Bob Holly & Alundra Blayze vs. Hakushi & Bull Nakano (and other Dream Matches!)

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This time it’s a WWE Vault spectacular, as those beautiful bastards upload more and more amazing “WTF?” matches for our viewing pleasure! Check out the main event- BULL NAKANO & HAKUSHI teaming up against Alundra Blayze and Bob “Spark Plug” Holly! Absolutely spectacular stuff, especially as Bull & Madusa work “Zenjo Style” and leave the boys in the absolute dust so they can work generic “WWF Lightweight Style” at 1/3 the pace.

Then it’s a request, as Bret Hart & The Bushwhackers team up against DA MOUNTIE & The Nasty Boys in MSG, with a 13-minute match ridiculously full of fuckery (aka time-killing house show spots)- ironically IMPROVING the match compared to if they’d just played it straight! You have GOT to see Jacques Rougeau’s cartoonish overselling here. Then it’s a CASKET MATCH from WWF In Your House 5, as The Undertaker (with Phantom of the Opera mask) takes on King Mabel to cap off their feud! Also one of the worst “on paper” matches I’ve ever seen, as the Big Boss Man faces MIDEON on Sunday Night Heat in 2000, where I review it for the lulz and accidentally find a truly historic moment! Finally, I threw in a WCW match as WCW Pro features La Parka & El Dandy vs. Super Calo & Ciclope!

BULL NAKANO & HAKUSHI (w/ Shinja) vs. BOB “SPARK PLUG” HOLLY & ALUNDRA BLAYZE:
(WWF Dark Match, March 13th 1995)
* WHAT A FUCKING CHANNEL! From the WWE Vault comes a bizarre mixed tag match- JTTS Bob Holly and the top WWF women’s wrestler, and they’re taking on the Japanese duo- Hakushi (who never really got out of the midcard despite his fascinating gimmick) and Bull Nakano, brought in as Blayze’s “opponent of the time” (there were usually only 2 women in the company at once).

Bull starts shoving Alundra around while Tim White is giving instructions, so Alundra spinkicks her while Stan Lane & Gorilla Monsoon marvel at the size of Bull’s thighs. What a world we live in, lol. And this wasn’t even her peak AJW size! Alundra catches her out of the corner with a bodyblock into a standing moonsault (!!), getting only two. Well there was almost no impact and it’s early. Alundra pops her in the ribs a couple of times, but gets dragged out of the corner in a vicious bump and Bull helicopters her around the ring by the hair while Monsoon marks out. They tag out and Bull takes a swipe at Bob from behind, all “WHAT?” as he turns around and immediately gets rolled up for two. Bob wins an International against Hakushi, but takes a cartwheel handspring elbow. Running dropkick in the other corner again has Monsoon loving this, and a Vader Bomb gets two- Hakushi hits the chinlock but gets clotheslined down, and Holly tags out so Alundra can walk RIGHT into a huge running lariat from Bull.

But Alundra quickly flips over the ropes on a corner-whip, necksnaps her on the top rope, then kicks her in the ass to set up a sunset flip, only for Bull to squash her for two. They’re going a million miles a minute- like much faster than even 1-2-3 Kid went at this point, as Alundra leaps up for a hurricanrana for two, then gets clotheslined over the top, only to land on her feet and trip Bull, then hit a shotgun-style missile dropkick off the second rope. Haha this is Full AJW Style right now. And of course they immediately tag out so the boys can do the classic “uhhh let’s keep it simple” lockups & random gut-kicks stuff. Vertical suplex from Holly, but Bull trips him up and Hakushi gets a dropkick as the ladies brawl on the floor (Monsoon joking about the “beached whale” Bull). The heels slam into each other and hit the floor, leading to stereo babyface planchas! Shinja distracts the good guys, who get attacked, but Hakushi dumps Bob and pescadoes him, leaving Bull alone, and a wild swing sees Alundra duck under her and hit her German Suplex finisher for the pin at (7:11).

A peppy little match! Holly & Hakushi were a bit unfamiliar and doing pretty basic stuff, but Alundra & Bull had a classic AJW-style sequence there, worked at a similar insane pace, which looked like light speed compared to the usual WWF fare. Obviously for only a minute and probably planned well ahead of time, but still.

Rating: **1/2 (pretty good for a short-ish TV match!)

BRET “HITMAN” HART & THE BUSHWHACKERS (Luke & Butch) vs. THE MOUNTIE & THE NASTY BOYS (Brian Knobs & Jerry Sags):
* AMAZING. WWE Vault brings us Bret teaming up with the lowest-tier WWF babyfaces against a Jimmy Hart dream-team combo of DA MOUNTIE with Knobs & Sags. Bret even has extra shades for the Bushwhackers to wear, all three doing his signature walk. No Jimmy Hart for the heels, even though this is Madison Square Garden.

