There's a decent amount of full shows from Mid-Atlantic, Georgia and various other territories on the Network now; lots of new stuff that had never seen the light of day before, as well as stuff that already had but obviously not with this remastered video quality. The Flair/Steamboat match from this show has apparently been around for ages, although I don't even know if I've seen it. So I just watched the whole thing. If nothing else it makes you ponder how much stuff WWE are sitting on. Just doing nothing in a vault somewhere. Wild.
Tully Blanchard v Dory Funk Jr.
Pretty fun Dory performance. I've sort of come around to enjoying Dory when he's in there with the right opponent. He worked this like a believable old-timey shooter type, where he'd randomly sandbag-but-not-ACTUALLY-sandbag in amusing ways and Tully would react in equally amusing ways. Tully would try to whip him from one corner to the opposite, but Dory would decelerate and sit on the mat, dragging Tully with him. Tully would be almost bemused and Dory would yank him into a headlock. Dory's abdominal stretch looked really tight as well, then he'd take Tully over and try to force his shoulder down, really making Tully work to make sure he kept at least one of them off the mat. His forearms were snug, the crowd were super into him; he brought what I wanted him to bring, basically. Tully ruled. He's one of the best ever at going from sniveling wee dickhead to just terrorising someone when he sees his chance. He was all over Dory at points and of course every single person in that arena hated his guts.
Ernie Ladd v Rufus R. Jones
Ladd is always an interesting watch. I'm not even sure I've seen anything from what you'd consider his prime, all of it has been late career when he's mostly broken down, but he's always fun and super charismatic and those legdrops are wonderful. Jones is fairly over and the crowd will pop for his shuckin' and jivin', although he's mostly broken down as well. So this was like five minutes of two guys who can no longer do a ton physically hitting the same notes these fans have seen for years. Ladd taking a bump off the top rope was surprising because I figured he was way past bothering with any of that shit in 1984 (and understandably so). Of course the legdrop still ruled.
Wahoo McDaniel & Mark Youngblood v Bob Orton Jr. & Don Kernodle
This was real nice stuff. They went with the double heat segment and the crowd were red hot for all of it (a pattern with this show), but they also got pretty creative with how they filled the time. They could've worked a couple standard FIP segments, a couple hot tags, a few of your garden variety heel cut-offs and hope spots, and people would've gobbled it all up. But they ramped the surliness up to 11. Orton was a blast, hitting Youngblood with a military press slam in the ring and then later slamming him over the guardrail, which left him all mangled and contorted. He also makes a point of stopping the babyface from tagging out, making sure to grab Wahoo and keep him in his own corner after tagging in Kernodle. Even if it's not a big thing I always appreciate it when folks do that. Wahoo and Kernodle had a bunch of cool moments together as well. Wahoo gets thrown into the post to set up his heat segment early, then they run a great revenge spot later when Kernodle tries it again only to eat post himself. Wahoo was obviously chopping guys to bits and Kernodle was happy to bump around huge for all of them. At one point he basically did a full belly slide across the concrete outside. The second hot tag felt like a wee bit of an anticlimax, but it never fell flat with the crowd so it's hard to really complain. Crockett must've ran about eight million tags of similar quality throughout the decade and I could watch every single one of them no problem.
Great Kabuki, Gary Hart & Ivan Koloff v Angelo Mosca Sr., Angelo Mosca Jr. & Junkyard Dog
Perfectly solid six man tag, with the added bonus of Kabuki kicking people in the throat. His pre-match routine with the nunchucks, the ceremonial spitting of the green mist, the hair menacingly covering his face, even Koloff doesn't seem quite sure what to make of him. He threw two of his amazing thrust kicks and one of them was an absolute corker, right underneath Mosca Jr.'s chin. I'd never seen Mosca Jr. before but he was fine enough as your white meat babyface living off his old man's name. He was here to take a beating for a few minutes, hit a couple crossbodies, do a leapfrog and throw a forearm or three. I have absolutely no idea how long he wrestled or if he ever amounted to anything but I'm glad I can tick the Angelo Mosca Jr. match off the bucket list. Hart was what he needed to be on the heel end - a coward and a cheat, and in the end he paid for it.
