Into the Indies 08.30.10: Before & After II

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Into the Indies, the column that’s a bit of a mixed bag.

About a month ago, I did an installment of the column that I referred to as “Before & After.” In that column, I noted that one of the things that I found interesting about following independent wrestling from countries other than the United States is that you have an opportunity to see a lot of guys from the Americas before they break out and become big stars and you also have an opportunity to see a lot of older favorites winding down their careers. Essentially, you see a lot of folks at points before their primes and a lot of folks at points where they may technically be past their athletic prime but are still damned entertaining.

In that column, I had a lot of fun taking a look at matches from these individuals who were at varying stages of their careers, and, based on the feedback from readers, several of you did too. As a result, here is the second installment of I2I’s “Before and After,” taking a look at two matches from the international indy scene featuring wrestlers before they hit it big in the promotions with which they are most closely associated and two matches featuring wrestlers from the closing out their careers.

Sabu vs. Haystacks Calhoun, Jr. (FMW, 2/1993)

We’ve hit a lot of FMW over the months here in the column, so I will direct you to the IndyDex if you need any information on the history of the promotion. What we haven’t covered, though, is the fact that FMW is one of the first decently sized promotions in which Sabu really broke out. At the time this bout occurred, he was having critically acclaimed matches with the likes of the Lightning Kid (Sean “X-Pac” Waltman) and Jerry Lynn on the US independents, but he was still a few years away from the height of his popularity in ECW. His opponent for this match is a bit of an unusual choice, as the high flying Sabu takes on the morbidly obese Haystacks Calhoun, Jr., an indy wrestler from the southern States who is adopting the gimmick of the first true superheavyweight superstar, though without being actually related to him. Haystacks Jr. had virtually no exposure of note during his career aside from his one or two FMW tours around this period. This purports to by his current MySpace page.

For reasons that I don’t entirely understand, Haystacks Jr. enters the arena to the theme from Ghostbusters. Well, at least some of the lyrics are applicable. He is something strange, and he don’t look good. Before the bell even rings, Sabu runs straight into a giant shoulderblock that knocks him to the floor. When he reenters the ring, the Human Highlight Reel tries to leap off of the top rope at his opponent, but Haystacks swats him out of the air in such a manner that Sabu flies ineffectively over the big guy’s head. A clothesline from the fat man connects, and Sabu fails a second time at whatever top rope maneuver he was attempting earlier. Haystacks stays on his opponent with the running avalanche, which I’m sure was no small feat for him since this looks like a fairly large ring. A vertical suplex and a world’s strongest slam are the next bits of offense from the southern competitor, though he misses a low-elevation legdrop, giving Sabu an opening to grab a chair. Haystacks unfortunately can’t get to his feet quickly after the missed legdrop, so he’s in perfect position for the Arabian Nightmare’s repeated chairshots. After that, Sabu does a weird move in which he attempts a backflip and then charges at Haystacks in the corner. It doesn’t work out too well, as Sabu doesn’t rotate all the way and lands on his knees. The second version of the move even sees Sabu fail at the body attack, as Junior catches him with a clothesline and then a Rude Awakening.

In one of the most comical spots that I’ve seen in the last several years, Sabu attempts a rana at this point. Yes, because I see the six hundred pound HAYSTACKS CALHOUN, JR. doing the forward roll necessary to take that move. Anyway, I would say that Calhoun reverses the rana into a powerbomb, but that’s really a generous description, as instead he just drops down to his knees, causing Sabu to land on his shoulders in a kinda-sorta powerbomb position. Things spill out on to the floor once more, this time with Haystacks following his opponent out there. The two men brawl at ringside, where Junior lands another clothesline and splays Sabu out across a table. Believe it or not, Haystacks climbs on to the ring apron and signals for a dive, but Sabu moves, causing his opponent’s legdrop attempt to miss. Junior’s ample backside goes through the table but Sabu does not, and the future ECW star rolls back into the ring just as the referee brings finishes up his twenty count. Yes, Sabu wins an FMW match by count out.

