William Bologna

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Stan Hansen/Patriot/Maunakea Mossman (AJPW 7/24/1996) There's a hidden feud going throughout these AJPW cards in the 90s - Hansen & Co. vs. Williams & Co. Williams always has Ace with him, but other than that the personnel is fluid. It's always great. Hansen and Williams make it a point to wale on each other, which is great wrestling and always gets a pop. In this case, that's pretty much all they do. They wind up going outside and doing their own thing while the other four guys have a match. Both the brawl and the match are good. We get an exciting finishing sequence, and Johnny Smith pins Mossman after a top rope elbow and looks pretty excited. Smith won one! I'm excited too. in the aftermath, there's bad blood between Ace and Patriot. Hansen seems disgusted with his team - we get a shot of him just heading for the door without getting back in the ring. No one wants to celebrate with Smith. Did Williams and Ace actually dislike him or something? We've had two matches with this lineup, and in both cases they want nothing to do with him after the bell rings. I'm proud of you, Johnny, even if no one else is.

Johnny Smith/Rob Van Dam vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 11/18/1995) They love giving Johnny weird partners for tournaments. He gets RVD for this year's tag league (they wind up with 2 points). Last year he got Dory Funk (2 points). They put him with Yoji Anjo in 2001 (3 points!). There was also the All Asia tag league with Tommy Dreamer. Anyway, this is a nifty five minutes. Smith and Misawa work really well together, and Johnny is as over as he ever gets in Korakuen. There a biggish pop for his dropkick/kip-up, which is how you judge Johnny Smith's popularity. Van Dam is there mainly to get his ass kicked, and does he ever. I figured it was over when Kobashi blocked a split-legged moonsault and clotheslined the hell out of him, but there was another solid minute of punishment coming. He gets backdropped, frog splashed, and finally pinned with a Tiger Driver (while Kobashi nearly simultaneously powerbombs Smith) for a weirdly flat finish. No opening night RWTL upset for Johnny Smith this time. Give it two years.

Johnny Ace/The Patriot/Johnny Smith vs. Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat/Mike Anthony (AJPW 10/25/1995) We join in progress to see Kroffat lightening the mood. He does a perfect flip out of a bodydrop to land on his feet; Ace offers a hand, but Kroffat does the old fake out where you slick back your hair. Ace takes the initiative, hits a sunset flip, and shows everyone Kroffat's ass. It's a full moon in the Budokan tonight. Johnny Smith has downgraded his gear. He had been wearing the Union Jack trunks and red tights, and it really made him stand out. It coordinated so well whenever he was in there with Kikuchi or the Patriot. Now he's just got these lame light blue trunks. It's like he got demoted to Young Lion. Whoever put this television program together absolutely does not care about Johnny Smith. He does his dropkick into a kip-up and then clotheslines someone - the camera's looking at something else. He suplexes Anthony off the top rope, but we cut to an action-free shot of Furnas prone on the outside. I'm pretty sure this isn't the same Mike Anthony from Van Halen, although they do have something in common: Neither man is actually named Michael Anthony, and in both cases the real name they're not using is Slavic. The wrestler is Lozansky, and the bass player is Sobolewski. I didn't know anything about Anthony. I looked him up and I still don't. He was a little guy, and he threw some effectively awkward kicks. We only get five minutes of this, so no one but Kroffat really gets to show off. Ace pins Anthony with a Doctor Bomb, which I didn't know he did. Later in the evening, the fans got that awesome Kawada vs. Albright match and Misawa vs. Kobashi. These Budokan cards were no joke.

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Chris Youngblood/Mark Youngblood (AJPW 7/24/1995) The Youngbloods were in All Japan on and off for five years, but I've never seen a match. I'm not even sure I'd heard of them. I think I saw their dad once. I kinda liked them. They were all about cohesion: Matching outfits and double teams, some of them goofy. Such as when one Youngblood picked up the other one from behind so Johnny Smith could bounce off his boots and then atomic dropped his brother onto a supine Smith. This is the last time we're going to see Smith and Hansen as a two man team, and it's too bad. Not only are they starting to gel, but there's not much better than watching Hansen put dudes through the ringer. He really lays into the Youngbloods here, they give it right back to him, and I'm happy as a clam. I know it's not an original observation that Stan Hansen is great, but I could watch 40-something Stan go full tilt in ten minute tag matches forever. Hansen matches often have another great feature: Cool finishing sequences built around the lariat. Here he yells so we know he's going for it. He whips a Youngblood into the ropes, but his brother catches him, and they give Stan a double kick to the face. The legal Youngblood presses the advantage and charges only to run into the lariat. AJPW midcards are turning out to be much better than I assumed they were. I gather that the quality dips as the 90s wear on, but they're looking pretty rad here in 1995.

