Toshiaki Kawada vs. Cactus Jack, HUSTLE-3 (5/8/2004)

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This, despite being on HUSTLE, was for Kawada’s Triple Crown Title.

Mick Foley and Toshiaki Kawada are two of my favorite wrestlers of all time. For any number of reasons, I do not connect with too many professional wrestlers on an emotional level (not that there are like five or anything, but given the sheer amount of professional wrestlers, you know?), but I did with these two, and it was near immediate in both cases. Outside of Stone Cold, which as a child in 1998 was undeniable, Mick Foley was one of the first wrestlers I ever loved. I was the person that WCW documentaries describe who turned it to Raw is War on January 4th, 1999 when they said that thing. When I first got into Japanese wrestling, while the heroics of a Misawa or Kobashi were impressive, it was the struggle of Kawada that kept me looking back at things and discovering. You get me on the right day (these days, usually around when Bryan Danielson is too kind to a bad wrestler in a big AEW match), and I will say Kawada is the second best wrestler ever in my eyes, and up there was my very favorite of all time. Get me on the right day, perhaps even that same one, and I will say Mick Foley is in the top twenty, if not better than every other Pillar (I can waffle on he and Taue, nothing is ever set in stone).

I say that all to say that I love these guys, beyond just a base level on which I think they’re really great wrestlers.

Despite what many might say, I am a very positive person, and I believe that I see good in a lot of things many others do not (sometimes even wrestling matches), and I am particularly inclined to do this for wrestlers I love watching.

Such a thing was not possible here.

The best thing about this match is that, because HUSTLE booked it and because it happened, there are pictures widely available of Toshiaki Kawada and Mick Foley fighting each other.

When you watch the match — as I avoided doing for over twenty years because of such warnings — that all falls apart.

Both have been a part of some great stylistic clashes that prove the old adage about styles making fights, but I think this is simply too far of a divide to bridge. Foley is like two weeks removed from one of his best and most wild performances ever, if you want to cite that, and has admitted that he was here for the insane money HUSTLE was throwing out (Dusty Rhodes, Mark Coleman, and The Outsiders are also on this show). Kawada throws some of the softer shots of his career all throughout, and leans a lot on these elbows to the back of the neck that are more in line with a U.S. southern heel than Dangerous K, really only unloading with one kick at the very end.

Neither ever feels at all comfortable with each other, nor interested in becoming so. It’s all best summed up by the classic Foley barbed wire bat, which is brought in and teased, but never even all that close to being used in a meaningful way. It’s a match that feels as though it was forced to happen at gunpoint. Two of the best ever do exactly enough to say that, technically, they had a match, which ought to get someone somewhere to let Foley go free and to keep Kawada’s ramen shop free from extortion for the time being.

I didn’t enjoy it much at all, but I’m happy both made it through this ordeal that they were very clearly forced into.

Kawada wins with a Gamengiri followed up by a head kick to a seated Foley.

The greatest strength of this match is that, despite all Foley would go on to do in sporadic appearances over the last six and a half years of his career, it made me a little less sad that Samoa Joe vs. Mick Foley never happened the following year.

Some dreams are best left as dreams.

Cactus Jack/Headhunter A/Headhunter B vs Terry Funk/Leatherface/Shoji Nakamaki, WPW Bridge of Dreams ~ DOME SPRING FULL BLOOM (4/2/1995)

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This was a Barbed Wire Board & Barbed Wire Baseball Bat Bunkhouse Deathmatch.

 

It’s the IWA Japan offer match on the famous Weekly Pro Wrestling BRIDGE OF DREAMS show. The famous pro wrestling magazine organized a gigantic Dome show with all the notable promotions of the era throwing a match in. Most were great, but I imagine if you’re reading this, you know that the NJPW guys didn’t quite produce their greatest outing and also that it’s never been released in any sort of official format.

Luckily, you’re reading this in the 2020s and unofficial video of it has been widely available for quite some time now.

It’s pretty great.

There are like ten or twenty different things here worth capturing in GIFs, but I think you should just watch the match for yourself instead.