Match Thoughts: I made some jokes at Haystacks’ expense throughout the play-by-play, but, to be perfectly honest with you, this match was significantly better than I would have expected from one involving a wrestler with his limitations. Though a couple of his moves looked awkward, Sabu by and large knew what to do in order to get the most out of the bout, and, believe it or not, Calhoun was a bit more athletic and bumped a bit more than a lot of other wrestlers that I have seen clocking in at the same weight. He wasn’t quite Yokozuna, who still holds the record as best of all time in that regard, but he was perfectly acceptable. **

Fuerza Guerrera vs. Taiji Ishimori (Toryumon X, 8/31/2003)

I originally picked this match to focus on Guerrera as one of our “After” selections. He was one of the biggest stars in lucha libre during the late 1980’s and the early 1990’s, including reigns with many major middleweight and welterweight championships south of the border and at least one surprise pinfall victory over the red hot El Hijo del Santo. (Those of you who got into wrestling in the late 1990’s in the US will probably best know him as Juventud Guerrera’s father.) However, after I picked the match, I realized that this could also technically qualify as a “Before” selection, as Taiji Ishimori is currently a big part of the junior heavyweight division of Pro Wrestling NOAH. This match, however, is from Ishimori’s days with Toryumon. Toryumon, as many of you know, is the promotion/training camp established by Ultimo Dragon, which operates in both Japan and Mexico to crank out a ton of talented young wrestlers. Specifically, this match is from the debut show of Toryumon X, a collection of cards featuring trainees from the ninth through twelfth terms of the Dragon Gym.

Ishimori controls early with a series of armdrags, but the veteran Guerrera eventually catches him off-kilter with a single leg and transitions into an armbar. The Toryumon trainee escapes with FLIPS~! and hits a dropkick, causing Fuerza to pause for a bit and rally the crowd behind him. Some exchanges off the ropes lead to Ishimori hitting a rana and a version of Tajiri’s handspring back elbow, the latter of which sends Guerrera out to the arena floor. He returns to the squared circle of his own volition and immediately clocks Taiji with a big open hand strike and a full body slam, which Ishimori sells like a shotgun blast. Kicks to the abdomen are next from the luchadore, and he sends his young opponent high into the air with a monkey flip. Ishimori lands on his feet and it looks like he may mount a comeback, but Fuerza shoots him into the corner. Ishimori takes a few strikes but rallies regardless and kicks the masked man down to the floor once more. Rather than going after him immediately, Ishimori takes some time to regroup and waits for Guerrera to join him in between the ropes. When the wrestlers lock horns again, it turns into an abbreviated fish-out-of-water spot, which Guerrera brings to an end by trapping Ishimori in a version of the STF. (It featured Fuerza laying on his back to apply the hold rather than his stomach.) Taiji makes the ropes but runs into a spinebuster by his opponent, which gets a two count for the Juice’s father. Ishimori tries for . . . something . . . off of the ropes but gets caught in a rolling guillotine submission by his more seasoned adversary. Again, the ropes are made. There’s a foul from Feurza behind the referee’s back, and he also “accidentally” clocks the official en route to hitting a powerbomb. Guerrera gets a visionary pinfall with the ref out and tries a second powerbomb, but Taiji slips out of that one and hits a DDT out of the wheelbarrow position. Then, in an odd move, Ishimori gets the pinfall with an elbowdrop which came after he executed a series of backflips off the ropes.

Match Thoughts: These two seemed like they were on slightly different pages and it held the match back a bit, though it still wasn’t godawful. In particular, Ishimori had slightly less than a year of experience in wrestling. He was clearly athletically gifted and busted out some interesting looking moves, but he wasn’t quite clear on how to string those all together into a match that made sense from start to finish. The bout wasn’t really all that structured as a result, but Fuerza was awesome and provided a bit of a counterbalance, compensating for the lack of structure by providing some awesome veteran moments and an entertaining “salty old veteran” persona that showed in his reactions and body language despite the fact that he was wearing a mask. This isn’t one that you should go out of your way to watch to see an awesome match, but it also wasn’t horribly offensive. **1/2

Kintaro Kanemura, Masato Tanaka, & Tetsuhiro Kuroda vs. Super Leatherface, Raven, & Tracey Smothers (XWF, 8/6/2008)

This is from a promotion that I quite frankly had never heard of before I ran across the match. It’s the XWF – or Xtreme Wrestling Force – and an on-screen graphic tells me that the name of the show is “Give Me Hardcore or Give Me Chair.” Given the prevalence of chairs in hardcore wrestling matches, that doesn’t seem to be much of a choice. Anyway, from the little that I have been unable to earth about this card, it appears to be one of the many twenty-first century attempts to cash in on the former popularity of deathmatch promotions like FMW, W*ING, IWA Japan, and, to a lesser extent, the American ECW in the Land of the Rising Sun in the mid-to-late 1990’s. Kintaro “W*ING” Kanemura appears to have been the booker/promoter for the group.

