Beaver Cleavage vs. Christian (and other Dream Matches!)

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! After last week’s WWF tape, I figured I’d go for more disparate weird things, from outliers to requests to spectacularly awful indie garbage (see the above pic)! First off, it’s Yokozuna back when he was an up & comer in 1989 AWA, as “Kokina Maximus” takes on job guy rookie and future ECW & TNA star Jerry Lynn! Then it’s over to NOAH in Japan for a bizarre one, as Claudio Castagnoli and indie long-timer Chris Hero team up to take on one of the four pillars, Akira Taue, alongside Jun Izumida in a comedy match!

Then a request, as the most “2001 WWE D-Show” match possible has Crash Holly teaming up with Too Cool against Raven, Perry Saturn & Tazz on WWF Jakked! Then it’s some of the worst indie crap you’ve ever seen, as Bobby Bold Eagle, a 60-year old white guy dressed in warpaint doing an “Indian” gimmick takes on an Abdullah the Butcher knockoff in 1984 WWA! BUT FIRST…

I will never forget this one. So the time is 1999. My dad was helping out a young coworker move into a new house and lay sod in the back yard, and recruited me for it as well. This was a RAW night, so I was of course taping it. But we were finished sometime after RAW started and we went back into the house for food or what have you as the guy’s wife was watching TV. And of course I was like “hey, how about RAW?”. Being seventeen years old, I couldn’t WAIT to show these 20-something newlyweds how cool wrestling had become, how “adult” and edgy it was now! No longer was it the childish, goofy thing of the past- ADULTS could watch it and feel no shame! I was so proud of how I would spread my interest to others and showcase what I loved about wrestling so much.

So we flip channels, set it to RAW mid-show, and what’s the first thing we see?… the in-ring debut… of BEAVER FUCKING CLEAVAGE.

HARRY “BEAVER” CLEAVAGE (w/ Mrs. Cleavage) vs. CHRISTIAN:
(WWF RAW, May 31st 1999)
* So yes, this is WWF Headbanger Mosh repackaged as “Beaver Cleavage”, who appeared in goofy vignettes focused around his mother’s cleavage. His mother was of course a woman around the same age as Beaver, who nonetheless acted like a child. So “The Beav” comes out dressed in kiddie shorts and a suit & tie, plus a propeller beanie, arm in arm with “his mother”, wearing a dress with a short skirt and open cleavage. Of course the entrance is filmed in black & white- gotta keep to the gimmick! And… fuck me, his name was actually Harry Beaver?

“I love beavers!’ cries Jerry Lawler as I try to explain to these people whose home I’ve just defiled that “oh haha, they’re just doing a silly thing where he pretends to act like Beaver Cleaver!” like this is clever, and the guy’s wife was like “haha, her name is Cleavage and she’s showing cleavage…” in a manner that was in no way an uncomfortable attempt to humor me. I have no recollection of the rest of the evening and this has never been mentioned again. I can only assume that my soul left my body permanently, and I would desperately like to say I never tried to push my wrestling fandom on anyone ever again, especially not my college friend Ben on the very episode where Vince McMahon debuted the “Kiss My Ass Club” and showed his pearly-white ass cheeks on TV as William Regal kissed them.

ANYWAYS, the match starts with Christian, still very much in the “JTTS” role in the Brood and probably known as a “good hand” for debuting guys already by this point, doing an International, a very serious-faced Cleavage doing a poor sell of a kick to the chest but hitting a loose powerslam. Christian calls some spots and counters a hiptoss and does a sit-out front suplex as the canned heat (this is obviously a taped show) is like “OHHHHHHHHHH!” to this jobber hitting a move on a stupid gimmick guy. Mrs. Cleavage hits the ring apron to scold Christian, who nonetheless avoids the Beav and wheel kicks him. Beaver trips him up into the top turnbuckle as close-ups of Mrs. C reveal she is REALLY built- Marianna Komlos was a fitness model before those became routine in WWE, and had more toned arms than either guy in the ring, haha. Beaver gets a slingshot clothesline on the apron and hugs his momma, then bounces on Christian in the ropes, at least looking and acting childishly now. He blind charges into the corner and eats a backdrop suplex, then an inverted DDT. He gets crotched up top, but still hits a frog-type elbow drop- but Mrs. Cleavage distracts the ref so the Hardy Boyz and Cool Dad Michael Hayes (oh jesus THIS time period) run out, Hayes cracking a cane over Christian’s head, and Beaver Cleavage hits an inverted suplex for the pin at (3:48). Beav & his mom celebrate, but immediately Christian nails the Hardy Trio with a plancha and gets his ass kicked again, at which point Gangrel & Edge come out. The Hardyz take HUGE bumps to the floor and drag Hayes out to save him.