Really, the match is just packed nearly full of real cool stuff. Terry Funk bleeding up a storm, the classic Foley vs. Funk stuff, Headhunters diving off the top onto Nakamaki lying on the Big Ramp, all sorts of stuff off the top or the apron to the floor near the end, Headhunter dives, a few real sick barbed wire board spots, all sorts of other assorted lunacy. Cactus Jack and The Headhunters getting to team up in a match based around sheer lunacy in the mid 1990s feels a little bit unfair, like Gary Busey and John C. McGinley sharing the screen as different types of psychopaths in SURVIVING THE GAME (1994) and constantly outdoing each other. It’s a wonderful type of thing to see, different sorts of freaks at the peaks of their powers going insane in front of the world.

You can criticize some things, it’s disorganized as hell, there are definitely a few real down portions of this that do hinder them somewhat when they start to build a lot of momentum, but I like that. I don’t want a match like this to really have a flow or to follow a formula. With people like this, stumbling upon any real sense of normalcy would feel deeply wrong. While it holds the match back somewhat, and while it could maybe be tighter, it’s otherwise just about perfect as is.

If you’re going to run a big sort of chaotic mess, this is how you do it. If you’re going to have a match that is simply a compilation of cool shit, it helps to do shit this cool. Not exactly some secret artifact, a road map to a land forgotten by time, but the sort of wild, violent, and reckless mess that I miss seeing performed with the sort of skill and charm that was on display here.

Big, dumb, and wonderful.

***

Cactus Jack vs. Eddie Gilbert, TWA (10/11/1990)

Huge improvement on the month before. Cactus Jack is mad, and he jumps Eddie coming out from the dressing room. They fight all over the house-lit gymnasium. As someone who hasn’t explored this period of Foley’s career much, it’s a TREAT to see him work in an Stone Age US Indie environment like this. This feels like the first Mick Foley match, as that sense of chaos that was hinted at kind of envelops the entire match.

Eddie never properly gains his bearings, as Mick always forces the match outside. There’s so much going on, and it’s ALWAYS going on. Eddie can never escape. He barely gets any offense in. He keeps crawling back inside or throwing Mick inside, only to be thrown or dragged back out into Cactus’ environment. He finally pulls out a chain to choke Cactus to give him an opening to use actual professional wrestling moves, but Eddie being Eddie, he eats shit again before too long. After a ref bump, Cactus takes him back outside, and now after his plan and really his only hope fell short, he just flees. Cactus fights him out into the crowd and Eddie gets thrown out the back door and just leaves. Call it a no contest.

The sole hardcam shot hurts this somewhat by not providing an up close look at Cactus diving off the apron and crushing a garbage can when Eddie moves, or following them through the crowd and up to the bleachers, or providing close ups of Eddie’s blood covered face, but it also helps in its own way. This entire thing is dirty and gross, and I don’t know if you can maintain that sense that this is something we’re not supposed to be watching if the production is clean and organized. A spectacular piece of filth.

***

Cactus Jack vs. Eddie Gilbert, TWA (9/11/1990)

This series was ground breaking at the time, but it’s been almost thirty years. Fair to say they’ll get crazier as the long feud carries on, but this is a fairly normal brawl adjacent kind of match. This isn’t to say that it’s bad at all, but in a world influenced so much by this series of matches, the actual stuff they’re doing is real ordinary from 2019 eyes.

It still works though, and what makes this work so well is all the little things. Eddie begins by having his leg worked on when he hurts it being a real asshole, so he’s walking with a limp for the rest of the match. Eventually takes over with a combination of experience and skullduggery, but he’s constantly getting himself in trouble. Foley isn’t quite FOLEY yet, but he’s very good. Years later, he’s better than anyone ever at creating a sense that everything is about to go wrong and that things are already badly out of control. He doesn’t have that tentirely here, but you can see the signs.

It’s the first match in what becomes a famous program, so it’s not a long one. Much more like a TV match, the kind where you see that guys have something there, so they start a program. As it is here, they’re just setting the table and getting the basics points across. Who they are, and who they are against each other. Jack is a maniac, but still young and still learning, and still trying to actually wrestle. Eddie is an asshole who seems to always eat shit when he bites off more than he can chew, but he’s just crafty enough to survive here. He baits Cactus into running around a lot on his comeback, and can catch him with the Hot Shot for the win.

**3/4