Johnny Ace/Doug Furnas/Johnny Smith vs Giant Baba/Stan Hansen/Tamon Honda (AJPW 7/22/1995) They fired up the random team generator, so we get the long-awaited face-off between Johnny Smith and Giant Baba. We get it twice, in fact, and neither time does it go well for Johnny. He takes the worst DDT I've ever seen and gets his coconut crushed twice. I didn't think much of it, but the crowd goes nuts for Baba's every halting, pained action. It's the Giant Baba in the 90s Experience. I liked watching Hansen carry this team, which consisted of him and two people who are capable of nothing. He keeps things moving, keeps everyone on the same page, and makes this a really enjoyable match. Is Hansen an underrated tag team wrestler? I don't remember seeing it prominent among his many good attributes, but he always impresses when he's part of a team. Rough times for Smith in this match. In addition to getting Baba'd, he tries something from the top rope only for Hansen to stop him. Smith falls off the turnbuckle and lands right on his face. This did not look like a planned bump, and Hansen really has to drag him out of the ring. If he was selling, he was doing a hell of a job. Smith also takes the pin, and I know it's a stupid thing to care about, but I don't like seeing him get pinned by Tamon Goddamn Honda. Honda was bad and looked like he knew it - he came off like he was too ashamed to look anyone in the eye. The German suplex he polished Johnny off with wasn't even any good. The bridge was bad, and his feet were splayed all over the place. Regardless, I dug this. These random midcard All Japan matches have been a lot of fun.

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Johnny Ace/The Patriot (AJPW 6/30/1995) Stan Hansen is a good partner. He's always yelling encouragement and instructions to his teammate - we open this match with him cheering on Johnny Smith, whose head is in a lock - and when he tags out, he makes sure the incoming wrestler has something to do. It's very clear in this case, where he starts working on The Patriot's arm just before he lets Johnny in, no doubt knowing that arm work is something Smith is good at and that it would be a good thing with which to fill the body of this match. He's a max effort kind of guy, even here in his mid-40s, and he gets across that he wants to win. I (kayfabe) feel bad for him that he's been tagging with Johnny Smith lately, which means he never wins. But we all know that Stan Hansen is a great wrestler. What about Johnny Ace? It's funny - I'm familiar with Johnny Ace. He took the fall in the first All Japan match I ever saw. I saw him lose a Triple Crown match. But since I've started this thing, the inescapable conclusion is that Johnny Ace is rad. He throws himself full force into everything he does, whether it's his awkward terrible mule kick or a boot to his own face. He's barely in this match, but when he is in he and Hansen hit each other really, really hard, and it's the best thing about it. My current theory is that maybe he started slowing down by 1997 and no longer had that explosiveness, which would explain why I didn't think anything of him. We'll see - there's a lot of Laurinaitis coming up. Meanwhile, The Patriot might be the rich man's Wolf Hawkfield. He's big, and he looks like a million star-spangled bucks, but his work isn't memorable. This was only eight or nine minutes, though, so you don't want to rely too much on it. I feel like Smith is coming into his own. The crowd is starting to like him - he gets a big underdog spot where he takes out both opponents, and they're right there with him. He does cool arm stuff to Patriot and a lovely fisherman suplex to Ace. Maybe pretty soon he wont be eating the pin every time.