Oh my god, so yeah, the Hardy Boyz were just starting to get over and then MICHAEL HAYES attaches himself to their gimmick in something that looked insanely like an uncool old uncle trying to be young again, dressing like them and being their mentor. It couldn’t possibly have been more obvious that powerful road agent Hayes wanted to look cool with this hot new young act. I was so worried this would kill their careers but THANK GOD they repositioned quickly. Poor Beaver here has his debut match won by a classic “RAW Finish” but was at least victorious. The match was as “Filler RAW” as you can get, but Christian was a good enough hand to lead this perfectly well. He hit the lion’s share of the offense, though, and a good variety of offense, which doesn’t exactly make The Beav look like a threat. His own offense was pretty piss-poor but he could at least bump and move for stuff. Beaver didn’t last more than a month- he abruptly “quit the gimmick” during a live promo (“Chaz? We’re LIVE- Chaz?” called an offscreen producer) and he came out as “Chaz Warrington” for a while until the Headbangers were reunited. Either the gimmick just bombed horribly and they repackaged him or this was the idea all along (Russo wanting to be “real”)- I forget who has given what explanation now. Allegedly Vince pulled the plug on it after seeing the debut.

And man… it’s never Benoit/Angle. You never got to randomly show people Rey Mysterio vs. Eddie Guerrero when you want to share your fandom. It’s always like two dudes in an evening gown match, Al Snow having his balls tortured by midgets, Vince’s butt, or Beaver fucking Cleavage matches XD. Wrestling is so goddamned stupid- I love it so much.

Rating: *3/4 (a very “WWE RAW” kind of match- almost twice as long as many of them tended to be, but hey- they had a character to establish!)

KOKINA MAXIMUS (w/ Sheik Adnan Al Kaissie) vs. JERRY LYNN:
(AWA, 9/23/89)
* I went looking for more “Yokozuna as Kokina” matches, and found a jobber bout against a curly-haired, mustached Jerry Lynn in 1989! Humorously, Kokina is like 350-ish pounds and billed at 460. Kokina’s wearing black “Headshrinker shorts” and Lynn’s in some brutally 1980s blue & pink tights.

Lynn naturally immediately goes for a shoulderblock and eats shit, then tries two more times and gets clotheslined. Jerry then takes the “Eddie Bump” except I can’t tell if it was on purpose or he forgot to rotate on a back body drop because he comes down diagonally. Kokina throws a bunch of throat-thrusts and stomps and finally just press-slams him and hits a Running Splash for the pin at (2:01). The most interesting part was Lee Marshall & Nick Bockwinkel (maybe) debating the virtues of a “Super Heavyweight Division”, with Marshall pointing out that Jerry Lynn at 212 lbs. (well, 180 if they weren’t bullshitting, lol) was “a big guy!”.

Rating: 1/2* (perfectly acceptable mini-squash with Lynn getting demolished and taking big bumps. 3/5 on the Squash Scale)

AKIRA TAUE & JUN IZUMIDA vs. CHRIS HERO & CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI:
(Pro Wrestling NOAH, 02.03.2008)
* I just had to take a look at this one, lol. It’s a Comedy Match just looking through clips, but it’s pre-WWE Claudio coming out to “Sharp Dressed Man” while wearing a pinstriped slacks and a jacket, doing stuff that’s very much “uncharimsatic man trying to pretend to have charisma”. He looks weird with hair- even here you can tell it’s giving up the ghost and he needs to live with it. The long red tights are a weird look. Hero looks like all almighty dweeb with poop-green tights and a purple shirt with “CH” in the Superman logo on them and “HERO” written on the bag. He’s one of those guys whose name I’ve heard a billion times on the BOD but I’ve never once seen him. He’s pretty tall-ish with a nothingburger physique. Izumida is a bit shorter than both and has an unbelievably rotund upper body for his body type, looking very much like an “aged-out veteran now doing silly stuff”. Speaking of, Taue is looking weaker and toughier, a lot more like his old senior Giant Baba than I’ve ever seen. Izumida is I guess a former sumo who was a career mid guy in AJPW/NOAH, and died in 2017 of a heart attack. The ROH duo are doing a long-ish NOAH tour (Hero wrestles there frequently for a few years from what I can see, but he’s one of those dudes who wrestles in 20 promotions per year for most of his life).

