Recommendations From A History Man

Peter Edge is back for round 3 of his history tour, as we begin with a topical trip back to 1994.

El Hijo Del Santo/Octagon vs Eddie Guerrero/Art Barr- When Worlds Collide 1994

Since the last SoSu newsletter came out, a lot has happened. I saw Mercedes Mone wrestle live, Sabu retired and nearly died on the same night and WWE entered the lucha market by acquiring the most non lucha libre promotion in Mexico, AAA.

I’ll be honest with you guys. I have a blindspot on lucha. I don’t know why but I struggle to love lucha and maybe the proof of that is to say that my favourite lucha match of all time is this match.

It’s like saying Taylor Swift is your favourite country music singer. Hey, “Love Story” is a great song and so is this match.

The 2 out of 3 Falls ruleset with a Luchas de Apuestas stipulation (with Mask and Hair on the line), has an elimination variant in it on this occasion, which sees a fall decided by both members of a tag team being eliminated.

Within minutes it’s pretty easy to see that the themes going on in today’s politics were also around in 1994. This was Mexico vs America. The Americans are using anti-immigration slurs. The low hanging fruit that has often been on show when it comes to heel heat is being grabbed by the Los Gringos team of Guerrero and Barr (even the tag team name is a thing of a bygone age).

The 3 falls couldn’t be more different. Fall one is more or less a squash, which sees the finest frog splash you’ll ever see from Art Barr.

It is Fall Two when the electricity is at its finest. A particular moment causes the biggest outpouring of in wrestling I’ve ever seen…. Well, until Chris Jericho said he was going home on the episode of Dynamite after “Dynasty”.

It’s Fall Three that sees the drama. Especially in the final moments when Santo is fighting the odds, 1 vs 2.

The two main weaknesses of this match and why I can’t give it a perfect five despite the fantastic moments in Falls 2 and 3 are that the same babyfaces fighting with a man down after the first elimination trope happens in all 3 falls and also the constant cutaways and split screen of Octagon being attended to after a tombstone piledriver distract from the end. But with such drama in the proceedings, it’s perhaps a perfect gateway drug to lucha libre. ****¾

Akira Hokuto (white/black outfit) vs Shinobu Kandori (yellow/black gear) 2nd April 1993

One of the pledges I made to myself and you guys was that I wouldn’t become one of those “it used to be better” jerks but I’m not going to lie, watching this match once again almost got me into that mind space.

(Urge to have the writing prose of the Unabomber rising)

Seriously though, this match absolutely rocks.

The first minutes set the tone with an Akira knockdown and a Hokuto mid match promo that is nothing like those Roman Reigns “why don’t you like me” mid match promos, such is the aggression from Akira. That aggression is met by Kandori in the form of an armbar, which started the limb work on Akira that would have been the focus of the match had Hokuto not hit 0.8 on the Muta Scale.

Fun fact, The outside of the ring ref (the one dressed like he was going to Birmingham Symphony Hall) for this match was Wally Yamaguchi, who is best known for trying to cut off Val Venis’ “pee-pee” for fans of WWF during the Attitude Era. It was he who was the one who ran the blade on Akira on her request but went too deep on it hence the disgusting (in a good way) crimson mask.

From then on, Akira is trying to survive akin to how Meiko Satomura tries to survive her in their 2001 classic I recommended last issue. She hits bombs on the counter attack but Kandori’s control has Hokuto in a scramble, especially when in Kandori’s submissions.

The similarities to the Meiko/Akira match don’t end there either. The final five minutes are eerily similar with both just trying to find that final blow in their arsenal before their gas tank runs out, with one strike making all the difference.

Phil Schneider in his “Way of the Blade” book calls this “maximalist” and he’s right. In an era where maximalism is outnumbering minimalist wrestling, this is one of the OG max matches. *****

I am starting to sound like one of those essayists now 🤦

Jerry Lawler vs Terry Funk- Empty Arena Match

Speaking of “it used to be better” jerks, on the 45th anniversary of this match a few weeks back, you got the usual suspects doing the whole “it used to be better” and it reminded me why I wanted to do this regular feature.

In an age where access to historical matches has never been easier, the motivation for people to watch such content hasn’t been helped by wrestling essayists talking down to people about it being better in the old days.

Whether today’s wrestling is better than it was in the 80s is actually irrelevant. There have been great matches in 2025, there were great matches in 1994 and there were great matches in 1980 (like this match I’m looking at) and we should celebrate the greatness of wrestling when great wrestling happens, and this is great wrestling, albeit a different kind of great.

