Mitsuharu Misawa & Toshiaki Kawada vs. The Land of Giants (and other Dream Matches!)

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This week, I have ANOTHER Butch Masters/Giant Warrior match, as the 7′ scrub shows up again in 1990 All Japan teaming with Skywalker Nitron (Tyler “Sabretooth” Mane)… and their opponents are two of the Four Pillars, Misawa & Kawada! But it’s a fancam and 2-4 years before their peak as workers! Come see what to GOAT-tier talent do to wrestle two absolute scrubs who are too big to throw around!

Next up, it’s a Sunday Night Heat request, as Val Venis in his “Jobber Era” gets his first-ever match against RIC FLAIR! Then I find a random Midnight Express tag team match from 1986 as Loverboy Dennis and Beautiful Bobby face the Kansas Jayhawks- Dutch Mantel & Bobby Jaggers! Then it’s over to WCW Worldwide as eras collide- WCCW’s 1980s talent “Gentleman” Chris Adams gets a match against beanpole Ultimo Dragon trainee TOKYO MAGNUM! Finally, it’s a rare OVW appearance by ERIC ANGLE, Kurt’s brother, as he takes on the promotion’s pseudo-top star, Doug Basham!

MITSUHARU MISAWA & TOSHIAKI KAWADA vs. THE LAND OF GIANTS (Butch Masters & Skywalker Nitron):
(All Japan Fancam, 1990)
* You have no idea how happy I was to find this match- there are few things more interesting than watching GOAT-tier talent deal with total incompetents in the ring. Like… can they make a good match out of it? How will they attempt to? Will the big guys flummox their every attempt at getting this past **? Or is this a mid-tier tour show where they’re not gonna try very hard? You see a LOT of those, even in All Japan. And… oh, it’s actually just a fancam show so yeah- expecting effort is a fool’s errand haha. Another wrinkle- this is 1990, 3-4 years before the real Four Kings of All Japan really formed. Are Misawa & Kawada quite as good at this point? So the Land of Giants are impossibly bad giant wrestlers- Tyler Mane from the X-Men movie and Butch, who was seen last week as “Giant Warrior”, and is EVEN WORSE). They’re in matching red tights and come down to Dungeon of Doom/Giant Gonzalez-esque music. The crowd appears awed by their size at first but quickly boos seeing these total scrubs do generic roars and poses.

Nitron works super slow with Kawada to start, the MUCH smaller man (coming up below Nitron’s neck) dodging some grapples and being given a clean break in the ropes. Nitron slams him but misses a theatrical elbow and does the “noob arm-swivel & confused look” to sell. Butch tries with Misawa, clubbing him and hitting a lariat, but Nitron comes in and eats some counter-elbows, being powered around by his opponents- Kawada’s kicks draw “SHA!” chants (is Hack Myers all up in here?) and he pummels the big guy down with a spinning one. But Nitron comes back handily on Misawa, smashing him again and again… then doing another one because he’s kinda run out of ideas. Oh, there’s a vertical suplex. A double-lariat brings Misawa down as the pace is still very low effort. Slam, second-rope axehandle, corner clothesline, throw him into Butch’s boot… yup, house show. lol Misawa’s big transition is to just pop up after a back-club and elbow him. Kawada throws more kicks & elbows but there’s a funny bit as he seems to run out of ideas and just throw on a front facelock and walk backwards to the corner so Butch can get out and nail him.

haha Kawada tries to sell some kicks but gets whipped to the corner and Nitron throws the limpest, wimpiest-looking clothesline ever, barely hooking him. Nitron’s bearhug keeps up the scintillating pace- Misawa cheats to save his partner, but Kawada gets dumped for a slam on the floor and some guardrail whips, and Butch pulls the spot of the match by slamming Kawada’s back into the post. Then does his own bearhug- oh god dammit. They keep working the back (so there’s psychology!), Nitron hitting a sideslam and going for a stroll, and Kawada backdrops out of a powerbomb attempt! Misawa comes in with elbows and the Land of Giants get whipped into each other, leading to a missile dropkick getting two. The big guys hit a double-big boot after Misawa misses a dropkick, and Nitron drops Butch in a legdrop on Misawa for a nearfall- Kawada has to save! The Giants fight back but Kawada pescados Nitron to leave Misawa alone- he’s choke-tossed once, but elbows free, hits a running elbow, then ducks a clothesline to hit a Bridging German- three (9:58)! Misawa uses a clever reversal and (sorta) manages to hold the bridge after Butch nearly overshot it! The Giants sell the loss by putting their hands on their hips in disappointment and casually walking away with their heads down- scrubs.