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat (AJPW 1/2/1995) Not a whole lot to this one. Hansen runs over the Can-Ams like they're a couple of AWA title belts, and Smith wrestles them. It's got that unrehearsed character, which I'm thinking we can attribute to Hansen (Hansen, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!), but it doesn't amount to much this time out. It is the first night of the tour; maybe everyone's rusty. Kroffat manages to get Smith alone and pins him abruptly with a Tiger Driver. It's kind of odd to see a midcarder doing the same finisher as the top guy - and it's not like it's a generic move like a clothesline or whatever. I'm guessing - and a guess is all it is - that Misawa did it first. Pretty ballsy to borrow that one. This is the tour that infamously includes Tommy Dreamer. They were running a tournament for the vacant All Asia belts, and Dreamer and Smith were a team in it. They didn't do well. And speaking of unusual tag partners, in the recently concluded 1994 tag league, they teamed Smith up with Dory Funk Jr. They didn't do well either.

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Stan Hansen/Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat (AJPW 1/9/1995) What a lineup! "Hey, we need another match for this card. Any ideas?" "Make all the white guys fight!" And fight they do. This is twelve minutes packed full of cool stuff. Williams and Hansen start out, which the crowd is immediately hot for. They hit each really hard. Smith reverses out of a piledriver on the floor only for Kroffat to clothesline from off the apron. Later Smith does the same thing to Kroffat. Kroffat hits Williams with two kicks, but Williams ducks one and socks him in the jaw. I'm not the biggest Dr. Death fan, but he has his moments. The moments where he punches a guy in the face. This is pre-haircut Johnny Ace, and my goodness. It's so luscious and buttery. I bet he cut it because the maintenance was just too much. I'm thinking 100 brushes every day, egg whites, the whole thing. Williams holds Kroffat up, and Ace jumps above Williams' head to hit a dropkick. Ace has Kroffat in an abdominal stretch (a really good one); Furnas comes in for the save, but Ace sees it coming and blasts him in the face with a boot. I really liked that this match felt unrehearsed. They were clearly playing it by ear, and these guys are all so great that it worked. It wasn't always smooth, but it shouldn't have been. It was the opposite of a Private Party match. When the end comes, though, they do start telling a story. The story is called "Keep Johnny Smith Away from Stan Hansen's Arm." Hansen tries to lariat Smith, but Williams hops up onto the apron and stops him. Hansen whips Smith into the ropes, but Ace trips his own partner to avoid the lariat. Hansen tries for a powerbomb only for Williams to clothesline him. Finally, Smith tries to fight back, but Hansen blocks an elbow and lariats Smith into bolivian. Not much team spirit in the aftermath. Hansen leaves on his own; Furnas and Kroffat come well behind with their arms around each other. Williams gets on the second rope and does a personal action, and then he and Ace congratulate each other like they didn't just lose. They should be attending to their partner and looking chagrined. This was great, and it's a testament to the strength of the roster at this point. They just rolled this match out there without using a single native, and it delivered both in terms of quality and fan reaction. We are more or less at the halfway point and surrounded by what's basically his competition, so it's a good time for a Johnny Smith Status Report. Johnny Smith Status: Eh. The question going in was: Who is the true Johnny Smith, the one I remember from that Misawa/Akiyama tag in 1997, or the one everyone else doesn't remember at all? It's starting to look like the latter. Consider this match: Six guys in it, and he's the sixth best one. I thought that surely Johnny Ace got pushed when Smith didn't just because he was tall. That's not the case - Johnny Ace is turning out to be completely awesome, while Smith is turning out to be completely fine. He's definitely not a bad wrestler. He doesn't screw things up or injure people or do stupid stuff all the time. But he stands out from the crowd so seldom, and his work is generally not as stellar as it looked that one time. I was expecting lots of tricky English stuff, which we know he's capable of. The arm-wringers and whatnot are there from time to time, but they're overwhelmed by stomps and elbows and unremarkable power stuff. I do think it's going to get better. Based on my skipping around, Smith seems to hit his peak in the late 1990s, and we're in the middle of a long stretch of midcard All Japan stretching from '95 to '97. The competition's good, the fans are starting to respond to his kip-ups, and things are looking up. Even if Smith isn't any good in this stuff, there's enough Hansen and Misawa and Kroffat to make up for it.

