Colette Arrand

Category: Wrestling

  • Bryan Danielson vs. Kamala (9/30/06)

    Where else but a high school gym would one expect Bryan Danielson, future WWE Superstar, to defend the highly respected ROH World Title against the man, the myth, Kamala? This is the secret hidden potential of independent wrestling: That some promoter will get the bright idea to toss together a legend and an indy darling for the viewing pleasure of the fifty or so people who paid to be there. This is the secret hidden potential of the internet: That a match like this somehow makes it onto YouTube, where an audience forty times that size can see it, too. As an added bonus, Liberty City Wrestling has no announcers, so not only does one get to hear Danielson yelling at Prince Nana for screwing with the pinfalls, but you get to hear the awkward fellow who has the distinction of being the only guy in the building who thinks that the American Dragon is overrated air his opinions in a public forum.

    This is by no means a great match, and I don’t really know if you can call it good, in the strictest sense of the word. Danielson, as anybody who knows his work might guess, is what makes this match go. Not only does he sell Kamala’s gimmick better than anybody has in the past twenty or so years, but he keeps the match moving where other people in his shoes would have left a lot of dead air for Kamala’s grunting and stomach slapping routine. There’s also the issue of Prince Nana, who has one of the better gimmicks on the independent scene. He’s (legitimately) a Ghanian prince, so he uses the tax money he collects to hire wrestlers to be in his stable (The Embassy) and do his dirty work. I can’t tell if he’s hired Kamala to win the ROH Title for him or not, but he certainly doesn’t want Danielson pulling one over on the Ugandan Giant.

    Speaking of Kamala, it’s almost heartwarming to see him still headhunting for his first World Title. 28 years after his debut. Kamala, obviously, is way past his prime, though he can do a lot more than you’d guess from the string of bookings he’s taken with WWE over the past few years. There’s a little bit of his old self in here, when Danielson is selling his gimmick and when the two are brawling around the spacious ringside area, but there’s little doubt that the ROH strap won’t be going with him to Uganda. That’s what I like most about this match–Kamala’s been hunting for a World Title so long, often in big territories, that it almost makes sense that he’d go after Danielson. Imagining Kamala winning and going against some of the best ROH had to offer at the time is also a wonderful thought. Picture him at their shows before belltime, trying to sell fans copies of his self-recorded album, The Best of Kamala: Volume 1 and tell me his being champion wouldn’t have ruled. Alas, the match ends in a schmozz, so the closest Kamala will ever get to the recognition he and Kim Chee so clearly deserved is this tremendous magazine cover, from 1987:

    Oh well. If the World Title hunt doesn’t pan out, at least Kamala can fall back on his second love: Bowling.


    Kamala vs. Doink the Clown

  • Sgt. Slaughter vs. Pat Patterson (5/4/81)

    Sgt. Slaughter vs. Pat Patterson (5/4/81)

    Back when wrestling was viewed as legitimate sport, encounters like this “Alley Fight” match were a rare breed, pulled out only for feuds that had reached their limit, somehow. The steel cage match (or lumberjack match), for example, was brought into play when the heel had pushed the fans patience to the limit by running away from every possible confrontation with the face. The knock down, drag out, no disqualification slugfest here happened because the two men legitimately hated each other and, to this point, their hatred could not be contained by a mere one on one encounter. Slaughter and Patterson went at each other for so long that promising a resolution to their feud was enough to sell out Madison Square Garden in an era where really only two other men–Bob Backlund and Bruno Sammartino–were capable of doing the same.

    The match itself is about as intentionally brutal as the WWE gets–just two guys wailing away at one another. Blood is spilled, shoes are used as weapons, and the fans absolutely eat up every move. This would be an interesting match to show to somebody who just got into wrestling, somebody who expects some sort of no holds barred contest every week on free television. Slaughter rubberlegging his way around the ring as Patterson clubs him with cowboy boots and big ‘ol fists might look goofier than, say, a dude getting whacked headlong with a steel chair, but there is no wasted motion here, not a single minute where I ask myself why two guys who supposedly hate each other so much are spending their time doing moves or setting up for their finisher. I love that this match has to be stopped by Slaughter’s manager (THE GRAND WIZARD!) by means of throwing in the towel, and love even more that Slaughter, battered and blind from the blood in his eyes, wants nothing more than to continue, even though all he’s capable of are slow haymakers.

    If I remember correctly, this match was honored by more than a few prestigious wrestling journalists (I know, right?) as 1981’s match of the year. It’s not hard to see why. Each punch, each kick to the head, each move feels important, as if that’s the one that’ll either put Patterson over the top, or send the fans home angry. Patterson’s a genius in the ring, and when he retired he put that genius to use as a backstage agent, structuring other important matches and giving guys advice on how to work the WWE’s style. Chris Jericho credits him with saving his WWE career, and Patterson put together the 60-minute Iron Man match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels that maybe doesn’t hold up as well as it did, but is near miraculous in that it both sent the crowd home happy and did so without pushing Michaels or Hart, who hated each other at the time, towards the exit and to WCW. A wrestling match like this is all about the small details, and Patterson’s a master of those. If it’s the job of a wrestler to put smiles on faces (I’m dubious to that notion, but that’s what they advertise), then by the end of this match it’s obvious that Pat Patterson knew that job to a science.