This review was commissioned by Julian Ortiz over on my Ko-fi account.
It’s hard for me not to have a good time watching Abdullah the Butcher. He’s such an interesting and deeply compelling figure in the history of pro wrestling. Vacillating between being in some of the greatest matches of an era against the likes of The Funks in All Japan to being almost immobile as wrestlers try to work around him in the 2000s. He’s funny as fuck, dude, I can’t ever really hate on Abby.
This match offers a picture of him at sort of a midpoint between those two extremes. He’s a little closer to peak Abby though here, with only his signature fork not making an appearance here. Other than though, it’s all about the punches, the blood, and the sneakiness which always interests me from a worker his size. It’s the sneakiness that always gets to me with Abdullah too. He doesn’t really use his size to overwhelm or overpower his opponents, but rather as a shield to hide his dirty tactics. It’s better seen in other matches when he uses his frame to hide the use of a weapon like a fork, but even here that same idea gets translated in other ways. For example, he doesn’t swing for big massive punches, but always keeps them close to the body and aimed at specific weak points like Colon’s bleeding forehead or right to Colon’s throat.
As for Colon himself, he’s left in charge of most of this. Abby’s still close enough to his prime, but the dude was never the most agile man to begin with so Colon’s putting in the work to fuel the energy here. I love his early attack on Abby’s ear, and he generally throws a lot of really good worked punches throughout the whole match. His selling and physical charisma comes through too. Note the way he grits his teeth through the pain, the way he hops about the ring like he’s just dying to get in there and take the big man down. And his selling work is good as well, really putting over the constant wear and tear of crashing into Abdullah.
The match itself is a mostly straightforward brawl. There’s a decent enough spectacle to it with the punches and the blood, but it’s never really explosive and heated enough to be great.
That said, all the presentation around this thing rules. It’s hilarious how the English(!) commentary on this presents this match as a controversial piece of archival footage that they recovered from the evidence lockers of the local police station. Their railing on the referee for allowing the match to continue despite the blood and chaos is funny too, and sort of adds to the charm of the stoppage finish at the end. There’s also the crowd around this too. One doesn’t really hear much of their roar or how they respond to the bout, but watch them in the back half of the match and you can see police officers in the crowd trying to maintain some sort of order up in the masses. What’s going on there? No clue, but it’s a sight to see.
Rating: ***1/2