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Jun Akiyama/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (AJPW 7/29/1993) It's the very next day, the end of the tour at Budokan. Smith does pretty much the same routine with Akiyama that he did yesterday with Asako, but this is tougher competition for our boys than yesterday's rookie/jobber team. The crowd, which is mostly sitting on its hands, is pretty hot for Kikuchi. They seem to really be looking forward to Dynamite beating him up, but it's not as one-sided as I expected as Kikuchi gets a number of fiery comebacks. Dynamite looks bad, and that's even with this being a perfect situation for him. He has Smith to do most of the teamwork, and he's got Kikuchi to do the opponentwork. But his body is sufficiently shot that none of it looks good. His pain is obvious even when he's just walking across the apron to cut off Kikuchi's attempt at a top rope maneuver. Akiyama gets the win, pinning Smith with a German suplex. This was fine. I like that Smith sold the hell out of that German - I wish you could still win matches with that move. This is it for Dynamite. It seems he came in for the last two days of the tour and never wrestled for All Japan again. I was impressed with how good he still was back in 1991, but at this point it's clear that he's done. So we prepare to fast forward a couple years and watch a bereft Johnny Smith team with pretty much every foreigner that ever wrestled for All Japan in the 90s. It's not like he won a whole lot of matches with his countryman. We'll see if he does better with Rob Van Dam and the Patriot.

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Satoru Asako/Takao Omori (AJPW 7/28/1993) It doesn't take long to see the differences in Kid's and Smith's approaches. Smith starts out with Asako, and they do a bunch of arm holds and flips out of holds and kip ups and stuff. Then Dynamite comes in and beats the hell out him. The Bruisers are unanimous, however, when it comes to Takao Omori. Omori is less than a year in and looks like a gangly teenager. He's in the young lion role here, which means that they give him almost nothing, and most of the match is him being beaten upon. It's odd to see Asako as the team's senior member, but he gets to do some neat, Yoshinari Ogawa-style tricky stuff to gain the occasional advantage. But as he tags in Omori and we see the progress bar reaching its destination, we know what's coming. Dynamite drops his forehead on Omori, and the Brits are victorious.

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Kenta Kobashi/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (AJPW 4/6/1991) The British Bruisers get a shot at the All Asia Tag Titles. That's not a big enough deal to make television, but fortunately an enterprising if somewhat twitchy fan is there to capture it. This wound up being pretty good, and man was the crowd nuts for it. Dynamite was supposed to be washed up at this point, but I don't know. He didn't do much flying or bending at the waist, but he was still capable of bleeding and hitting, and those are more important anyway. You miss his intensity when Johnny is in there, but Smith and Kikuchi work really well together. Also Kikuchi's tights are extremely cool, and the rising sun on his ass contrasts niftily with the Union Jacks on the asses of the Englishmen. Kobashi does some stuff that he would later remove from the repertoire, and for good reason. He has Smith standing in the corner, and he climbs onto the second rope and DDTs him from there. Didn't work. He also hits Smith with the shortest distance moonsault I've ever seen. He went nearly straight up and down. Nothing wrong with that, just kind of odd. Dynamite piledrives Kikuchi in a way that says "my back hurts and I don't give a shit about this guy anyway" and then headbutts him from the top to win the titles, even though Kikuchi wasn't actually one of the champs. It was Kobashi and Johnny Ace, but Ace was injured. Is Vince Russo booking this? This was a hell of a card. In addition to this fine match, you had Jumbo vs. Kawada and Hansen vs. Misawa in Carnival matches. Gordy and Williams took on Furnas and Kroffat, which could have been good as long as the big guys didn't chinlock everyone to sleep. Plus Andre the Giant was there, and we got Dory and Terry Funk vs. Cactus Jack and . . . "Texas Terminator Hoss."

Blue Lives Matter started in response to two NYPD officers being murdered by someone who was angry about Eric Garner. You can be skeptical of their aims (I'm no fan of extending hate crime protections to cops), but it does no good to strawman their stated purpose and goals.

Cornette's better when he talks about things he loves than when he talks about things he hates.

Yeah, you're right. This was a pretty silly road for me to go down. I don't even like the Undertaker.

Your second paragraph had nothing to do with your first? You were just musing about some bumper stickers you didn't like in a thread about the Undertaker's political opinions? Because it sure sounds like you were connecting the Undertaker's shirt about how he likes cops with some other, non-Undertaker-related car decorations you didn't like.

