Very Jimmy

Jimmy Dean vs Flying Tiger Collins, Battling Briefs 3 (BG Enterprise)

Plunge backwards into the early 1990s, with Jimmy Dean (in blue) and Flying Tiger Collins (in tiger stripes) on the BG mat. This is before Dean bulked and inked up. I like him as a smug, tan youngster who thinks he's indestructible. He scoffs when he hears that Tiger Collins flew in specifically to fight him. In the first round, Collins wipes the smug off Jimmy's face, but Jimmy, having learned a lesson, moves in for the kill in the second and third rounds. At first, he fumbles, but he dusts himself off to give Tiger a lesson in rage-amplified payback.

I'm not dreamer enough to live entirely in the past, but I like to stick my toe in it from time to time. Twenty-first-century underground wrestling is equal to its late twentieth-century model in many ways. Maybe it's my imagination, but the old stuff looks more fun, wild and spontaneous and considerably less self-conscious. The assaults are erotically charged, each man striving to emasculate his opponent. Something about the performances makes every low blow tangible. I find myself wincing and grabbing my crotch with Tiger's castrating headbutt to Jimmy's balls. It's an assault that fires Jimmy up and seals Tiger's fate.

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