Bret Hart vs. Doug Somers

 

March 10th 1992 

World Wrestling Federation

WWF Wresting Challenge

Coast Coliseum Biloxi, Mississippi

There's probably not going to be a lot here since we're dealing with a 2 minute supplemental match. We can touch on Bret in '92 and get into some Somers (not likely he'll pop up again on here), but there's not much of a match here. This match was selected at random off of a 1992 Bret Hart compilation disc, and while I wish we ended up with something better, it could have been much worse, so I'll take it. 

1991 was a year of transition for Bret Hart in the WWF. The Hart Foundation disbanded after losing their WWF World Tag Team Championships to the Nasty Boys... What am I doing? This stuff has already been covered to death. Look, Bret was getting the singles push and would win the Intercontinental title from Mr. Perfect at SummerSlam that year. Yes, yes, great match. Moving on to January 17, 1992, when Bret dropped the title to the Mountie at a random house show in Springfield, Massachusetts. The story WWF went with was that Bret was sick and had a fever, and an audible had to be called. But there were also rumors that Bret was going to dip and debut at WCW's Clash of the Champions that following Tuesday with the title (WCW's revenge for Flair jumping with their title). But no, actually, WWF was going to move the IC title to Piper at some point anyway. Oh, then weirdly enough, Bret didn't realize his contract had rolled over, so in actuality, he couldn't give his notice. I don't know, man. It's pro wrestling. Bret would return to work quickly, but in his absence, the Mountie lost the Intercontinental Championship to Roddy Piper at that year's Royal Rumble. This led to the Piper and Hart feud that culminated in a match at WrestleMania VIII, which is probably my favorite WrestleMania match if I had to pick one. Before all of this, Bret would have to face his worst nightmare: DOUG SOMERS.

Doug Somers was one of those old-school guys who would go anywhere, work until there was no more work to be done, and move on. He wrestled in nearly every major territory in the United States you can think of: Texas, Portland, Mid-Atlantic, Florida, Tennessee—pretty much everywhere. But his roots lie in Minneapolis, and that's where he returned in 1986 for his most notable run. A majority of this run was spent teaming with Buddy Rose in a feud with the Midnight Rockers (Michaels and Jannetty). What started out as something on the undercard eventually grew into a program that would usually main event shows and is responsible for bringing notoriety to the Rockers team, especially since this was around the time AWA was airing on ESPN. The team with Rose disbanded, and Somers hung around AWA for a short while until the work dried up. He bounced around again, even doing a short tour with All Japan in 1989, until he landed a supplemental gig with WCW in '91, eventually making a daring, shocking, reality shattering jump to WWF in '92, where our match today takes place. 

WrestleMania VIII is right around the corner and Bret Hart makes his way down to the ring, with Somers already in there, huffing and puffing, ready to get his hands on the Hitman. In actuality, Somers is standing there like he's waiting for a self-checkout kiosk to be free at Target. Bret does his usual ritual of giving a random kid his sunglasses. I blink, and Bret now has Somers tapping out in the Sharpshooter. That's it. All the action before that was just basic in-ring warmup stuff while an ad for their next Boston Garden show played. Anyways... 

Bret would go on to face Roddy Piper at WrestleMania VIII and win back the Intercontinental Championship. For real, if anyone hasn't seen that match or anything from that feud, check it out. Low-key and focused promos, believable issues, and the match builds off all of it. He transitioned into a feud with Shawn Michaels, then won the WWF World Heavyweight Championship from Flair, and that's pretty much his 1992. 

Somers wrapped up with WWF in the late summer of '92 and pretty much retired from a full-time schedule from there. He popped up on indies from time to time and tried suing WWE in 2011 over issues with his likeness, but the case was ultimately thrown out. In 2008, while working with an AWA revival indy, he participated in a tag team match teaming with Dennis Condrey against Tommy Rich and Chic Donovan—which, with those guys at the time, would have been a combined age of 226. Just thought that was funny. Somers died on May 16, 2017, at the age of 65. I'd recommend checking out the feud against the Midnight Rockers—there's some pretty good stuff.

The Midnight Rockers vs Buddy Rose & Doug Somers Feud

The Gladiator vs. Kenta Kobashi

 

December 4th 2002

Pro Wrestling NOAH

GHC Heavyweight Championship

NOAH Navigation, Uprising Spirit 2004

Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium Yokohama, Japan

After a messy departure from ECW, a stint in WCW during its dying days, and an unmemorable run in the WWF while recovering from knee surgery, Mike Awesome returned to Japan, working under the fan-favorite gimmick "The Gladiator" in Keiji Mutoh's All Japan in 2003. Over the next year, The Gladiator's role was primarily that of a large, meathead gatekeeper. The injury had really taken its toll, and every time he found himself in a prominent spot, there were questions regarding if he could pull off a good match or if the other guy could possibly carry him to one. Despite this, his size and whatever nostalgia remained from the FMW days were enough to keep his head above water. 

