Sabu vs Harry New Baker WCW Prime 09-25-1995
Homicidal? Sure
Suicidal? Makes Sense
Genocidal?....Uhhh what?
Though I never quite understood how Sabu's wrestling gimmick was related to ethnic cleansing, I was able to ignore it because Sabu was awesome. I've talked before that I feel like I missed the boat with ECW, but for those who didn't read that entry the jist of it was I was just a little too young for it's glory days. Luckily, that's where Bill Apter came in because ECW was all over issues of PWI, Wrestling America, Inside Wrestling, Outside Wrestling, Wrestling on Wrestling, Wrestling Digest, Wrestling Weekly, etc . Sabu was tailored made for the pages of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. The Apter Mags thrived on dangerous and mysterious wrestlers with androgynous backstories that they can twist to suit the narrative of the story. While I never saw Sabu much, I was familiar with who he was
So imagine my surprise when one fateful night I turn on WCW Monday Nitro and he's kicking Mr JL's ass. I knew who Sabu was, and after reading a about him in the magazines I was excited to see what be brought to the table. He was an absolute lunatic. There's this expression every wrestler says in their shoot interviews " The people knew that other stuff was fake, but me I was real". Really, The Goon? You were the barometer seperating fiction from reality? I love to make fun of that line because its typically untrue, but in Sabu's case....I believed it. I still didn't fully know wrestling wasn't on the up and up, but stuff was starting to add up. I couldn't figure out why The Stone Cold Stunner didn't work as well on my brother as it did on Scott Taylor. But Sabu man, I believed Sabu was legitimately crazy. I wasn't afraid of him, because I couldn't process his existence. Sabu was how I felt about the universe, how can I be afraid of something my little brain can't understand. One time I did spend a lot of time contemplating the sheer massive size of the galaxy and I called out of work because I got overwhelmed and emotional. Unfortunately for the WCW universe, Sabu's time was short lived. Cagematch has Sabu with less than 10 matches and I think this might be his only squash match. There's no way he got many of those in his career so let's see how it shakes out
We are in 1995 for an edition of WCW Prime as Sabu takes on Harry New Baker. The Prime episodes have been a treat, because we get Dusty Rhodes on commentary messing around. I don't think he is physically, emotionally, or spiritually capable of giving a fuck right now. It's fantastic. Harry New Baker is a very large jobber with hair that Dream says looks like a bird's nest on top of his red head. Chris Cruise also on commentary and mentions Sabu's wrestled in "Knife Matches". I don't think that's real. You only see Knife Matches on Dateline. Spoiler alert, whoever is interviewed wearing neutral colors in a brick room is the killer. One thing that sticks out about Sabu is the way he moves. He dart's at New Baker's legs and when kicked off immediately comes back with a quick clothesline. No wasted movement. Sabu gets New Baker down and comes back onto a seated New baker with a springboard back legdrop. That happens a lot here, as so much of Sabu's offense is throw his body at the guy.
It's pretty effective
Sabu with a bodyslam followed by a flipping rope assisted legdrop into the ring. So many of Sabu's moves are fairly standard now, but I can only imagine what it's like to be there watching this psycho hit all of these in succession. After ANOTHER Springboard attack, Sabu finally slows down and grabs a armlock on the mat. New Baker hasn't gotten any offense really other then kicking out of a victory roll. That moment is short-lived after Sabu hurracaranas New Baker over the top rope. It's Sabu so of course he's gonna follow that up with a flip over the top rope onto Poor Harry New Baker. He was probably hoping he was gonna have an easy job day and just get like tackled by Jim Duggan for 15 seconds, but instead this lunatic is making you catch him like six times. Then to top it all of, while New Baker is still outside Sabu uses the ropes to leap outside the ring and catch New Baker in the world's slowest hurracarana. The move isn't impressive, but the effort is. One springboard moonsault later and Sabu gets the pin
This was really fun. The squash doesn't hold up because wrestling has evolved so much, but Sabu gets how to do a squash match right. Constant movement and cool moves and It was super fun. Worth it if you've ever wondered what a Sabu squash was like
TLDR Review
Sabu's head is full of cool moves. New baker's head is full of birds. My head is full of concerns about the expanding size of reality.
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