from the show, that’s a problem. The end sequence began when M missed a charge in the corner and rammed his shoulder into the post, which Hawks immediately capitalized on with a fujiwara armbar. M tapped out, but there were no hold allowed, so referee Ritchie Howard just ineffectually asked Hawks to let go. I’m not sure why he didn’t disqualify him, since there was no announcement of a “no disqualification” stipulation, but he eventually got Hawks to break the hold… to stand up and yell that he doesn’t care about the rules and is going to break M’s arm. Not sure why he had to stand up for that, but okay. WHOOPS M catches him by surprise with a crucifix for the three count to retain the Mayhem Title when Hawks tried to reapply the armbar.

Ravenous Randy Myers vs. King Dusty Adonis

King Dusty Adonis has had enough of Ravenous Randy's shenanigans. He shows his displeasure by violencing Randy's head.

Ravenous Randy started out by cutting a promo, at which point I realized I’ve never actually heard him cut a promo that was more than about four seconds long. After hearing him go for a few minutes, I was left to wonder why the hell he’s not on the mic at every possible opportunity. Dusty cut a counter-promo demanding that Randy bow to the king, at which point Randy pretended to not understand what that meant. First he extended his hand, then offered a high five, then tried to hug Dusty. Finally the King got frustrated and yelled “NO! Bow! Like this!” and lowered is head… right into a kick in the face from Randy. The first five minutes or so were an extended comedy segment in which Dusty was constantly outwitted and embarrassed, to the point that he ended up bailing to the outside with his singlet pulled down around his knees. Naturally this led to him deciding that he’d had enough and sitting next to an old woman in the crowd… without pulling his singlet back up. Awkward. Once he got back into the ring the two dropped the comedy act and got down to business.

A lot of Randy’s offence features moves I don’t know the name of, so instead of trying to awkwardly describe most of the match, I’m just going to go with “it was pretty good” and cut to the end. After a series of counters-to-counters and near falls for each guy, Ravenous Randy countered one of Dusty’s attempts at something into a bodyslam position, then hit a twisting slam move that I’ve never seen before for the victory. I had a really great angle on it so you guys could have just watched it for yourself, but an obese man walked in front of my camera just as Randy was hitting the move, so you can thank him for having to live with my crap description of it.

PWA Heavyweight Championship Match
Chris Steele © vs. Dylan Knight

I just realized that Chris Steele has held the PWA Championship for nearly a year now. A bland year in which I’m fairly certain he wasn’t even involved in a storyline over the belt, he just defended it against a string of random challengers. This time there’s a feud attached, so that’s nice. Dylan Knight couldn’t claim the belt in a steel cage at Night of Champions and, spoiler alert, he doesn’t do it tonight either.

Australia's primary export is angry wrestlers.

Steele and Knight are easily two of the bigger guys in the PWA, and as such this match had a much different feel than a typical PWA match, with a slower pace and a focus on basic moves delivered with a lot of power behind them (a suplex seems totally devastating when both guys involved are 250 pounds, for example).

Steele got the advantage, but T-Bone had quietly snuck out of the dressing room to lurk near the timekeeper’s table. Steele slammed Knight to the canvas with a gorilla press drop, which is usually the prelude to a match-ending spear, but T-Bone climbed up onto the apron to distract Steele before he could hit his finisher. He didn’t do a very good job, though, because Steele immediately cleaned his clock and turned his attention back to Knight, who had recovered. Upset at being punched in the mush, T-Bone snatched the bell away from the timekeeper and held it up in the corner as Knight attempted to whip Steele into the turnbuckles. Unfortunately for Knight, Steele reversed the Irish whip and Knight took the bell in the small of the back. Steele went for a cover, but T-Bone dove into the ring to break up the fall with a double axe-handle, ending the bout in a disqualification victory for Steele. Knight and T-Bone worked over the PWA champion until Lance Storm came out to make the save. After the fight was broken up, commissioner Kurt Sorochan came out and announced a tag team match on the next Edmonton show featuring Knight and T-Bone taking on Chris Steele and Tommy Dreamer. Yes, that Tommy Dreamer, he’s being brought in for a pair of shows in late August.

Spot of the Night: A tie between Andrew Hawks’ torture rack spun into a sit-out powerbomb and William Saint’s Angel’s Wings.
Match of the Night: Ravenous Randy vs. King Dusty Adonis.
Overall: This show was decent, but was probably my least favourite PWA show that I’ve attended this year. It seemed like a show that only existed to promote that Tommy Dreamer is going to be on some shows in August, and the rest of it was secondary as far as management was concerned.

