1973

This is for the NWA International Tag Team Titles, which the Funks had just regained from Ciclon Negro and Killer Karl Kox in Lubbock TX on September 26, 1973. It is a 60 (61?) minute draw, but it is not complete. However, the footage I have lasts about 44 minutes and is PERFECT VQ. Jumbo has been wrestling professionally less than SEVEN months. He already faced Dory back in May for the NWA World Title in a 55 minute match!!! (not taped) That was 4 days before Dory lost the title to Harley Race in Kansas City. (Did Dory ever have hair? Lol) Someone famous enters the ring and shakes hands with all 4 competitors...Unfortunately I'm not sure if it's …

Watched this for the first time in a while and this blew me away. It's hardly some hidden gem as it's been a favorite among tape traders since forever ago, but I guess some combination of me forgetting just how good this match is and me not being attentive enough in my viewing when I first saw it led to this really surprising me. I love it from the opening bell with the amateur style positioning work they did. They did a really good job working at a stalemate with lots of great struggle like you'd see in Golden Age matches. The boston crab spot was so good. I got a kick out of it being a tight headlock that leads to Destroyer pulling out the strikes and ultimately losing…

This starts JIP 5 minute into the match. Then they do another 5 minutes of pretty standard hammerlock work and then... things escalate and it turns into a gritty double juice bloodbath. Mulligan had a glove that he kept loading with gimmicks and reached into his pants god knows how many times, until Kimura took his glove to a big reaction. Mulligan had a nice punch and Kimura was fired up. Both guys bled buckets and Mulligan did a nice job selling "loss of blood" as the match went quite long. Not as epic as you'd hope for a 70s bloodbath to be, but a fun match regardless.

The Thesz/Gotch team may be old school wrestling incarnated. You have Gotch, that gentleman european technician who is just a trip to watch, with his beautiful judo-esque throws, slick transitions and all kinds of funky moves, including a physics defying bridge. And then there's Thesz, who will cheap shot and stall incessantly and knee you in the face in the middle of a grappling exchange. Don't get me wrong, Thesz was gold here. In fact the whole match was gold. This was really long, but there was not a single dull moment. Just one cool exchange after another. Well, if you like grappling, that is. I really enjoyed Thesz' psychology as his strategy was basically about cou…

The mighty Red Bastien! Y'know IWE is cool just because you get to watch all these guys with no footage go to work. The problem is that it feels a little exhibition-y with the foreign guys just doing their shtick (a problem that Mile vs. Hara didn't have). But when it's a wrestling master like Bastien you don't complain because you just want to see what he could actually do. And this match was fun. They start of with this really intense lock-up and then do a long 70s style match where Bastien does all these neat things, like headbutting Shozo in the ear or pulling the tights from a weird angle. Shozo is solid but won't exactly set your world on fire. This was a good match…

There is about a minute and a half of pro-shot footage available on the Network. Vault, Home Video Classics, 1986. Villains of the Squared Circle, starts at 31:12. This is handheld silent film footage

Jack Brisco defends the NWA World Heavyweight Title in a match from the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa FL. Talk about it here

This was before Inoki started doing the „World's Greatest Martial Artist“ thing, so this was all JWA style old school grappling. Johnny Powers was kind of a poor man's Johnny Valentine, guy with a crazy stare who will drop elbows and knees on you. His holds and elbows and knees looked vicious especially when he was dropping elbows and knees on Inoki's throat. His googly eyed selling was pretty goofy and he also blew some highspots. I liked the opening 10 minutes of this a lot with Powers locking in a mean armlock and really chopping away at Inoki's arm and Inoki looking like a slick grappler countering with some super tight headscissors. The following 10 minutes Powers st…

What a matchup. Street is in his gown and makeup. McMichael is just the most regular looking bloke you can imagine. It's an amazing contrast and it produces a wildly entertaining TV match. McMichael tears up Streets gown and it's a furious match from the start. Street is actually super vicious here, clawing McMichaels cheek, always sneaking in blows, big leaping stomps that look violent as hell. When Streets starts wrestling he is just blindingly fast and smooth. But there is little wrestling here as it's basically a sprint brawl. Street does some prancing as he gets the advantage so McMichael does some prancing of his own and even steals some of Streets glitter which was…

Probably the strangest and most wonderous grappling in a World of Sport match that there is. Not counting anything hypnosis related that may or may not have happened in certain Kendo Nagasaki matches. It's not just about the moves and escapes, but the sheer consequence this is wrestled with. Normally, in WoS you will see a lot of guys agreeing to a stalemate and giving up their position and holds. Here, that is reduced to a minimum and both guys are determined to wrestle to the limit. This leads to them pretzeling into and out of positions that would make Solar step back and say "Woah there" for a moment. They really explore the basic holds, like a toe hold and short arm …

This is one of the earliest Grey bouts on tape, with the only one earlier that I could find being a match against Eddie Capelli from the year prior. It is also during this bout that Kent Walton informs us how Grey teaches handicraft to OAPs and the handicapped! Nearly the entire first round of this contest was worked around a headlock, firstly with Cortez in control and then Grey. After two rounds of straight wrestling Cortez starts to get more aggressive in his offense, firstly palming Grey in the face and then hitting him with a great sounding uppercut. He cartwheels out of a headmare immediately throwing a dropkick and Walton is not happy with Cortez losing his coo…