Claudio starts with Izumida and is all “AARRRGGGHHHH!” like Lex Luger as he works an armbar but we do old Japanese comedy spot of “Taue armbreaks Claudio while looking away, then gets tricked into doing it to his partner”. Claudio tries to work the brain, but Izumida is one of those dudes with a “hard head” gimmick and repeatedly humiliates him, Hero even selling when the head hits his knee on a double-team. Taue keeps hitting lumbering boots but Izumida is shamed into doing the same, even though Claudio keeps countering his. Hero works basics but tries a headbutt and dies, then tries a chop and Izumida lowers his head, Chris selling agony. He gets dropped, and Claudio’s interference sees Jun land head-first on Hero’s balls! Taue rakes Claudio’s eyes to the anger of Hero, who admits “that was impressive… that was impressive, Taue” as the big guy hits a high kick.

Claudio eats some big boots, selling with cartoonish fervor (a Jun clothesline sees him sell like the WCW/nWo Revenge “collapse” animation), but Claudio gets his slingshot European uppercut to Izumida. Hero throws generic stuff, then a goofy tumbling routine throws Claudio into Izumida and the crowd actually pops & laughs at that! Hero has to repostion Izumida a bit to hit a Spinning Indie Flying Neckbreaker, then does a somewhat awkward strike contest with Izumida, but the ROH guys are able to pound town Taue and Claudio hits the GIANT SWING on him! Taue even flaps his hands in fear and shock, haha. The crowd is impressed even as Claudio cartoonishly stumbles around to sell dizziness, and they hit another tumbling toss for two. Taue surprises him with a DDT and when Hero does a comically long ramp-run, intercepts him with a Chokeslam! Taue’s Chokeslam & Dynamite Bomb (sit-out powerbomb) finish Claudio at (10:58).

A tolerable, mostly silly match with two aged veterans going up against ROH guys who were probably tickled to be there and doing a bunch of goofy theatrical double-teams that are more silly than “good” but fun for the live crowd. Taue has obviously seen better days- moving and looking just like Baba did in the ’90s, but still had his timing even if he was mostly doing comedy spots (it’s funny seeing one of the legendary Pillars slapping his ass to taunt people and selling fear like he’s Masa Fuchi).

Rating: **1/2 (the most “2.5” match to ever exist- too fun to be **, but not good enough to be “really good match” by any means)

TAZZ, RAVEN & PERRY SATURN (w/ Terri) vs. CRASH HOLLY & TOO COOL (Grandmaster Sexay & Scotty II Hotty):
(WWF Metal, Oct. 21st 2000)
* By request, the most “Metal” match possible is a six-man between all the lower-end guys in the company. Raven is new to the company again (“Who the fuck hired Raven?”). The whole trio is of course a cutesy reference to ECW. Scotty is I believe about to get over and focused via “The Worm”. Man, Raven is looking SVELTE, here. I have no recollection of him being so skinny. Was he using pills as food by this point?

Sexay hoots and squawks while wrestling Raven, managing “go away heat” with me even while wrestling babyface, ducks a Saturn clothesline and averts a double-team, dancing on the 2nd rope before hitting a dropkick. Double-hiptoss leads to a rocket launcher on Crash, who dances with Too Cool and is pulled to the corner by his ear for it. This lets Saturn & Raven hit a high/low with a sweep & clothesline on Scotty, everyone taking turns beating on him. Watching Tazz as a WWF-style heel is always funny- he’s so short that the highly mobile style makes it look like he’s scampering. Saturn hits an overhead suplex to stop a comeback, but both he & Raven get crotched on the top rope by cheating babyfaces, leading to the “hot” tag to Crash, who bashes the heels around and actually does the Bushwhacker Battering Ram to Saturn. Tazz trips Crash up from the floor to bring everyone in and I notice the heels are trying REALLY hard with their bumping, doing flipover bumps on regular stuff. Raven eats a facecrusher and there’s The Worm, finally waking up the crowd as poor Raven just has to lie there for Scotty’s routine. But the heels attack Too Cool from behind and dump them, then Raven DDTs Crash to set up the Rings of Saturn for the submission win at (4:53). The heels take it!