The Japanese team comes out to the Offspring and is repeatedly referred to as the “Independent Hardcore Brothers” by the announce team. All three of them are alumni of FMW, with Kanemura and Tanaka in particular being proteges of company founder Atsushi Onita, though Kuroda came around a bit later. Raven and Smothers are pretty well playing off of their ECW personas for this match, while Super Leatherface is, um, being Super Leatherface. For those of you reading this who may not know the backstory, Leatherface is a gimmick taken from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, and the most famous man to play it in Japan is the fellow who used to wrestle as Corporal Kirschner in the WWF, who had to flee to Japan to salvage his wrestling career after allegedly choking Vince McMahon, Jr. and being blackballed in the United States. I can’t confirm whether this version of Leatherface is actually Kirschner, but his build and mannerisms in the gimmick are so similar that, if I had to put money on it, I would bet that Corp is under the mask and wig.

It’s a six-man brawl as soon as the intros are over, with Tanaka and Raven being the only men into the ring until Raven gives his opponent a drop toe hold that sends him rocketing out through the ropes like he was doing a tope. As soon as that happens, Kuroda and Smothers take over the squared circle, with the American hitting some big strikes and a version of the flatliner. Now it’s Leatherface and Kanemura’s turn to do battle, and they bust out the ever-popular chair duel. ‘Face wins it and throws Kanemura’s chair at a hapless fan afterwards, then using his own weapon to inflict more damage. Eventually Kanemura low bridges his man off a blind charge, leading to all six men brawling at various points in the arena. Not going to be able to follow this one for a while. Somewhere in there, Kanemura is slammed on a stack of chairs by Leatherface and Smothers and Raven are Irish whipped into each other amid the fans. After a while, Raven, always the man to work smart rather than hard, gets a surprising amount of heat by putting Tanaka into a SLEEPER HOLD out in the crowd. This is just a mess. Kanemura is bleeding now. We didn’t see what caused it, though we do see Leatherface hitting him in the head with the can of a fire extinguisher after it’s already occurred.

Action has now spilled back into the ring, where Raven gives Kuroda the drop toe hold onto the chair and then tags in Smothers. Yes, he tags in Smothers in the middle of this insane hardcore brawl. The Southerner gives Kuroda the smashmouth and punches away some more. Oh, and Kuroda is bleeding, also caused by something off camera. Leatherface takes over on the Japanese wrestler now, hitting his own version of the drop toe hold. It simultaneously looks more botched AND more legitimately dangerous than Raven’s, so that’s a fail all around. A tombstone on the chair follows, after which Smothers tags back in to give Kuroda a chair-assisted spear. Raven checks in for his corner clothesline/bulldog combo, and here’s an attempt at a superplex from Super Leather. Kuroda fights him off, snapping the maniac’s throat over the top rope and tagging in Kanemura. He runs wild with bodyslams as we once again have a pier six brawl on our hands. Team ECW is Irish whipped into each other once more, and Tanaka sends Raven over the top with a wild clothesline. Meanwhile, Kuroda has Leatherface set up for a Randy Savage elbow which Masato follows with a frog splash, though the American still kicks out at two. Eventually the wrestlers begin throwing chairs into the ring and encourage the fans to do so as well, which I believe even the announcers acknowledge is a spot lifted from ECW.

The ring is now so filled with chairs that there would be no way a man could run or walk in it. Kanemura and Leatherface take to the ring, with Kintaro eating the Super Leather superplex. I would say it was on to the pile of chairs, but that somehow seems redundant at this point. Kanemura somehow kicks out at two, so Raven DDTs Tanaka into the furniture. Kuroda makes a save and starts to double team Smothers alongside Tanaka. They hit a two-man vertical suplex on the Full Blooded Italian, and Kanemura follows it up immediately with a senton off of the top rope. That gives us the three count and an end to the match.

