1970

This match between the Texas Outlaws against Ben Justice & The Stomper is for the NWA Detroit World Tag Team Titles. Silent Film Footage

What a great comedy match. Malenko was incredible in his roll in stooging, comedy spots were great. On top of It Malenko on commentary was tremendous. Boesch was good in his role as local hero, but Malenko carried this. The interactions he had with the ref was pure gold. I was legit laughing the whole entire time. It had a very vaudville feel to it. 8 million stars. Also the news interview with Boesch was awesome, and I always pop at the earring commercial.

Interesting tag which was fairly luchariffic. These guys clearly had a routine worked out, and they wrestled smooth as butter. I dug Royal alot as he always does nifty technical stuff, Faulkner on the other hand could never get his stupid grin off of his face. The Black Knights - Masambula and Honeyboy Zimba were pretty solid too. Obviously Masambula's charisma was the center, as he has mad presence, but he also did a lot of wrestling. I liked that while it was acknowledged that Masambula was a bit of a comedic, he had no problem going on the mat and piledriving Faulkner out of nowhere. I also loved Walton pointing out Faulkner is too short for the arm lever to work. Z…

This was easily the best of the three matches from the 6/6/1970 show. Arras is a very strong ring general, taunting and brutalizing Steele in what was apparently Steele's first match on TV. The commentator also says that in one of Steele's first ever matches, he faced Arras in a match where Arras broke Steele's nose. True or not, they ramp up to heated and fun exchanges early on with Steele over-preforming and bringing a fight to Arras. It's not a high bar, but the best British match we have on tape for 1970. ***

Now available on the Network, Collections, Nikolai Volkoff, "Mongolian Gold June 15, 1970" The Mongols debut at MSG and challenge the WWWF International Tag Team Champions

NWA World Heavyweight Champion Dory Funk Jr vs Antonio Inoki - JWA 8/2/70 2/3Falls First Fall: This is not as good as I remember their 1969 match being. I read my 1969 match review and it seems that one was a much more exciting from jump. Don’t get me wrong this is is still very solid and snug, but doesn’t get out of first gear yet. I like this idea of slams as more about body positioning rather than accumulating damage. I should say they can be both but an early slam shouldn’t be a death sentence. I like how both men scramble out of bumps to avoid the other consolidating the advantage. Generally seems Inoki is working the arm and Junior the leg. Inoki works a…

NWA International Tag Team Champions Giant Baba & Antonio Inoki vs Dory & Terry Funk - JWA 8/4/1970 Two Out of Three Falls Cagematch has Baba & Inoki listed as B-I Cannon which I dont know how I feel about, but a cool piece of trivia. We only get 12 minutes or so of a 32 minute match so no rating, but this has a lot going for it. Terry Funk with bright blond hair definitely stood out, took me a second to recognize him. The Funks worked as very American heels. Loved Terry taking the Ray Stevens bump into Dory Funk as Dory was hanging in the Tree of Woe. It is interesting that Baba was the one who liked to sell more and play that sympathetic role while Inok…

The second Mercier started to rip off Kayser's body hair as a response to eye gouging and illegal choking, I knew he was my boy. This was an extremely tight and brutal match from a smaller venue in comparison to the other French Catch matches of 1970, they quite literally didn't pull any punches in this one, making me giddy with the violence on display. Kayser took the more clear heel role, repeatedly choking Mercier and making spit sputter from his mouth. Mercier played the role of a mean babyface who would give Kayser everything back in the terms of ferocity and even underhandedness. I cannot see another match from 1970 being better than this. ****1/4

Now available on the Network, Collections, Nikolai Volkoff, "Counting on a Victory, September 14, 1970" Beppo Mongol challenges Bruno Sammartino for the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship

Andre the Giant was announced as the World Champion but he doesn't have a belt. This is a battle of super heavyweights even if there is a difference of 110 lbs between the two wrestlers. Frank Valois was a mentor to André and was also his translator in the U.S. Also thanks to the commentator, I learn that wrestling was still a part-time job for Andre as he was working as a cabinetmaker. The match is pretty good. Valois is that rough veteran who will use cutoffs to take advantage. I love how he works the nose on André at one time. At one point, Valois is trapped in the ropes, a spot that Andre will use later in his career. Andre is ready for the battle and will wre…

17 minutes of the first fall are clipped but this is one of the longer looks at Valentine we have. He looked pretty fantastic throughout. The match had a brutalizing style as the foreign heels tried to cut the ring off and then the finish of each fall would end in a flourish. Inoki/Baba complimented each other well and helped out showing continuity between them. With the full match, this is possibly a MOTYC for 1970. The final fall finish was predictably a lame count out with Inoki barely getting back in. The match worked to progress the upcoming Kiniski vs Baba matches but Valentine was the standout here to me just based on performance and scarcity of footage of him.…

Ah, that old 60s/70s style of matwork. I remember years ago when I was obsessed with this stuff and downloading everything from Ditch I could find. If you've seen lucha title matches, british matwork or really anything modern this stuff will seem rather prehistoric to you, but there's lots of good stuff here. The star of the bout was Gene Kiniski as he has such a simple, yet cool style. He did a number of nifty holds and all of his offense was extremely painful looking. It was almost like incubatory ground and pound, as he would get Baba on the mat and then just stomp and knee drop him into oblivion. He does have really great stomps and knee drops and he was constantly at…