ooooof- total house show match, as you might expect (this isn’t even recorded for TV, I suspect, so a fan is just recording it himself). The Land of Giants are the awful kind of bad where they’re not just scrubs, they’re SO BIG that you can’t just do normal filler with them without looking weird, so the smaller men are left with just throwing strikes as their only believable offense. Totally limp offense form the big guys except for their back-clubbing, which they over-rely on, immediately marking to the audience that they’re scrubs. Like, shouldn’t big guys just be eating them alive and throwing them around? They start the “real match” later on after two extended bearhugs, actually acting like they’re trying to win, but they still do “hit a move, sit around and take their time getting up” stuff that often happens on house shows. The finish was NEARLY botched but Butch actually had the wherewithal to slide back over to allow himself to be pinned, so props to him.

Rating: ** (yeah, a barely tolerable match helped by the Japanese offense and a few attempts at trying some stuff, but overall a very low effort bout- a House Show Special)

Best part of the match: Horny Mom taking gleeful pictures of the ladies’ man wrestler while her daughter is noticeably bored and a menacing bridge troll lurks behind them.

RIC FLAIR vs. VAL VENIS:
(WWF Sunday Night Heat, 1/2/2005)
* Another request, with Flair & Venis being two guys whose careers actually overlapped in the same company for WAY longer than you might think (almost nobody from the 1980s or early ’90s overlapped by eight years!), but still come off as if they were from two entirely different eras. This is mostly because Flair was usually an A-show guy and once it was clear Venis was never going anywhere in the business, he was used as a “good hand” filler guy on the weekend shows for nearly a decade. Best part about this is the camera gets what is clearly a 40-something mom gleefully taking pictures of Val while her young daughter just watches, chewing on her fingernail. Flair is 55-ish years old at this point. The hosts here are Todd Phillips and Ivory- I didn’t know she went to commentary. Her “excitable chatterbox” persona isn’t the BEST at this sort of thing, really. Both guys are in black trunks, though Flair has distinctive PURPLE kneepads and boots on, which is quite unique.

Todd goes on about how Val has never faced Flair before, and was actually nervous before the match. He gets a shoulderblock and the best out of an armlock exchange and backdrop, but Ric keeps taunting and suckers Val in for an eyepoke. Val does his best to oversell chops (man, the canned heat here is INSANE- no one on camera is reacting yet the “fans” are just cheering wildly for every little move) and fires back with his own, but Ric punches him down in the corner and drops the knee (the “crowd” roars like they just saw a move an All Japan match had been building for 10 minutes). Flair throws a pair of chops while taking his sweet time, looking exhausted already, and Val fires back with clotheslines, chops and another back body drop as Ivory talks about Val’s “vast knowledge of mat technology”. I can only assume she meant “technique”, haha. Clothesline! Neckbreaker! The “permanently 1980s” offense of Val continues, and a persistent ass-kicking finally leads Flair to tease, then stop, then complete the Flair Flop to our first genuine physical response from the audience. Val does the ten punches in the corner (after… doing 6 punches there a minute ago) but Flair “flops” again, taking out his knee on the landing. Flair, exhausted, dives in with a shot to the knee and the Figure-Four Leglock finishes at (6:26), Val at first teasing a pinfall and trying to escape but ultimately capitulating.

This was a very “Val Venis vs. Elderly Ric Flair” kind of match, in that Flair was just letting his opponent run through all his shit in between the usual Flair spots, and Val just does 1980s spots with good execution and very little else. Val’s big issue was always a lack of genuine fire- he always PHYSICALLY throw a lot of himself into all his shit, but he was kind of a generic dude stylistically and never had much emotional furor put into anything. So the fact that his offense is all chops, clotheslines and ends with a big splash was hurting him (he lifted the Blue Thunder Bomb from Japan but that was it)… never mind what happened to him when the company got an influx of ACTUAL good workers in and he was left out in the cold. Like, the dude is wrestling Ric Flair and thus it’s his biggest match in a year but he’s running out of offense so he’s repeating shit constantly in a 6-minute contest. Still, the dude lasted until 2009 doing this “Sunday Night Heat special” shit, which is an AMAZING run all things considered. His selling was bigger here, which is probably why his run lasted so long- if you needed a guy to put someone over, he was arguably the most ideal name to do it- former belt-holder, former “name”, had classical shit that was easy to sell and he sold big for everything. It occurs to me also that Ivory’s commentary is very much “Disney World Show Host” with the rapid-fire faux-excitement narration.