I'm not entirely sure how the transition from All Japan to NOAH happened—most likely a contract running out and Mike moving on—but during this transition, we get a match with him versus Masato Tanaka for a new (now defunct) title in ZERO-ONE, plus a small dip of the toe into HUSTLE. Gladiator's role in NOAH was more of the same: tagging with foreigners and gatekeeping. The match we'll talk about soon enough is the main focus of his NOAH run and gets more properly set up at the 11/21 Sendai show, where Gladiator powerbombed Kobashi through a table after the main event tag match. 

For Kenta Kobashi, this was towards the close of his 735-day GHC Heavyweight Championship run. If anyone were to tell me this was the greatest title run of all time, it'd be hard to disagree. That's why I'm telling anyone who reads this that this is the greatest title run in pro wrestling history. Okay, I'm not really going to claim it as such right now, but if that discussion were to take place, this run is one of the first that would need to be mentioned. Some of the holes in this reign lie around this period. The July 2004 Tokyo Dome show reared its head and put pressure on the top title, with original plans pointing towards a match between Kobashi and Bob Sapp. Plans change. 

The past year saw Kobashi bulldozing through most of the major stars, all while putting more wear and tear on his knees. With the Sapp match not going forward (thankfully, in retrospect), the Dome main event ended up being against Jun Akiyama in a match they were hoping to hold off on. Now, this could lead into a whole discussion about the prospects of Akiyama around this time, who seemingly was going to be the guy to lead the promotion after Kobashi and Misawa, but we'll save that for now. A look was taken at what they wished they had with Akiyama and what they already had with Kobashi. Bad knees and all, Kobashi was going to hold onto that title, but after spending what was saved in the back pocket, where does a promotion go from there? To a heatless match against Akira Taue in September, of course. 

This was followed by a bout against Akitoshi Saito, who had no chance of winning, in what was a solid match but didn’t really do much for anyone in the grand scheme of things. Now we're at the point where the large, imposing foreigner, The Gladiator, has his sights set on the GHC Champion. But... what is Kobashi looking at over there? Oh, of course, it’s a match against Minoru Suzuki in the Budokan. Yes, Gladiator will get his match, but in the back of everyone's mind, it's known that Kobashi has bigger fish to fry. The Suzuki match really does take priority over this match, as Kobashi invites Suzuki to sit ringside in Yokohama.

I think a reason Kobashi remained such a success in Japanese pro wrestling in the early 2000s is the fact that the guy stuck with working a classic pro wrestling style. Now, I'm not saying the sport can't evolve and everyone needs to work a 50 year old style, but Kobashi stuck with what makes pro wrestling work in a larger environment where MMA was taking over and many promotions were scrambling and altering their identities. There were even critics who bashed Kobashi for working an "unrealistic" style, merely based on him not conforming to a sweeping trend. Early 2000s NOAH is considered a bright spot during a time referred to as the Dark Ages, simply because the promotion and their top guy just did straightforward pro wrestling.

 And that's truly what Kobashi did here: a match where he gets the stuffing beat out of him just before he musters up enough momentum to pull off the win. Just something to convey that the champion can take a beating and still stay on top. Really simple pro wrestling. 

This was the second time these two met in a singles match, the first being in All Japan back in September 1999, where Kobashi was making his way to another shot at the Triple Crown. It's exciting to see two big guys get after it in the ring, but when not much is happening (like the early goings of this match), that excitement can just as easily lapse. The crowd was pretty dead when this started. Minoru Suzuki was, of course, sitting ringside, smiling and doing eyebrow shtick. Boy, was it hard not to daydream about the prospects of a Kobashi match against him. 

There's a bit of plodding, some exchanges outside the ring, and then quickly back into the ring for more plodding. Things heat up when the Gladiator brings Kobashi outside the ring again and starts working the back. The crowd finally comes alive when he brings out a table to presumably give Kobashi another taste of what happened in Sendai. I like being teased in matches, where the idea of something really dangerous is about to happen but the wrestlers, after struggling, back out of it. Just getting the picture in my head of something devastating happening is just as effective when done right. 

The Gladiator and Kobashi forgo the mental images and just do it. Kobashi goes through the table by way of an Awesome Bomb. We're now treated to Kobashi being put through the paces of whatever the Gladiator feels like doing to him. There's a cool sequence of Kobashi out on the entrance ramp eating a dive from the Gladiator and then being sent back into the ring by a Super Awesome Bomb. Gladiator is trying everything he can, including an Awesome Bomb from the top rope, but Kobashi stays alive. 

And like magic, at the height of the crowd's enthusiasm, Kobashi finds the momentum through a suplex, a lariat, and a surprise moonsault to win the match. I mean, that's what they call working a match, right? Kobashi got the crowd exactly how he wanted before taking it home. Kobashi's attention quickly pivots to Suzuki, and the two exchange words. Kobashi would beat Suzuki and then drop the title to Takeshi Rikio in March 2005. And, of course, this wouldn't be too long before his cancer diagnosis in 2006. 

Meanwhile, the Gladiator would do for one more tour in NOAH, just being a body in tag matches until his last show (the same one as the title change to Rikio). The Gladiator would be no more, but Mike Awesome would stick around just long enough for a hell of a one night stand.