Greg Valentine v Roddy Piper (Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, 3/12/83)
Every minute of these two matching up is worth watching. Valentine is one of the surliest bastards ever and Piper had that wildness about him where it always felt like a riot was ready to break out. Against Valentine, it usually did. This was about eight minutes long and ended with a run-in to close the show, but it had the same foundation as their best stuff together. The roughness, the ugly strikes, someone getting slapped really hard across the ear, an elbow to the clavicle, the meanest collar-and-elbow tie-up you ever saw. They'd kind of stop for brief little periods and look at each other with total disgust, then they'd go at it again and much clobbering would commence. They captured a real sense of violence that very few others could match. What a pairing.
Arn Anderson v Bill Mulkey (World Championship Wrestling, 2/8/86)
I've watched a bunch of late '85-early '86 Crockett TV over the last few months. A lot of the time it's a case of throwing on the Network and having it run as background noise while I try to finish off work and/or research in a timely fashion. But every time an Arn match comes on, whether it's a three minute squash or a competitive ten minute draw or a lengthier tag match if we get lucky, I'll drop even the pretense of being productive and watch the wrestling instead. Arn is basically always worth checking out. And this is pretty much an extended squash, but it's one of those where it could've lasted forty seconds except he was enjoying himself too much and so we got five minutes out of it. Bill Mulkey looks sort of like Wynn Duffy with the body of Cricket after he fell on hard times. Arn gave him a couple clean breaks because it's not like he actually needed to take him seriously or anything, but then Mulkey popped him in the jaw and chucked him with a hip toss. So for the next four and a half minutes Arn bullies the hell out of him. This had some awesome arm-wringers, some awesome yanking of the arm, some great stomping on the shoulder joint while while standing on the hand to keep it in place. Arn's stomps are all-time level anyway and the Crockett studio ring always makes a really satisfying racket. Arn was also having some fun shit-talking folks, asking Schiavone where Dusty is hiding and even asking the crowd if they want to see him rough up a scrub some more. I've seen about a hundred Arn Anderson TV squashes and I'll happy see a hundred more.