So why are these two people doing an Empty Arena match? Terry Funk challenged Jerry Lawler to a match at the Mid South Coliseum which Lawler won. Funk would go on to claim that the refs were biased towards the Memphis favourite (Fans of the other 19 clubs that aren’t Liverpool in the English Premier League are probably going “tell me about it”) so Terry has challenged Lawler to a rematch with no ref and no fans in the building to negate the “unfair advantage”.

Onto the match and first off, there’s the hot mic stuff. Lance Russell (the greatest wrestling commentator ever in my opinion) is talking about wanting to film something for posterity. He’s talking aloud about being happy about the lights in the Mid South Coliseum (thank goodness the guy never went to a Rev Pro event) and then he just lights a cigarette and after just one drag, the cameraman tells him that they’re about to film and he just throws it away and doesn’t stomp on said cigarette.

This is how fires start Lance.

So much could have gone wrong here in so many ways. Thank god Lance is the loveliest human being on planet earth because with other wrestling announcers around at this time, we could have heard a hate crime happen on the hot mic (yes I’m looking at you Bill Watts).

Funk comes out first, insistent that Lawler won’t come out, to the point where he tries to count Lawler out and proceeds to count like a nursery school teacher.

Lawler does come out in his full wrestling gear plus the crown he wore as “The King” and he looks REALLY STUPID for this occasion. So stupid that Terry has to point out that he looks REALLY STUPID for the occasion.

Once they get fighting (and that’s the word to best use because this is not a wrestling match), Terry is just in perpetual motion while Lawler walks and brawls.

Lawler is that reasonable guy in a pub car park as it’s about to kick off and Funk is that guy who has had one or two or three too many pints and thinks attacking someone with a parking sign is an acceptable solution to a argument.

Funk, at one point when beating on Lawler on a table, starts for some reason screaming like a Karen who is annoyed that the restaurant she has had to go to because there is no Wetherspoons in the area she is stay-vacationing in has no brown sauce on the table.

The end is befitting what might be the greatest one man performance in wrestling history. Terry’s squeals off the famous “My Eye” as his distress echoes around the Coliseum turn to fear when Lance Russell obeys his request to get help and then turns to anger as he starts calling out to those he despises so much. You’d feel sorry for such a pathetic figure if he wasn’t the dictionary definition of toxic masculinity at this point.

It’s a match that is difficult to rate. There’s no crowd to guide you, even Lance Russell struggles to make sense of the occasion at times, but yet it’s so captivating because of Terry Funk.

Younger fans might know Terry Funk as that guy who died during “All In” week in 2023 which meant we got CM Punk doing Terry Funk impressions really badly, but Terry Funk to me is one of the best to ever do this and “matches” like this show why.

Atsushi Onita Vs Hayabusa (bloke in mask) 5th May 1995

Cinco de Mayo is also known in certain wrestling circles as the anniversary of Onita and Hayabusa in a Exploding Cage Death Match and it’s been 30 years since that match.

This was supposed to be Atsushi Onita’s retirement (it obviously wasn’t) and a moment when the torch would be passed to the hottest new star that Onita had found in the form of the masked Hayabusa.

With 15 minutes on the clock ticking down before detonation and the chance of a ring exploding as likely as Onita wrestling again after this date, the patrons in Kawasaki Stadium were expecting fireworks, literally.

(Yes, that is Jon Moxley’s second AEW theme that Onita is using (the one that hasn’t got the flute solo or isn’t as good as Mox’s original theme tune).

This match relies on the obvious tension that is associated with men getting close to explosives stationed on barbed wire. They get so much out of so little. The moment the first flesh meets explosives, it gets the reaction you would expect. The panic in the ring announcer’s voice as the clock hits 3:00 sounds like what anyone’s reaction would be if a Doomsday clock on Sky News popped up just like that.

The sirens that envelop from that time sounds like something from a dystopian horror movie.

The climactic moment of the clock hitting zero and explosions setting off, is probably what Tony Khan loaded up onto his YouTube and went “SEE?!” to the bloke in charge of the explosives during the Jon Moxley/ Kenny Omega match at Revolution 2021. Even if the 3 minutes of action when the smoke clears and both Onita and ‘Busa are back on their feet is a smidgen anticlimactic, the match itself is a very easy ****.

By Peter Edge

48 hours in Las Vegas

Chris Whitehead takes us along with him on a whistle stop tour of the independents and global promotions who made Las Vegas their home during Wrestlemania week.

Naito

It is hard not to overemphasize how much this week feels like a truly momentous one for New Japan Pro Wrestling as the top draw for most of the last decade and the most popular wrestler in the company…

Wrestlemania 41

The first night of this year’s Wrestlemania was a mostly subdued affair, with a crowd that lacked energy, noise and motion for most of the proceedings. For a lot of the matches, it reflected issues in the builds that the performers were unable to turn around in the ring.