mikeawesomemike Wrestling Comp Vol. 4

 Hey y'all. Another comp today from myself. I promise I'll stop doing these daily at some point lol.

Wouldn't suggest reading further until after you have finished watching. I can't stop you from doing that either way, but I do suggest you experience this compilation without knowing the contents within it.

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Ricky Banderas vs Rastaman (IWA Puerto Rico 12/?/1999) - GREAT

The rematch! This has a lot of the same stuff as their first match, but that's absolutely fine with me. If anything, Banderas feels even more fired up. He's such a fighter here.

It's barely missing some of the magic that the previous matchup had, but maybe that's just me loving chaos.

Bryan Danielson vs Kaval (FCW TV 2/7/2010) - FUN

This was taped on 1/14/2010. Pretty sure this was Danielson's first FCW match as well. You're getting a dumbed down version of Danielson v Low Ki but they also have to try to get creative because this is sub-10 minutes. I've seen more 2010 FCW than most probably. It's not good, but you'll sometimes get a match like this that's interesting to think about at least.

They do some stiff-for-WWE-standards striking and matwork. Looks good, feels good. You can tell even at this level, there's still that road agent/production micromanaging behind every match, but this one does a better job at separating itself apart and making me feel like I'm watching two wrestlers go at it, which those other ones don't.

Bruiser Brody promo (NWA Polynesian Wrestling 8/?/1986)

Brody loved this shit, man. One of the promos where all you can do is silence, listen up, and believe every word coming out of his mouth.

Bret Hart vs Jeff Jarrett [Special Referee: Big Boss Man] (WWF House Show San Francisco, CA 12/5/1993) - FUN

I think I like the WWE house show style a lot, what can I say. We need more special referees to be like Big Boss Man here. Jeff Jarrett's great. I'm not the biggest Bret fan but I think he's seriously good here. Does an awesome job at slowing being unnerved by Jarrett until he finally breaks.

El Hijo del Santo & Damian 666 vs Super Parka & Blue Panther (WWO 5/3/2003) - GOOD

I want to believe there's always room for wrestling to get better, in any time period. And then I watch El Hijo del Santo and yknow what, maybe it can't. I've watched so many of his matches and I'm still always amazed. Somehow, he's able to move in a way that feels mythical. The stories about El Santo make a lot more sense when you see what Santito was capable of. 

Blue Panther can be just as good of a rudo as he is tecnico. He can be a real bully in the ring, even with Hijo del Santo being as aggressive as he is in this. Super Parka gets a bit too much of the spotlight, but Santito shuts him down a few times at least.

The finish isn't great, but the rest of the match is good enough at least.

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Thank you for reading my thoughts on these matches/this comp today; I hope you enjoyed! If you didn't, that's alright too. Let me know if you have any thoughts, criticisms, ideas, or whatever in the comments or get in touch with me on my Twitter page.

mikeawesomemike Wrestling Comp Vol. 2

Hey again! I know it's only a day later, but I had such a great time putting together that first comp that I decided to do another one. Here it is:

Would recommend not reading further until after watching it, so that you can enter the compilation blind. But feel free to do whatever you want.

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Jason Cross vs. Jorge Estrada (NWA Wildside 3/29/2003) - FUN

Everything I've seen from NWA Wildside feels so ahead of it's time. These two guys in particular, they were doing some wild (lol) stuff for 2003 U.S. standards! Yeah, there were some other great independent juniors at the time, but these guys were next level. Cross is like ten years from the future and Estrada feels like a Mid-South TV champion from the 80s. He can move quick if he wants and is flashy, but knows how to use that in a way that's still able to get amazed fans to dislike him. This was sick as hellllllll.

Put this as the first match because it feels like it could open up any wrestling TV show in the past two decades and make me want to continue watching the rest of the show (and then be disappointed that the rest of the show doesn't get better than that, but I promise that's not the case for this).

Dump Matsumoto & Bull Nakano vs. Velvet McIntyre & Dawn Marie (WWF Boston Gardens on NESN 3/8/1986) - FINE

Commentary was notably atrocious for this, but that's unfortunately the case for a lot of the WWF matches with joshi involved.

Trying to ignore that though, this was still neat. You get Dump and Bull being evil in Boston and the crowd's not super into it, but they still worked the way I wanted them to. They beat up the faces for a bit, but lose to the athletic Velvet McIntyre. It's pretty simple, they don't do anything insane, but cool novelty. It's Dump and Bull in the Boston Garden.

Sabu vs. Osamu Nishimura [NWA Independent World Title] (NWA Sabu 8/7/1994) - FUN

You're getting Nishimura working a Sabu match. That's awesome. It's probably the most interesting way that this matchup could be done. It feels like it's a bit of a sprint too. Sabu tries to bombard Nishimura with offense that's pretty different to what he's probably seen up to this point, Nishimura tries to be more calculated than Sabu. I don't know how you wouldn't want to give this a watch.

Now I think I want to see their matchup from a year later in ECW at some point.

Zandig vs. JC Bailey vs. Nick Gage [Ultraviolent Underground Title/Junkyard Death Match] (CZW 7/?/2005) - GREAT

This is a one minute clip. The full match is out there online, but I chose not to include it because I wanted to stay under a certain time and thought this served as a nice teaser for the match on its own. Watch the match if you haven't yet, it's one of my favorites from CZW.

Simbolo vs. Makabre (MWF Millenials Fest 9/6/2025) - GREAT

One of my favorite matches this year. Good lucha brawling in front of an interested crowd at La Terraza Elma. I don't find myself always cheering for him in his matches, but something about Makabre feels so broken down and destroyed physically that I really wanted to believe in him. You can tell there's a real passion in every single punch, kick, and bump. I know Simbolo can be a bit hit or miss, but I wonder what an apuestas between these two would like. Watch this one for sure; I'd love to know if anyone else thought it was as good as I did.

Lou Thesz vs. Buddy Rogers [NWA World Heavyweight Title Best Two Out Of Three Falls] (NWA Chicago 1/26/1951) - GOOD

This is a clip of the final three minutes of this hour long draw. I watched a bit of Lou Thesz this year for the first time. He was great, genuinely deserved every ounce of recognition he had. I thought these final moments demonstrated exhaustion really well, probably because they actually were tired by this portion of the match. You get the idea though. Thesz just felt like a real wrestler, yknow? Rogers is pretty good too.

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My thoughts were a lot less lengthy on these compared to yesterday, but I still wanted to leave a few comments about the matches at least. I wouldn't consider any of those as formal reviews though.

Thank you for reading my thoughts on these matches/this comp today; I hope you enjoyed! If you didn't, that's alright too. Let me know if you have any thoughts, criticisms, ideas, or whatever in the comments or get in touch with me on my Twitter page.