Mayhem

The Brandon Brothers (Doug and Cody) vs Jeff Blackstone and Jarrod Lake, Tagteam Mayhem (Can-Am)

Precise production dates are hard to find, but the case of this Can-Am classic lists the date of production as March of 1996. I'm going with that, instead of the disk release date, thirteen years later. It might be useful to color code the fighters. The dim lighting makes it hard to tell one fighter from the next. Doug Brandon is in silver trunks; his taller kid brother Cody is in Creamsicle-gold trunks. Cody has a tattoo on his chest. Their challengers are Jarrod Lake (in yellow) and Jeff Blackstone (in pink, and taller than Jarrod). Jarrod has multi-colored hair and a hairy chest.

BG Enterprise and Can-Am Productions produced battles that were, in general, way more feisty, reckless, vengeful, and fast-paced than most underground wrestling these days. Of today's sites, UCW is the most like BG/Can-Am in rambunctiousness and roughneckery. More earnest. Intimidating. In the late 80s and early 90s, the underground was more menacing on the whole. That's why it was labeled "underground." It had shock appeal, a little bit of dirt on its face, and the outcomes were a little less predictable than most 21st-century matches. 

Obviously, we have better technology these days. That's a plus. And bigger muscles, too. We can also custom order matches that reflect our fantasies. Regrettably, even our imaginations seem to follow the same patterns we see in contemporary matches, but maybe that's to be expected. Frottage and cock-grabbing are tame compared to the old roughhouse style of Randy Page, Jimmy Dean, Cliff Conlin, Doug Brandon, and others. These guys liked to beat up and get beat up.

Often, I think of the rough and tumble days. Not every match was the Wild West, but there were enough dirty matches tucked away among the frolicky and comic stuff. The four wrestlers in Tagteam Mayhem throw all they have into the brawl. Most of all, Doug Brandon, the "in-house sadist," the most skilled of the four, puts up a fight for the ages - enjoying hurting opponents for the fun of it

NOTE: The ring match is the first of three matches. In the second, the wrestlers fight buck naked (the striptease begins at the end of the first match). In the third, they are naked and wrestling in oil. There's also a post-match six-minute shower scene.

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