The Undertaker is not responsible for the content of some bumper stickers you didn't like.

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala (AJPW 11/21/1990) The move to All Japan has seen a definite increase in Johnny Smith's quality of opposition. We've seen Kawada, Misawa, and Kobashi, and now we get what I'm pretty sure the play-by-play guy called the "Black Power Combo." It's going to be a different kind of match. The British Bruisers jump the BPC as they come to the ring, and Dynamite is actually the one who stabs first as he gets in some pokes on Abdullah. You can tell Johnny isn't a practiced hand at the this kind of thing - he reaches behind a table, picks up a non-folding chair, puts it back, then wanders off somewhere to find something better. He must have failed, because he comes back and grabs that chair again, which he and Dynamite use to hit Adbullah very gently. Abdullah is bleeding at 2:40, and that's including intros. A. Butcher (it says that on his pants!) pokes Johnny in the throat and does his dance, but Smith turns the tables by monkey-flipping him. It actually went pretty well! I wouldn't have guessed Abdullah was capable. Abdullah and Kimala are both wild men from Fake Africa, but their work is quite different. Kimala is a trained, mechanically conventional wrestler in spite of the gimmick, whereas with Abdullah it's always an adventure. He hits Smith with a neckbreaker that should not have been as difficult as he made it look; Kimala is much smoother. The story of this match is that Abdullah keeps hitting Johnny Smith in the throat. This eventually gets his team win and two points (this is actually a tag league match), but not before Dynamite Kid bleeds all over the place. This was kind of fun. All the tomfoolery was a nice change of pace after the pretty dry workratey matches we've had lately. I will say that I could have done without the long stretch of Abdullah standing motionless and digging his fingers into Dynamite's forehead. You've come a long way since World of Sport, Johnny.

Johnny Smith/Davey Boy Smith vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 5/17/1990) There are big things happening in All Japan right now, and Johnny Smith is a challenger to the All Asia Tag Team titles and a bystander to history. Tenryu left in April to shill eyeglasses, start a couple promotions no one watched, and occasionally enliven Tatsumi Fujinami matches by stiffing him in the face. The response to this is to make Misawa a big deal: Three days ago he had Kawada take off his mask (he's still wearing Tiger Mask tights). After this defense, he and Kobashi vacate the All Asia tag titles because it's time to put away childish things. Misawa actually forfeited this title twice: right after this and again in 1999 because All Japan's booking of its underneath titles was just unbelievably lazy. I already spoiled the outcome of this match, and when you've read that you've read everything. It's not really interesting. Perfectly acceptable professional wrestling, but all four of these men have better things coming for them. 1990 doesn't sound old to me, but it is interesting to see that we haven't quite hit the famous All Japan style yet. The finish was abrupt - Kobashi powerbombs Johnny and Misawa frog splashes him for the win - and it came without the parade of kickouts and dramatic rescues that one expects. Also I've seen Misawa do that splash dozens of times, but I never imagined that he ever pinned anyone with it.

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Sumu Hara/Ron Richie (Stampede 6/24/1989) Aw goddammit they sent him back to Canada. I thought I was done with Stampede, but I forgot about this one. It is a breath of fresh air, though - the video quality didn't make me seasick, and Ed Whalen isn't there. Ross Hart is pretty bad, but his charming incompetence is a welcome change from Whalen's "this is the soundtrack of Hell" announcing style. Hara is ahead of his time when it comes to instantly forgettable Japanese wrestlers. He's got billowy pants going into shooty-ass kickpads, and he throws those Mossman kicks everyone was doing. He'd fit right in on a WAR tape. UPDATE: I looked it up, and he's Koki Kitahara! Holy crap I couldn't have been more right. Dude was forgettable on all kinda WAR tapes. We're going to be seeing Smith and Dynamite working together a lot coming up here, and it doesn't look good for Johnny. You watch the two of them and realize almost instantly that Dynamite is much better. This is after back surgery and years of punishment, but he's just as crisp and vicious as he was beating the hell out of Fujinami in 1980. I don't know how he does it and why everyone else doesn't - his stuff just looks meaner than anyone else. It can't just be that was stiffing guys - plenty of people did that, but no one looked like Dynamite doing it. This isn't quite a squash - Richie gets a hot tag after a weird transition where DK superplexes Hara but puts himself in enough of a daze for Hara to get away - but it's close. The British Bruisers get the win after a double headbutt off the second rope, which looked dumb, and then talk a bunch of trash about Davey Boy and Chris Benoit. Did you guys know Benoit stole Dynamite's wrestling boots? Right out of his bag.