The bell rings and they still spend like two minutes milling about, Bret doing his “give a fan the glasses” thing, the heels begging for applause, causing the babyfaces to all do the “Bushwhacker Walk” together. Though Bret’s single-arm pump is way too similar to a handjob motion, haha. We finally get started with Sags ready to pit his technical acumen against the Hitman’s, but Bret wants the Mountie. But even “chicken” gestures can’t get him in the ring! They again drop that Bret only lost the IC belt to him because of a 104-degree fever, Heenan immediately aghast because “I wrestled with a 113 temperature once!”, but an aspirin knocked it right out of him. They finally shame Mountie into locking up with Bret, but they’re in the ropes right away (“BREAK THE HOLD! BREAK THE HOLD!” shouts Knobs from the ring apron, using his typical pleas for decorum and decency). Bret goes to the bread-basket immediately, Mountie leapfrogs him but tries a monkey-flip, Bret blocking it by hitting his fantastic elbow. lmao at Mountie’s “foot-kicking” agonized sell as he goes for a tag, spitting all over the place (“That PIG!”: Monsoon). Sags is shocked by this lack of decency, but gets armdragged. Butch & Sags make like RINGS with biting of the arm and Sags eyeraking out, Knobs clobbering Butch but getting his ass bit and it’s a pier six, the Mountie somehow making selling the wrong direction from a double-clothesline look appropriate. The Nasties eat clotheslines as well (lol dig Sags giving the ref an “iggy” to gtfo of the bump’s path).

The heels bail and the ref does the “if they don’t return to the ring…” thing, promising $5000 fines for each as they’re running through ALL the house show time-wasting, and they of course bolt in before “10”, haha. The Nasties use cheating to take over on Butch, Mountie laying boots on the floor, then the Nasties double-team him while the ref is distracted with mayhem. Bret of course gets in trouble for getting too close, drawing boos for the ref. Butch flops like a fish as Sags nails him with elbows (lol check out Knobs doing a “gets knocked off the apron by his partner cuz he wasn’t paying attention” bit to amuse the fans). Butch does a twitch-sell off a back elbow as Monsoon is just cracking up at Knobs falling off like a boob and Butch gets triple-teamed. Sadly they’ve stopped the fuckery and are mostly doing a regular match, which makes it ironically worse than if they’d just kept it up. The ref misses a tag and the crowd is kinda getting bored (hard to get a “Butch!” chant started). It’s chinlock city until Butch FINALLY gets his boot up on Knobs’s 2nd-rope splash. Bret with the hot tag (called as such by Monsoon) and Mountie SOMERSAULTS over his gut-punch, then hops up and down off an inverted atomic drop. The Nasties are shoved into the corner and Mountie is pancaked into them and Bret assists with three Battering Rams, all three get run into Bret’s boot, and he O’Connor Rolls Mountie for the three at (13:22). And the crowd pops! They really ramped it up in the last minutes.

haha, this was AMAZING. Like total house show fuckery but that was much better than when they sat down and tried to actually wrestle, which was all chinlocks and body slams. These guys are way better off doing comedy spots, plotzing off the apron, biting asses and taunting each other. Bret was interesting because his excecution was PRECISE (excellent, even!) but on the apron he was pretty bored till it was his turn to do shit, while Luke was trying to rev up the fans (and failing). Butch was twitching and thrashing around giving it his all, though. But DA MOUNTIE. Rougueau was just flinging himself into the sky off of every little move and it was spectacular. Also lol at Bret basically coming in to hit offense and easily handle the Mountie, never selling a single move all match long- like he didn’t even get HIT by anything. Great ending, though- lots of heel humiliation and Da Mountie paying for having the temerity to beat Bret months before. You can sense Bret’s glee at “getting his win back” despite all the excuses why he lost.

Rating: **1/2 (fantastic House Show Match full of goofy spots, heel humiliation, and the BEST stalling tactics.

I love the screencap function, lol. Windows + Shift + S, bay-bee!

