Beverly Brothers

Called “Wrestling’s Most Influential Match Ever”… and that just might be true. For better or worse.

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This one has an amazing match to start us off- “The Flair/Steamboat of MOVEZ Matches” as I’ve heard it described, as two Dragon Gate teams face off at Ring of Honor Supercard of Honor 2006! Come watch the match the U.S. indie/AEW style has been chasing for the last 17 years, and come listen to me ramble about just WHY they can’t quite seem to catch it!

And of course I follow it up with matches featuring the Beverly Brothers and Well Dunn! This time, it’s the Beverly Brothers versus BABYFACE Nasty Boys, during Knobs & Sags’ latter period in the WWF. After that, it’s Well Dunn being fed to the new babyface duo of the Allied Powers- Lex Luger & The British Bulldog! And finally we end with a request from my “Wrestlers Slaughtering Jobbers” column, as it’s Rob Van Dam accidentally splattering Kurt Angle’s mouth all over the place, leading to Kurt being out on his feet and bleeding buckets.

DRAGON GATE RULES (no tags necessary)
DO FIXER (Ryo Saito, Genki Horiguchi & Dragon Kid) vs. BLOOD GENERATION (CIMA, Masato Yoshino & Naruki Doi):
(Ring of Honor, Supercard of Honor 2006)
* Okay, so here’s another request, and it’s said to be a MOVEZ match from Dragon Gate (the former Toryumon)- you have been warned!! I know jack shit about any of these people but one so bear with me- I’m on the Pro Wrestling Wiki copying movesets so I at least know what’s what (jesus CIMA’s moveset is like a mile long). Saito’s a pretty “typical puro heel” with the dyed hair, toned body and bisected shorts. Genki’s got long tights in black & yellow and wears a shirt in the ring. Dragon Kid looks like Ultimo Dragon shrank in the wash, and was the “flippy guy du jour” in the business for a while. He’s in lime green and is skinny with no definition whatsoever. Yoshino’s got a ridiculously toned body with a weirdly skinny waist, like he’s sucking it in so he’s all ribcage- he’s in long black shorts. Doi’s just like Saito, but with black trunks. CIMA’s a pretty famous dude, having wrestled all over (even as a jobber in WCW)- his black shorts have tons of tassels and he gets by far the biggest reaction.

So with the sad news of Lanny Poffo’s passing, a couple people recommended I review Hogan/Genius, given it was Poffo’s peak in the business- I figured I’d make a special short Friday Dream Matches column out of it, getting that and his one PPV match- The Genius vs. Brutus Beefcake from the 1990 Royal Rumble (with an all-time quip from Jesse Ventura)! Also I’ll toss in one of his last WWF bouts (in fact, I’m sure it’s his last TV match), as he teams up with his charges the Beverly Brothers against Max Moon & High Energy!

WWF WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE:
HULK HOGAN vs. THE GENIUS:
(WWF Saturday Night’s Main Event, Oct. 31st 1989)
* This is a bizarre one- a total mismatch featuring Hogan going up against the former “Leapin'” Lanny Poffo, a low-tier babyface with a penchant for acrobatic moves like the futuristic “Moonsault”, now reimagined as a mincing, effeminate heel (I’ve heard tell this was Lanny’s idea to avoid getting fired). Hulk Hogan and his cocainey best proclaims to Mean Gene that “if he’s so darn smart, how come he doesn’t know that mathematically, he can’t win, brother?” See, it turns out that the “three demandments” (training/prayer/vitamins), plus the 24 inch pythons, times the millions of Hulkamaniacs = Victory. Dang he’s as good at math as Steiner. Good diction too, as he sputters “POETIC PROWESS?!” at Mean Gene’s assertion. Then counters with a Longfellowian poem “Roses are red/violets are blue/the Hulkster’s a wrestler- Genius WHAT ARE YOU?!”.

There’s something to be said when a guy is still talked about as a great “Shoulda-Been” almost 20 years after he stopped wrestling.

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! Today, I have a very “2001 WCW” pairing, as a washed-up, immobile Lex Luger has to lead hot rookie Sean O’Haire through a match! Then I check out some Rockers/Orient Express stuff… but 3-4 years before their WWF feuds, as it’s Badd Company vs. The Midnight Rockers in the AWA! Come see the double-teams and a very young Shawn & Marty, as well as their “infuriated Southern babyface” energy! Then it’s not one, but TWO matches of High Energy versus the Beverly Brothers! I can barely contain my excitement!

LEX LUGER vs. SEAN O’HAIRE:
(WCW Nitro, 3/5/2001)
* I decided to try and find more old Sean O’Haire stuff to see if the wild potential we’d all guessed for him was actually there in the first place. So naturally the first thing I found is a 2001 Lex Luger match, lol. At this point, O’Haire was getting a lot of hype online- with a FANTASTIC look (check that 2001-era spiky hair and chin beard!) and Jeff Hardy’s Swanton, he seemed supernatural and like a “sure thing”. Here he’s in shiny black shorts with blue fire on them, while Lex is in the same-old black trunks. The two are about the same size, which is part of why O’Haire seemed so awesome- if he was in AEW today, he’d be near Lance Archer’s height and would be flipping and flying around.

Seriously though, this is an ALL-TIME wrestling look and it’s a shame they wasted it on a “Midcard JTTS” act.

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This week, I have a classic case of a WCW “throw together two good workers and give them time!” throwaway match, as Mortis (Chris Kanyon) faces Juventud Guerrera on WCW Saturday Night! Then it’s the end of Rick “The Model” Martel’s WWF run as he faces “The Rocket” Owen Hart in one of Owen’s last babyface matches! The more WCW goodness as a rookie Tokyo Magnum on his learning excursion faces El Dandy!