A pretty “Jakked/Metal” kind of match, with lots of dudes yeeting themselves around, which was the style at the times. Raven & Saturn wrestled like they knew they were gonna have a hard time finding a push otherwise, doing flipover bumps off of CRASH HOLLY offense, Tazz scampered around a bunch, Scotty hit his one over move, and the heels used double-teaming to win. Tazz really brought NOTHING here- no bumping nor moves, while Sexay wrestled exactly like a man everyone hates and is just now feeling okay about tearing into in shoots, as his stupid dancing is totally exposing the guys he’s wrestling. When you haven’t done ANYTHING to your opponents, dancing right in front of them and then easily countering and hitting them with stuff is making them look stupid.

Rating: ** (very basic-ass wrestling match with a good bit of action but nothing incredible)

He looks like his 3-year old drew an “Indian” and he had to copy the paint exactly.

THE GREAT ABDULLAH (w/ Rooster Griffin?) vs. BOBBY BOLD EAGLE:
(WWA All Star Championship Wrestling, May 20th 1984)
* Oh man you guys HAVE to see some of this garbage, haha. This is a dying indie as its fading out and just has NOTHING to it- all these useless never-was dudes and guys doing cheap ripoff gimmicks. Like here with “The Great Abdullah” (a chubby black guy ripping off Abdullah the Butcher), and his opponent, who is very clearly a generic-ass white guy decked out as an “Indian” in the cheapest “war paint” you could possibly get. Not only cheap but LAZY. What are the dots on his hairy, pale torso supposed to be? Dude has the body of a guy whose only exercise is swimming at the YMCA. He’s Bob Boyer, who won the illustrious “City of Mobile Heavyweight Championship” and debuted in *1957*. I’ve got nothing on Abdullah, but this match indicates it was maybe his first and last match all at once, haha.

Right away the Chief snapmares Abdullah over and drops a knee and an elbow, going for the dreaded “69” pin each time. His chinlock is aggressively lazy- like he doesn’t even look REMOTELY like he’s putting any pressure on. He’s just sitting there smiling and resting his hands on Abdullah, who bless him is actually doing a “cross-eyed” sell. They’re in the ropes and the ref is doing NOTHING for like half a minute, then Eagle hits a “kick” and a “jumping double-knee” as Abdullah, despite supposedly being “insane”, isn’t going for a single move and is just taking soft bumps. Eagle with a headlock takeover, but Abdullah counters like Steamboat/Flair… except he overshoots it and Eagle flops down. He comes back with “overhand chops” while Abdullah hangs onto the top rope, then keeps raking him and twisting his neck and stuff- what’s with the heel offense, lol? 2 minutes in, Abdullah FINALLY gets some offense, using a thumb-spike to hit Eagle twice in the ribs and have him roll to the mat in “agony”.

Bobby lies there a second after taking four of these horrendous shots and suddenly springs to life like nothing happened, all fists up like he’s MAD, and Abdullah begs off. Thankfully he’s able to get a thumb to the throat to bring Eagle down again, but he gets some side kicks and another double-knee to drop Abdullah again, but as soon as they’re up, he eats more thumbs to the body and throat. This goes on for way too long before Bold Eagle “comes back” by arbitrarily getting up and immediately charging off the ropes and engaging in some feather-light tapping before they “collide” (Abdullah has his arm sorta outstretched) and Bobby collapses like a sniper got him. This lets Abdullah get his dreaded finisher- Awkwardly Positioning His Thumbs Down And Falling On Him Sorta, for the pin at (5:48). Nooooooooooooo Bold Eagle loses!

hahaha there’s nothing like TRULY awful wrestling to remind you of the virtues of your Jon Heidenreichs and Anna Jays of the world- you think you’ve seen incompetence and then you see two guys wrestle like they were trained in a half hour over the weekend and told to do an entire match. Abdullah didn’t seem to know the first thing about any aspect of his job, not interacting with the crowd, acting scary or tough, or even doing proper offense (his ONLY MOVE is a thumb-thrust? He can’t even do a headbutt or stomp or anything?), while Bobby Bold Eagle came off as washed-up AND inexperienced, which is a truly rare combo. Like you trained a fifty year old man. That “double down” is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen; Bobby hitting his lame double-knee jump move and Abdullah walking back into the ropes and slowly coming off with his arm out, causing Bobby to do the “collapse from the legs with his head lolling” sell into the finish (which looks like Abdullah just tripped with his thumbs pointing down). A legit DUD if their ever was one. If I did negative stars this is an easy -*****, haha.

Rating: DUD (this could be one of the worst matches of the ’80s, except you KNOW podunk indies were even worse than this sometimes)