CASKET MATCH:
THE UNDERTAKER (w/ Paul Bearer) vs. KING MABEL (w/ Sir Mo):
(WWF In Your House 5, Dec. 15th 1995)
* OH HELL YESSSSS!! The WWE Vault also gives us a Mabel match everyone forgets about! This is a month or so away from Mabel getting fired the first time, as they were tired of him injuring top guys (and Samoans!) and the way his main event push fizzled. He’s in gold gear and coming out to dead silence while Taker gets excited cheers. This is after Mabel “crushed Undertaker’s face” with a legdrop (shortly before ACTUALLY crushing Taker’s face with I believe a clothesline at a house show), which Undertaker sells while wearing is infamous “Phantom of the Opera” facemask, sold as ghoulish and scary. I of course thought this was an AWESOME LOOK when I was 14 and was disappointed he soon dropped it, haha. Mabel is ALSO carrying the Undertaker’s urn, which had been melted into gold chains. I used to be able to recite title lineages like crazy but I have no idea how “Kama melting the urn into chains” turned into “Mabel has the chains”. Also CONTINUITY ERROR- the urn was later supposed to contain the ashes of the Undertaker’s dead parents! But here they’ve likely been discarded as the urn is no more! CONTINUITY ERROR! I sure hope the editor overseeing THAT got fired for their blunder!

Taker stalks Mabel and gets distracted by Mo (who quickly backs up), allowing Mabel to start hammering on him. He puts his head down and they immediately botch something, Mabel selling what looks like a grab as a strike, and Taker adds choking and a Stinger Splash. Mabel reverses another whip with his usual agility and hits the Boss Man Slam, only for Taker to sit up. Mabel half-assedly sells the fear (instead of shaking his head he just kinda turns to the hard cam like “UH OH SPAGHETTI-O!”), then lariats the shit out of him. Another sit-up and Mabel adds a slam, then comes off the second rope for one of his patented transitions- missing a splash. Mabel does the “giant wobble” after a series of strikes and clotheslines, but Mo snags Taker to distract him, allowing Mabel to hit a HUGE belly-to-belly suplex and then the TAKERBREAKER legdrop! Psychology! Which is totally missed by Vince on commentary. Taker even tries the sit-up but FAILS, leading to Mabel nodding his head like “yeah, gottim” and sarcastically listening to the fans chanting “Rest in Peace!” as he adds a big splash, clearly getting blown up already.

Mabel roughly drags Taker over to Mo so he can carry him (hey, Mo’s pretty stronk) and casually dump him into the casket. Weirdly-timed spot as Mo runs around the ring, gives Mabel his crown, and Mabel takes a casual stroll over to close the casket, writing off the match. Taker naturally shoots his hand up at the last second, leading to Mabel doing the cartoonish “WOOAAHHHHHHH!” sell with his arms out as he turns around and spots his healthy foe! Taker again hammers away at Mabel with kicks, throat-thrusts and clotheslines, wobbling him again, and it’s the patented “duck under a clothesline and drive him down with a flying one” move, then a chokeslam! Mother of GOD that ring is stiff- Mabel weighs like 550 legit and it doesn’t so much as budge on that bump. Like it only moved when BOTH guys hit the mat on the prior move. Mabel struggles to his feet and takes a great bump as Taker boots him in the back and sends him spiraling into the casket with a THUD, and in a smart finish, Taker readies the casket lid but Mo comes in. Taker completely ignores every little thing he does, even a smash with the chains, puts the chains on him, then hits a big chokeslam, Mo thrashing around. Taker rolls his carcass in beside Mabel’s, grabs the chain to raise it high and pop the fans, then closes the casket at (6:02) for the win.

And that’s basically it for King Mabel as a meaningful wrestler- getting dusted off in six minutes. By this point they seemed to be more aware of his limitations, though Taker having to work with ANOTHER slug had to have sucked. There’s really not many moves you can do to Mabel considering his size and girth, so a guy who’s ALREADY limited isn’t the best of opponents for him. Mabel being unable to really sell that well was an underrated issue, too- his “wobble” sell is good (dig him swinging his leg up and ALMOST falling down), but he kinda just does the same sell of every single move, compared to someone like Andre, who would sell each move differently, end up battered around, looking wiped out and leaning in the ropes, etc. Selling is maybe the most important skill for a Monster Heel to have, and he didn’t have it yet. He’d be better (and safer) as Viscera, but mostly wrestle on the undercard until his Big Daddy V push years later- he’s sadly mostly figured it out just in time to be too old and worn out to be good for much longer. I did like the story of the match- Mabel able to weather Taker’s strikes and give his own, especially with help, flatten him with obesity-related offense, then dump him in the casket and get confident, though that spot was a MESS- he clearly had the match won and just walked away, which doesn’t make Undertaker look so great- I have a feeling the timing of that was a bit odd. Oddly, there wasn’t a single good shot of Taker’s mask all match, nor did they focus on Mabel breaking it.