Then we get another Steiner Brothers/Fire & Ice “just launch each other around the ring” match, and finally, an all-time dream bout of the Beverly Brothers facing the jobber Dream Team of Virgil and “El Matador” Tito Santana! Read on!

MORTIS (w/ James Vandenberg) vs. JUVENTUD GUERRERA:
(WCW Saturday Night, Jan. 3rd 1998)
* Hey, an interesting one, actually! Kanyon in his “Mortis” identity vs. Juvie! This is back when Juventud was still masked (here his mask is an odd dark salmon color) and was kinda/sorta a job guy but sometimes not really? WCW’s midcard was strange because guys would alternate wins & losses randomly. Mortis looks AWESOME and holds up even more in retrospect- 99% of guys don’t look half as cool. The size difference here is profound, too.

Rick Martel didn’t have the best matches during his WWF career, but is often a fountain of surprisingly-good midcard bouts!

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This week I have an assortment of WWF & WCW stuff, headlined by Rick “The Model” Martel returning to the WWF to face rookie sensation the 1-2-3 Kid! Rick’s well-known renaissance in WCW a few years later actually has some precedent here, given Martel’s showing.

Also featured is the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express showing up in early nWo-era WCW to take on Fire & Ice! It’s Jimmy Wang Yang’s debut in WCW, as Yun Yang faces off against the KISS Demon! A trios match from hell sees “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan & The Bushwhackers take on The Repo Man & The Beverly Brothers! And finally I find two matches featuring a name that’s intrigued me since I saw him like 30 years ago- The Intruder! Who is a masked jobber in a pair of squash tag matches four years apart, as he’s annihilated by both Demolition and the Nasty Boys!

RICK “THE MODEL” MARTEL vs. THE 1-2-3 KID:
(All-American Wrestling, Oct. 3rd 1993)
* Rick is freshly back in the company at this point “after modeling in Europe”, while the Kid is still a newbie in his blue singlet. Martel’s run at this point is seemingly just to put over some of the newer generation guys, but you gotta beat some dudes to regain credibility before you can do that, so this will be interesting!

Note: Not from the below match. Yes they ran this more than once.

It’s time for more Dream Matches- starting with the ultimate in obesity, as 1,000+ lbs. of humanity collide in a singles match! Also some major “Wait, that really happened?” stuff, with Balls Mahoney as an EVIL SANTA, Diesel fighting goddamn TYPHOON, and Jim Powers WINNING A MATCH. And an all-time tag team dream bout, as High Voltage take on the Beverly Brothers! As WCW jobbers! oh, plus more Joe Gomez goodness, and “HARD WORK” Bobby Walker makes his “Dream Matches” debut!

As always, everything here can be found via YouTube, but can’t be posted here.

YOKOZUNA (w/ Jim Cornette & Mr. Fuji) vs. MABEL (w/ Oscar):
(WWF Action Zone, 1994)
* HELL YES, an even BIGGER Fat Man Stand-Off! Absolutely glorious! Mabel’s in mostly purple with some gold writing.

Ugh, it’s SINGLET Warrior- that’s always death.

It’s time for more Dream Matches! Including the weirdest “final bout of the House Show” tag match ever! The ultimate battle of WCW Saturday Night: Hole In One versus LIGHTNING FOOT! An odd and very rare Heel vs. Heel Tag Title match on RAW! And a very interesting match featuring 1992 Sean Waltman & Jerry Lynn in a bout featuring a ton of Luchadors!

As always, WWE-owned clips are non-kosher to post here, but they’re all on YouTube.

THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR & BRET “HITMAN” HART vs. PAPA SHANGO & KAMALA (w/ Dr. Harvey Whippleman & Kim Chee):
(WWF Unreleased, Oct. 13th, 1992)
* Oh man, this is weird. Ultimate Warrior (in his “Brick Wall Singlet” era, no less!), just about done with the company, is teaming with the single WWF wrestler least like him against a guy they both have an issue with- Papa Shango possibly “cursed” the Hitman and he lost the IC Title, while he made the Warrior bleed black and puke his guts out on TV in one of the most bizarre, amazing, fantastic angles of 1992… before everyone was kind of just done with that gimmick. And Kamala’s teaming with him because he needs an extra guy, I guess (I mean, voodoo has its roots in African religions, but I doubt the booking team knew that). They’re clearly going with an “Undertaker” vibe with Shango, doing close-ups of “disturbed”, frightened children, but it’s just not taking- the gimmick’s too out there. Who would have guessed that the secret to Charles Wright was to make this 6’6″, 300-lb. tattooed guy a smiling babyface instead?

Taped from Poughkeepsie, NY

Airdate: April 19, 1993 (taped 4/12)

Attendance: 3.500

Hosted by Vince McMahon, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, and Rob Bartlett

Can the Beverlies upset the champs? Will Ramon get by Virgil? Does Bartlett survive the episode? Let’s find out!

Live from Poughkeepsie, NY

Airdate: April 12, 1993

Attendance: 3.500

Hosted by Vince McMahon,“Macho Man” Randy Savage, and Rob Bartlett

Give me a T! Give me an A! What’s that spell? Let’s find out!

Taped from New York, NY

Airdate: April 5, 1993 (taped 3/22)

Attendance: 1,000 (sold out)

Hosted by Vince McMahon & “Macho Man” Randy Savage

Lawler makes his RAW debut, so this episode is special, right? There couldn’t be celebrity guests trying to attach themselves to this glorious moment, are there?