Match Thoughts: I have to give these six guys a lot of credit for getting the most possible out of doing the least amount of work, which has always been a major part of professional wrestling. They were in front of a pretty rabid crowd who obviously paid to see an intense, hardcore streetfight the likes of which Atsushi Onita and his crew were putting on in the heyday of FMW. However, this version of the match was significantly toned down from what went on in that promotion, which is actually a good thing in my book given that everybody in the bout is now at least fifteen years older than they would have been when they were working for that company or similar ones. Frankly, their bodies can’t and/or shouldn’t take that sort of punishment anymore. Here, they used a lot of smoke and mirrors to avoid really hard poundings, and, in the truly impressive part of the match, they still wrestled in a way that the crowd reacted like they were watching something from the height of the mid-1990’s hardcore boom. That’s a testament to how great all six men can be at working their style when everything around them clicks. ***

Chris Jericho vs. Lance Storm (WAR, 1995)

Now here’s a historical oddity. As anybody who has read Jericho’s autobiography or any of Storm’s numerous online commentaries on his website is aware, the two of them met and almost immediately became friends when they showed up at the same term of the Hart Brothers Wrestling Camp in Calgary. They were opponents and tag team partners for several years thereafter, with their first major Japanese exposure coming in WAR, a promotion known either “Wrestle Association R” or “Wrestle and Romance” depending on the source. This is WAR footage from 1995, with each man having in between two and three years of pro wrestling experience. Storm and Jericho both get opportunities to cut promos before the match, complete with Japanese subtitles. The story of the match per the promos is that the two men have teamed up for several years in Canada and the United States but this is Storm’s first trip to Japan whereas Jericho has been over several times before, leaving Lance with something that he feels he must prove against his better-traveled friend.

We are joined in progress with Jericho ducking a spinning kick from Storm and connecting with a clothesline for a nearfall. Jericho follows with a version of Shawn Michaels’ old teardrop suplex, also earning him a two count. Storm avoids another clothesline and knocks his sometimes tag partner to the floor, following him out with a BEAUTIFUL no hands tope con hilo. Storm had definitely given up doing that by the time I started watching him wrestle on a regular basis. The match clips ahead a bit, with Storm suplexing the opposition back into the ring and covering, again for two. Have I mentioned how awesome Lance Storm’s bleached blond rat tail from back in the day was? Also interesting is the handspring clothesline that he hits, followed immediately by a northern lights suplex and a second rope leg drop. It’s interesting to see Storm and Jericho going for covers after every big move they hit, which in my mind is a lot more realistic modern wrestlers who will want to hit at least seven high impact moves before attempting to win the match. Now it’s a powerslam for Storm, and he uses that move to put Jericho into a crucifix style submission. There’s no commentary, so we can hear Jericho screaming like a banshee and following things up with a “Come on, that hurt!” after Lance lets go of the hold.

Storm tells us that “this is it” and climbs the ropes, but Jericho follows him, and the two are quickly both standing on the top. Rather than a superplex, we get Jericho, who was facing outwards toward the crowd, doing an INSANE bit where he jumps up off the top rope and dropkicks Storm in the stomach. Lance falls to the floor as a result, with the fall looking fine, especially in light of how dangerous that move could have been if something was timed wrong. We clip ahead again, and the future World Heavyweight Champion hits a frog splash on a downed Lance Storm. It gets two, as does Jericho’s old butterfly powerbomb. There’s a move of his that I miss. Now we go into a Jericho sleeper, but he applies it too close to the ropes and Storm is able to grab the bottom strand. In a nice, heel-ish sort of move, Jericho never fully lets the hold go and just reapplies it after rolling away from the ropes. Lance is still able to escape, so Jericho clobbers him with a dropkick in the corner and shoots him into the buckles. However, Storm is one step ahead and does a leap to the top, coming off immediately with a flying back elbow. It gets two, as does Storm’s attempt at a powerbomb. Coming off of the ropes, Jericho catches his man with a tiger suplex. He bridges, also for two. There’s a lionsault . . . and it also does not end the match. Then, in a bit of a surprising result, Storm catches Jericho with a forward roll as the two come off of the ropes once more, and that forward roll earns him his three count and gets his hand raised.

Match Thoughts: It is a bit hard to provide analysis of this one because it was clipped up and we do not know what wound up on the cutting room floor. However, I will say that it was very interesting to watch as somebody who has seen these two wrestle for virtually all of their US careers but missed out on anything that they did prior to their stint as the Thrillseekers in Smoky Mountain Wrestling. Both guys were obviously still trying to establish their routines in the ring, as evidenced by the fact that they were doing moves that I’ve never seen them do before interspersed with more familiar spots. What also struck me was how fundamentally sound and athletically gifted these two young wrestlers appeared to be compared to most if not all North American performers with comparable levels of experience. You could clearly see the makings of greatness in these two men, and the match is worth tracking down if you’re a big fan of either one of them.

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