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The Spectacular Legacy of the AWA

by Jeff on August 1, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Posted In: Blog

Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association is a promotion that I’d heard of, but never really knew anything about, so naturally I was intrigued when I saw The Spectacular Legacy of the AWA DVD in the bargain bin at Zellers for five bucks. Most of my knowledge of the AWA came from matches on WWE compilation DVDs and Vance Nevada’s book Wrestling in the Canadian West, which featured a section on the AWA (who ran in Manitoba).

The format of The Spectacular Legacy of the AWA will be familiar if you’ve seen any of the other WWE DVDs focused on another promotion. Disc 1 features a three hour documentary chronicling the AWA from the beginning of Verne Gagne’s career as a wrestler through to the closing down of the company in the mid-1990s. As far as I’m concerned, the documentary alone is well worth the five dollars I dropped to pick this thing up. The first few segments focus on Verne Gagne and his career as a wrestler, which eventually leads into the founding of his own promotion and breaking away from the National Wrestling Alliance, which seems to have been a hotbed of world championship controversy amongst the NWA promoters. So essentially it was the same as it is now.

Once the AWA is established in name, we start to hear about the promotion itself and Verne Gagne’s approach to presenting his product. The AWA focused quite heavily on the athletic competition in the ring, focusing less on over-the-top characters (although they were certainly there) and more on the wrestlers’ abilities as athletes. This was probably based on the fact that Gagne’s character as a wrestler was all about his abilities as an athlete, and he was the top guy in the promotion for a good chunk of it’s run. There was a lot of interesting stuff about wrestling and the early days of television, including that the AWA’s average rating throughout it’s television run was a 25. Think about that. 25. RAW nowadays gets a 3-point-something. There are a ton of completely sensible reasons for that disparity, but it’s still impressive.

All of the natural wrestling documentary bits follow, including the heyday of the promotion, Vince McMahon coming onto the scene with the WWF and the decline of the AWA after that, culminating in Verne Gagne’s induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2006. The bonus features on disc 1 are mostly interesting stories that didn’t fit into the narrative flow of the documentary. There are also a few classic promos.

Disc 2 features a selection of matches from the AWA’s history. I won’t say they’re classics, because it’s hard to judge the quality of matches from as early as the ’70s, especially when they aren’t even shown in full. The first few matches are Gagne-centric, and start near the finishes, probably because they’re all in the 40 minutes plus range. The first really solid match features a young Pat Patterson teaming with Ray “The Crippler” Stevens to take on two guys whose names I’ve forgotten and I’m not going to look up. Hulk Hogan appears briefly in the middle with a championship victory over Nick Bockwinkel (which it mentioned in the documentary was overturned later and the title returned to Bockwinkel) and about five minutes of brawling with Mr. Saito and some other folks, leading to the announcement of a handicap match which is then not shown, despite being the title of that particular chapter on the DVD. The disc ends with the controversial AWA/WCCW Championship unification match at SuperClash III between Jerry “The King” Lawler (AWA Champion) and Kerry Von Erich (WCCW champ). While it’s fascinating that a match can be compelling despite neither guy actually doing moves. Jerry Lawler’s entire offence involved punching Von Erich, both with and without a pair of brass knuckles which he kept in his tights (apparently having his hand down his pants for half the match didn’t tip off the referee). Von Erich crowned the king with his own piledriver, but other than that it was all punches and discus punches. And buckets of blood.

My favourite matches in the collection:

  • The Midnight Rockers vs. Playboy Buddy Rose and Pretty Boy Doug Sommers in a steel cage match. Except for Marty Jannetty deciding to take the night off from selling, this was a really good match.
  • Nick Bockwinkel vs. Curt Hennig. Oh man. Two masterful technicians doing what they do best. I could have done without the after-match shenanigans featuring Larry Zbyszko, but the match was still very good.
  • Jerry Lawler vs. Kerry Von Erich. Despite neither guy actually doing moves, this match was still very compelling. The King is somehow both a great and terrible worker at the same time, in that he can work a crowd and psychology like no other, but has pretty much the same arsenal of moves now, at 61 years old, that he did in his prime.

Should you buy this? If you’re interested in the history of the AWA, absolutely. If you can find it for cheap like I did, there’s no question about it: buy this. The documentary alone is worth it. The matches are more of a mixed bag. Some of them, most of which I called out, were excellent. Some of them weren’t. Some of them were in the middle. Much like the other WWE productions, match selection is a little bit questionable, and choosing matches that needed to be cut down significantly seems counter-productive. There are a few gems worth seeing, though.

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New Bonus Art

by Jeff on July 23, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Posted In: Blog

I forgot to mention this when I first posted them, but there’s new art in the Fan Art section, courtesy Roger Broemeling. There’s a long story behind that drawing, which I will write into a blog post at some point. There’s also a sketch of Dick the Bastard and concept art for a new character in the Bonus Art section.

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