Davey Boy Smith/Johnny Smith vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Samson Fuyuki (AJPW 5/13/1989) It's nice to see the brothers reunited. The Smith boys were able to put aside their Stampede differences - I'm guessing they blamed it all on Dynamite and agreed to forget about the stick-whippings and accusations of egg-sucking - to unite against a common enemy, The Footloose! Man, I missed these guys. If ever there was a role Kawada was meant not to play, it's half of a babyface rock 'n' roll tag team. He's already as stoic as he got - maybe if you were sitting there in 1989 and didn't know what he'd become, it was less hilarious to see him in those teal and zebra tights. And Fuyuki never should have left. He could go even years later when he was all fat and dissipated, and he brought a little bit of wildness. 1990s All Japan is the best thing ever, but that's not to say it wouldn't have been improved with some greasiness. ANYWAY, this is just kind of there. Davey Boy is dinged up - I think his leg is bothering him - and he messes up repeatedly. Twice he goes for (I think) a spot where a Footloose reverses out of a suplex, but they just wind up falling down. In both cases, he recovers by doing a Northern Lights suplex, which I don't think I've ever seen him do before. Fuyuki does one as well - it's the superkick of 1989. Neat finish. Davey Boy gorilla presses Johnny and throws him at Kawada, who rolls through and gets the pin. That's two losses in two days for our boy. You better pick up the pace before they send you back to Canada, Johnny.

Johnny Smith vs. Mitsuo Momota (AJPW 5/12/1989) Johnny's finally made it to All Japan, but I didn't recognize him at first. He had that mullet plus shaved sides hairstyle after he became a bad guy in Canada. All that now remains is blotch of hair on the back of head anchoring the mullet. It's hideous. Did he go through a bad breakup and take the clippers to himself in a moment of despair? Did he pass out and endure an All Japan hazing ritual? Did they tell him he was getting a Mongol gimmick? Aside from the hair situation, things are looking up. Freed from the dumbass face/heel structure around which Stampede contests revolved, Johnny gets to wrestle again. He gets a shot at the junior heavyweight title, held by Rikidozan's kid. The crowd is dead silent as they exchange holds (not counting me thirty years leader - I was popping pretty hard). They do react to the high spots, though. Momota has Smith in a . . . leggy arm scissors (I don't know), and Smith stands up while still in the hold and deadlifts him, only for Momota to roll him ever and keep the hold on. We all enjoyed that. They're positively raucous as the match heats up. Smith hits a brutal-looking second rope leg drop, Momota hits a dive to the outside, Smith catches him in midair for a powerslam . . . and then they start messing stuff up, which quiets but does not silence Korakuen. Smith just seems off. It is the first match on only his second All Japan tour, so maybe he was rusty or nervous or communicating poorly. He's supposed to get hurricanrana'd and just completely blows it, and there are numerous moments of hesitation on his part. Momota wins with a clunky small package. This is seven minutes of a thirteen minute match, and it was full of mistakes, but I really enjoyed it. I liked the timing and pacing of the match, and I dug seeing Johnny wrestle again.

Johnny Smith vs. Biff Wellington (Stampede 12/16/1988) Wellington gets a shot at Smith's Mid-Heavyweight title. Smith is heeling like crazy here. We join ten minutes in to see him yelling at the crowd, his bad guy mullet billowing behind him. When Wellington takes control, he even does the beg off. This follows the Stampede formula: The heel isn't allowed to do anything cool; he may only stomp and cheat while Ed Whalen drones moralistically in the background. Smith rakes Wellington's eyes and tries to leave, but Wellington, who looks like Dynamite Kid wearing Don Frye's mustache, rolls him back in. Which he ends up regretting, as Smith tries to drop him face-first onto the turnbuckle but misses completely. He still gets the pin. Young Johnny is off to All Japan for pretty much the rest of his career, so we're leaving Calgary behind. I wonder if he missed it. I certainly won't.