Rating: **1/4 (a filler TV match with a lot of effort from Val, who is still boring, and Flair, who was just selling until it was time for Ric Flair Stuff)

Every time I think of 1980s Southern wrestling, I picture images like this, haha.

THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (Loverboy Dennis Condrey & Beautiful Bobby Eaton, w/ Jim Cornette & Big Bubba) vs. THE KANSAS JAYHAWKS (Dirty Dutch Mantel & Hangman Bobby Jaggers):
(NWA Worldwide, Sept. 13th 1986)
* Oh yeah! I found another Classic Midnight Express match! And against the Kansas Jayhawks! Who I’ve never heard of! It’s… Dutch Mantel and some guy named Bobby Jaggers? Jaggers has one of those Wikipedia pages that was ABSOLUTELY written by himself, containing all sorts of extraneous details about his life and scholastic career, but he unfortunately died in 2012. Which means it might be a kid of his. Eaton looks hilarious stuffing his doughy body into neon green tights, Condrey’s in red trunks, and the Jayhawks are in black, Dutch wearing a singlet (that presses down his two inches of back hair in a horrifying manner) and wielding a whip, and Jaggers having a simply AWFUL combination of bleach-blond unstyled long hair and a dark beard, with a big gut, moobs, and a body that’s never seen the sun. Are these names why Cornette always stuck nicknames on everyone in OVW?

Jaggers handily hiptosses Condrey and slams Eaton, over to Dutch, and they do a quick international that sees Eaton elbowing nothing. He pulls Jaggers’ hair to come back, but Condrey gets chased out of the ring when Dutch drops down to meet him ducking and crawls at him, sending him scurrying out into a beating from Jaggers on the floor to the amusement of the crowd & commentary. Back from break with the Midnights working over Dutch, doing some cheating with the ref’s back turned- Condrey does a great swinging elbowdrop and whips Eaton into a back elbow, then more cheating sets up a neckbreaker. ugh this guy has like 2-3-inch-long hair all over his back- that must be so miserable to wrestle against, even for pretend. Shit’s a PELT. Dutch fights out of a chinlock but gets caught with a falling clothesline. Condrey works Dutch over a bit, but comes off the second rope into a clothesline (kind of a weird comeback spot), only for Condrey to be first up. Eaton with a great high knee too close to the ropes and the Midnights keep up the illegal double-teaming, Dutch finally makes a hot tag after a random elbow and tubby Jaggers comes in for some short punches and elbows, sorta skipping around the ring. He drops the elbow on Eaton but Condrey sets off a donnybrook breaking it up, and IN COMES BUBBA- he hits a splash off the second rope right in front of the ref and that’s the DQ at (9:07). Bubba hits TWO MORE, just squashing Jaggers until Dutch comes in with the bullwhip and… Bubba just stands there! No cowardly heel, he- he’s ready to fight! But Dutch just wusses out of actually USING said weapon (to be fair that’s REALLY hard to work a bullwhip shot), making him look like a bitch as Bubba just lets him drag his partner to safety.

Unfortunately screwjob finish but probably to be expected of a random TV match between “name” teams- it mostly felt like the Midnights on autopilot working a “template” match against scrubs- the babyfaces showed NOTHING and barely seemed in position for comebacks while Eaton was hitting great strikes and Condrey was acting like an asshole. Not the best showcasing of anyone but fine for TV. Did the Jayhawks ever really go anywhere?

Rating: **1/2 (a very baseline Midnights match)

CHRIS ADAMS vs. TOKYO MAGNUM:
(WCW Worldwide, Dec. 14th 1997)
* A request! And the PERFECT kind of glorious match for Dream Matches- where else are you going to see a washed-up Englishman from 1980s WCCW taking on an Ultimo Dragon trainee and future Dragon Gate superstar on a bullshit D-show from one of the Big Two? And of course the arrogant “Male Stripper” gimmick guy is coming out to a stereotypical “Japanese 1800s” ding-dong song. Magnum is a total beanpole next to Adams, who has gotten soft with age but looks like he should totally overwhelm his scrawny opponent.

