#135 – The Bride of the Three Rings of Horror
This year for Halloween, Dre and the Black Cat review three spooky tales for your enjoyment – Carlos Colón vs. Hércules Ayala from 1988 in Puerto Rick in a FIRE MATCH, the night the Undertaker tried to marry Stephanie McMahon, and FMW Barbed Wire Electrified Dynamite Pool Double Hell Death Match featuring OF COURSE, Atsushi Onita. We’re also pleased to announce that the OSWP 500 book is now available for digital download on our Gumroad site. Please support the Old School Wrestling Podcast by visiting oldschoolwrestlingpodcast.com where you can find links to all of our great products. We now offer all of our box sets and bonus episodes from all three seasons on our premium digital download site. We’ll see you…..at the matches!
I watched all three matches/vignettes mentioned from this podcast, and you were right, they were all very strange, yet thoroughly entertaining!
As to the quick 1-2-3: I would have to say my favorite facial hair in wrestling belongs to none other than Ted DiBiase.
From Mid South to WWF, and even today, his beard is perfect. Not too long, no odd colors or shapes. Perfectly sculpted and eminently dignified… Worth every penny of the Million Dollar Man!
Hey guys, loved the Halloween episode again, mostly as I knew it would bring another 90s deathmatch. Great choice of the Pool death match, always a favorite of mine, and such a spectacle!
Have to chime in with a few notes.
Regarding ‘Double Hell’ – you could say its the “technical term” for when only two sides of the ring have barbed wire ropes and the other sides are empty. In a more ‘traditional’ double hell deathmatch there would be two pits of explosive barbed wire on the ground next to the ring for the guys to try and throw each other into.
In this match, the two sides lacking ropes sure did make it easier to throw guys from the ring into the pool.
I think you had a hard time telling Hosaka and Mr. Pogo apart, because Hosaka was a young guy who was a lackey of Pogo’s during this period in FMW. He started dressing the same and using the same face paint, etc. As a result they looked like twins. He normally spent most of his time outside the ring just handing Mr. Pogo his knives and sickles and other instruments of torture.
Shockingly, Onita is still active and doing explosion deathmatches at age 57. He’s had a feud for the last couple years with Akebono.
Their 3 big explosion matches are all on youtube if you want to check them out (one of them was even produced by Ribera Steakhouse!)
They feature Onita’s new toys, the exploding barbed wire bat – which explodes on contact with skin, and the exploding suicide vest – so giving someone a tackle causes an explosion. It’s like deathmatch wrestling 2.0.
And yes, Onita does always grab the microphone at the end of his matches, cry, scream, dump water all over his head, and then get loaded into an ambulance while the fans lose their minds.
He even almost died once after a match, by jumping off a bridge in front of his fans, into a cold polluted river with open and bloody wounds. Metlzer noted in the 5/1/95 Wrestling Observer, “that stunt nearly killed him. Between the pneumonia and infections, he was out of action for a few months.”
What a maniac.
– Kyle (formerly doomtown on the oswp board)
@niteofthecreeps
PS – if you need a suggestion for next year’s Halloween show, I already have one that is one of the most over the top, ridiculous things I have ever seen:
The BJW Big Born Deathmatch (Barbed Wire Boards, Electrified Fluorescent Light Tube Boards, Dry Ice, Thumbtacks, Bed Of Nails, Cactus, Scorpions, Coffin, Barbed Wire Danger Net, Nail Baseball Bat, Barbed Wire Baseball Bat & Electrified Space Heaters) (01/05/1998)
http://youtu.be/xT3aTPy5tWY?t=1h1m38s
Hey boys, another great episode, and a scary one at that! I for one love the Cryptkeeper’s lame ass puns.
So glad you spent some time talking about one of my all time favorites, and the only version of The Undertaker that I ever really liked, Ministry of Darkness Undertaker. I thought the M.O.D. was one of the most underrated storylines, only to be mucked up by joining them with The Corporation. Nothing says Satanic hell on Earth like Ken Shamrock, HHH, and Test.
Plus, at one point the M.O.D. was affiliated with The Brood, and I loved Gangrel. So to have this awesome vampire as a part of this super cult was the best to me.
Stephanie was abducted at the end of Backlash, a PPV I attended live in Providence, Rhode Island. I believe this was also the last PPV that Owen Hart/Blue Blazer wrestled on. They showed the skit on the video wall, with Undertaker turning around and saying “Where to Stephanie?” To this day I have no idea if that was actually filmed in Providence or was just a pre-tape somewhere else.
But all in all, the M.O.D. was probably my favorite faction of all time (work rate aside, and remember, I also love D’Lo Brown, The Mountie, and Colonel DeBeers). Hell, they made Mabel and P.I.G. relevant, cool, and threatening!
I love the holiday themed episodes, can’t wait for my invitation to the Crocketts’, and I should probably get started on my letter for the Macho Claus.
I hadn’t finished the episode yet when I posted my first comments. I wanted to submit my Quick 1-2-3: Wrestlers’ facial hair edition.
1.) Obviously and DUH – The great Colonel DeBeers. Such a fine mustache, suitable for twirling incessantly.
2.) Big Bully Busick. If Colonel DeBeers did not exist, Busick would have the finest mustache in history.
3.) Scott Steiner’s black and blonde mish-mash of a goatee. Made him look like such a badass, and was a total 180 from his Michigan booster days.
Hey guys, great episode as always. A quick Bruce Hart story, twice in the last year I have been in Costco and saw Bruce. I wasn’t sure it was him until I saw him closer and he was wearing his cowboy boot style wrestling boots (of course with his jeans tucked into them) looking like he was on his way to a street fight somewhere. He was wearing a different pair the other time I saw him as well. I guess they are comfortable? or maybe he has so many pairs and he is trying to wear them out?
Anyway if you ever end up here in Calgary … Alberta, Canada let me know as I would gladly buy you a beer or three and provide transport to see the local wrestling landmarks (although I think you can only get a few blocks away from the Hart House – the new owners are tired of fans coming around).