Johnny Smith vs. Louie Spicolli (ECW 3/8/1996) Joey Styles tells a lot of fibs, which is objectionable even if it is in the service of making us think Johnny Smith is tough and cool. He claims that Smith has held titles in Great Britain, Austria, Australia, and Japan. As far as I can tell, only Japan is correct there, and he left out Canada. He states that Smith is making his ECW debut, as if we're supposed to forget that he lost to 2 Cold Scorpio the day before in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. I should be more appreciative, since we're all trying to get Johnny Smith over here. If ever there was a wrestler destined to get over in front of the ECW Arena crowd . . . well, it wouldn't be Johnny Smith, but I appreciate the effort. On an ironic note, Styles tells us that Smith is looking to make a name in the U.S., and you can be sure Stamford and Atlanta are watching. One of these guys wound up working for Stamford and Atlanta, but it wasn't Johnny. They start off with some matwork, but it's dumb matwork. They do the same headlock takeover into a headscissors spot three times like it's supposed to be impressive. Then they give that up and go outside. It's only a five minute match, so you can't waste a lot of time. They do some moves to each other, and then Smith kicks Spicolli in the gut and does a sitout powerbomb (Styles: "TIGER BOMB!") to get the win. It's a short, sloppy match (the finish comes after Smith almost reverses an Irish whip but decides not to midway through). Everyone chanted "Johnny" at the end, which is nice to hear - ECW Arena is second only to Korakuen when it comes to Johnny Appreciation.

Johnny Smith/Makhan Singh/Midnight Cowboys vs. Owen Hart/Bad Company/Jason the Terrible (Stampede 4/15/1988) This is an elimination match, and we join it - thank heavens - 20 minutes in. Only four men remain: Smith and Singh vs. Owen Hart and Brian Pillman. The match has peculiar rules: Going over the top rope means elimination, and there are no tags; everyone wrestles at once. So most of what we see here is like a particularly dispirited ECW tag team match. There are two singles matches happening at the same time in the same ring, and neither of them is good. This is our first look at Pillman, and he disappoints. He looks like a million bucks (the only man in Calgary with a tan!), but his execution is lacking. It really does hurt him that he's on a team with Owen Hart. They both do a lot of flying, and Owen's is much better. And a sloppy sunset flip is one thing; Pillman lays the worst sleeper hold I've ever seen on Singh. A sleeper is the single easiest wrestling move there is, right? I didn't know there could be a bad one. Pillman is eliminated when Norman the Lunatic sits on him, and the heels go to work on Owen. They send him over the top, but he flips himself back in and dropkicks Bastion Booger over the top. Disaster is averted when Singh grabs the top rope to send Owen out and leaving Johnny Smith as the last man standing. Big win for our boy here. Good to see the best man win.

Owen Hart/Ben Bassarab/Johnny Smith vs. Viet Cong Express/Les Thornton Stampede (Stampede 10/10/1986) That's former Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Hiroshi Hase under a mask pretending to be a Vietnamese insurgent. We all have to start somewhere. We also have the lost Hart brother-in-law, Ben Bassarab, and the guy teaming with Cactus Jack when the Bulldogs beat the hell out of him, Les Thornton. Plus another Japanese guy pretending to be from Vietnam. That covers all the new guys. We arrive 20 minutes into the match with Johnny Smith getting worked over. He manages to tag in Owen and holy crap was Owen amazing. He gets whipped into the corner, whereupon he hops up to the top rope and does what looks like a cross body but turns into a picture perfect sunset flip. I can't believe a video this bad was showing me something that awesome. Bassarab comes in and does some stuff, but he works too fast, if that makes sense. He busts out a piledriver, but there's no anticipation or setup. It's just "OKI'mpiledrivingyounow*piledriver*." Eventually they do a tricky finish where Owen tags himself in as Bassarab shoots Thornton off the ropes; Owen bounces off Thornton's head with a cross body and pins him. What little we saw of this was fun but sloppy. The ring generalship of the competitors wasn't quite up to the task of arranging the positions of six men, but there's something charming about it. If I'd been in the audience, I probably would have really enjoyed it, but I've been blessed enough never to have been in Calgary in October.