Adams wisely works some headlocks, probably being told that Tony & Bobby were gonna completely ignore this and focus on Hogan/Sting anyways. Magnum hits a dropkick out of a criss-cross but eats a backdrop suplex when it’s his turn to headlock. Magnum spins out of the corner to no avail as Adams just steamrolls him with a clothesline after a stall-out. They then botch a powerbomb when Adams gets him at way too high an angle for the gutwrench and falls backwards dropping him for the move. This still leaves Magnum selling enough for Adams to hit the Superkick (hey! He slapped his hip! How far back does that GO!) for the easy win at (2:22). A very jobbery squash, as Adams gives Magnum only a single move and just overwhelms him the entire match. Boy had some cocaines to eat or something!

Rating: 1/2* (A barebones squash with some half-decent headlock bits and then immediately swallowing up the new kid and giving him nothing)

ERIC ANGLE vs. “MACHINE” DOUG BASHAM:
(Ohio Valley Wrestling, Nov. 23rd 2002)
* haha, on a whim I decided to look up Eric Angle and figure out why he never ultimately got the callup to WWE. And in so doing I found a match featuring him against one of OVW’s nothingburger guys, Doug “Generic Default CAW” Basham, a basic-looking, basic-talking guy who was also like a 5-6/10 worker yet was expected to become a big star, somehow? He cuts a horrible promo in the back, telling his allies Damaja, Jackie Gayda, someone named Spade (Johnny, as I’d learn later), & Chris Kanyon not to interfere in his match. This match is so 2002 that “Machine” hits the ring wearing black leather pants. Eric has a very “amateur wrestling” physique with the ridiculous neck & shoulders giving him a V-shaped bulky yet athletic torso- he’s got a deep buzzcut revealing baldness hit him well before it did Kurt, and a Steiner-style bisected singlet (grey & purple).

Eric dominates using amateur techniques to start, grappling Doug down, elbowing his hand to break a waistlock, and teasing an anklelock while Jim Cornette on commentary talks about “14 months of hell” with surgeries on his right arm. Doug repositions with a boot and beats Eric down in the corner, but Eric fires back with some lumbering clotheslines and a hiptoss, only to charge into an elbow and have Doug smash his arm into the mat. Eric’s selling is just kinda “hold the arm and turtle a bit” while Doug’s offense on it is loosey-goosey. Maybe he’s getting fucked up because he actually has to work the RIGHT arm and has to mirror regular stuff? Cuz even his hammerlocks are looking like shit, his hands slipping all over the place. Doug works some stretching on the arm but goes up and misses a flying headbutt and Eric is… just lying face down. Come on, man, ACT! Eric gets up and throws some light strikes and occasionally holds his arm, hitting a back body drop so Doug can do the Mortal Kombat “FINISH HIM!” sell into the Angle Slam, which gets only two. Doug does a shitty go-behind but Eric pulls him down into the Heel Hook Ankle Lock, but Space hits the ring apron (disobeying orders!). Eric won’t release as Doug’s in the ropes, but lets go so he can throw some of the lightest punches in recorded history against Space & Kanyon, then just look at him- it’s Rob Conway! He beats on Kanyon outside as Eric turns around and it’s the Attitude Era finish- the “kick wham”-style Sit-Out Pedigree from Doug gets the pin at (4:58).

haha, pretty weak-ass match, fitting the “WWE Velocity” style, more or less. Lots of boring, loose work on Eric’s arm, not really sold well (dude should be lurching madly, kicking his feet, bailing to the floor, and trying moves but breaking “because of the pain”, not just grimacing and holding the arm). To be fair he was a rookie who spent over a year on the shelf (surgeries + an infection). Doug’s stuff was incredibly sloppy whenever he had to do mat wrestling but was okay (if generic) when he had to throw strikes or regular offense. Like his hands kept slipping all over Eric whenever he tried a hammerlock or something, as if working right was throwing him off too much).

Rating: *3/4 (about as good as a weak, uncharismatic rookie against a 5/10 worker was gonna be)