Rating: ** (very much not good, but not actively bad and had a logical story, and not long enough to drag)

toooooooooo tight. Way way way too tight.

THE BIG BOSS MAN vs. MIDEON:
(WWF Sunday Night Heat, March 19th 2000)
* Oh man, DREADFUL. This has to be a rib- a washed-up Boss Man taking on one of the worst in-ring guys in the company. Like an “amuse the boys” match or something. They’re both heels! Mideon is apparently sucking up to APA to join them (probably a “Heat only” angle). You can tell it’s the Attitude Era because both guys are in all black. Mideon’s is a terrifyingly tight, unflattering black singlet with his “eye” logo on it.

They trade armbars and brawling, Boss Man clotheslining Mideon in the corner, but runs into a boot and also takes a clothesline- just riveting offense. Mideon adds a clunky backbreaker and Boss Man bails to the floor after kicking out as Cole & Kelly shit all over Mideon’s gear on commentary (“He actually spend MONEY on that?!”), then Mideon fully rips off the Foley Bump as he kneecaps the steps (OUCH- Foley used to snark that guys never copied the stuff that really hurts, like that one). Boss Man adds punches while Mideon wails, then Mideon comes back with punches of his own (yup- it’s the Attitude Era, alright), then runs into the Boss Man’s boot and takes his two “in the ropes” moves- the ass slam and sliding punch. Boss Man works him over to absolutely zero reaction and then a HUGE muscular dude comes down to ringside- oh my god, I’ve found an historic moment! It’s the debut of BULL BUCHANAN, as he goes nose to nose with the Boss Man, they smile, and then mutually beat up Mideon for the DQ at (3:27)! Wait, Boss Man was WINNING- why waste Bull’s debut on that? This sets up the Boss Man Slam, then Bull adds a Guillotine Legdrop!

The match was pure, unwashed ass- it’s HEAT so neither guy is trying, never mind that neither is good at this point (Boss Man’s prime was like 9 years earlier and Mideon was never above a * guy), so it’s just a bunch of heatless exchanges as they trade punches. Also it’s Heel vs. Heel- why even book this? Why debut Bull doing THAT unless they wanted him “already active” for RAW? But like… it’s a debut! You got one shot at that! Also I think Bull has toilet paper on his boot.

Rating: 3/4* (bad, even by Heat standards- just lazy and dull. I was going DUD but was told that’s overdoing it since neither of them shit their pants or anything BUT STILL)

SUPER CALO & CICLOPE vs. LA PARKA & EL DANDY:
(WCW Pro, July 18th 1998)
* More of WCW’s shovelware shows sees three of the lowest-tier luchadores in the company paired up with La Parka on a D-show! La Parka had already gotten a reputation for turning on partners and dancing on his chair, which Tenay calls out on commentary. Dandy is apparently trying out a goatee now. Ciclope was rarely seen in WCW by my recollection, so this is a special treat.

Parka starts with Calo as Lee Marshall gives Calo the “compliment” that “you can just beat on him all day and he will never EVER give you the satisfaction of showing that he is injured in any way”. Like uhhhhhhhhh is he saying what I think he’s saying? Parka clotheslines him down and Dandy just does an armbar while Tenay puts over that Calo once had bones “pressing through his flesh” a year ago and kept wrestling (well now we know where AEW got their ring doctor from). Calo & Parka exchange strikes and Calo ducks so El Dandy slugs down his partner, then slingshots over the ropes and STOMPS him. Uh oh. They recover enough to knock Calo down, but in comes Ciclope with a double missile dropkick and his team hit stereo dives. Ciclope runs wild by dodging a leaping Dandy and clocking Parka, then sunset flips Dandy while Calo does a flying version to Parka. Ciclope hits armdrags and a tilt-a-whirl, then dodges Dandy’s dropkick so Parka takes it, hitting two on La Majistral, then an inside cradle, but Dandy comes back with a REGULAR-ASS PUNCH after landing on his feet from another whirly move for three at (3:18). hahahaah Ciclope jobbed to a PUNCH. I mean it was a jam-up one (a Dandy specialty; Tenay thankfully mentions this) but holy crap. And of course they do a replay in slow motion that very clearly shows Dandy had an open hand.

Actually not bad, as Dandy LOOKED like a man just doing another day at the office (very, very blank expression all match long) but MOVED like a man who knew his shit, and Ciclope of all people was putting in a lot of physical effort. Given how many times Dandy nailed his parter I’m a little shocked Parka didn’t grab the chair and go to town on him after the match.

Rating: *1/2 (perfectly fine TV filler in a short match)