Dick Slater v Greg Valentine (Cage Match)
This was quite literally a Greg Valentine slobberknocker, with all that entails, occurring within a metal cage that could be used as a weapon, with all that entails. It was fucking awesome. Babyface Valentine is a bit of a rarity and he totally ruled. He worked much the same as he would as a heel and was pretty reserved for the most part, at times almost embarrassed by the fact the people had adopted him as their own. But then as time went on he seemed to realise that it didn't matter how much of a mean bastard he was being; it just mattered that he was being a mean bastard to Slater. "Oh so I can punch him in the neck and elbow him in the ear and we're still good? Well hot damn, I'll do lots of that!" By the end he'd come to welcome the peoples' support and maybe even feed off it, though ultimately, when you get right down to the root of it, he was driven by the need to kick the living shit out of Dick Slater. Nine days a week I could watch Valentine beat the brakes off someone. It started almost immediately as Slater tried to trade body shots, and of course Valentine won that exchange and then just clubbed him in the throat because why the hell not. There was some headlock work early, but it was tight headlock work and more of a punctuation point between the fists and forearms. Slater was pretty great in this too. I'm not a huge Slater guy and sometimes his hamminess can be too much even for me, but he took his licks like a trooper and when it was his turn to dish out receipts he sure made the most of it. He took over with a fairly standard cage spot, where he grabbed Valentine's trunks and yanked him into it, but the set up for it was cool. Valentine was hammering away on him as was Valentine's wont, and Slater practically had to keep hold of those trunks just to stay on his feet. Eventually he goes down, but in doing so he can use his momentum and hurl Valentine into some steel. All of his headbutts looked nasty, his jab flurries, the way he'd just grab Valentine by the hair and repeatedly slam the back of his head off the canvas. The latter was one of those instances where he looked genuinely crazed, like he was trying to make an end of someone. Valentine's big revenge spots were home runs and I loved him choking Slater up against the cage, taking in the moment afterwards with a raised arm as the crowd went nuts. The finish also came across as something you'd get between two guys on their last legs, which was fitting considering how much they laid into each other in the last few minutes.
Ric Flair v Ricky Steamboat
This was probably the perfect litmus test for how much Flair I can handle these days. It's one thing watching him work a ten minute studio match with Sam Houston or twenty minutes with Magnum, but a full hour? Even if it's with Steamboat? in 2020? Who could possibly know?! Well he passed it pretty comfortably. I'm sure he definitely gives a shit, just as I'm sure you all do too. For about forty five minutes I thought this was excellent. I usually think of Flair as a broad strokes kind of guy, not really much of a details guy. He's more about the macro rather than the micro, but I thought this was one of his very best performances in terms of nailing the subtleties. When you take it as a whole it's still Flair doing what he often does when working long. He starts out sporting, begins to lose his composure, gets tetchy, gets nasty, gets desperate, and eventually sheds all the bullshit to be the man we all know he is deep down. He just went about that a little differently at points. We got the handshake at the start and then for about twenty minutes Steamboat controlled him utterly, first with a headlock and then with a front facelock. It was all nice and tight, especially the front facelock where you'd see Steamboat really grimacing, really looking like he was trying to unscrew Flair's head from his shoulders. Flair tried a few things, like driving Steamboat into the corner and then with some amateur wrestling of his own, but it got him nowhere and Steamboat was relentless. Even at a couple points where he could've thrown a chop he opted for the clean break, and one time he offered up another handshake in begrudging appreciation. The other subtlety in Flair's performance was how he sold and worked holds. I'd never call him a particularly special matworker and if we're comparing blond heel world champions then he's nowhere near as strong in that regard as Bockwinkel. This all had a real nice sense of struggle, though. Steamboat would crank on that facelock, take Flair down to the mat and try to pin his shoulders, Flair would try to use his own legs to hook Steamboat's in a cradle, they'd get back to a standing base and he'd try to grab Steamboat's head for a suplex, Steamboat would make a point of bobbing his head out of reach. They'd fight over a knucklelock, Steamboat would force Flair to the mat, Flair would have to bridge up on his neck to keep his shoulders up, he'd catch Steamboat in a body scissors, Steamboat would get back to a standing base with the body scissors still applied. None of the sequences were mind-blowing, but it was a really quick twenty minutes (as much down to Steamboat as Flair, obviously). Flair then started getting irritated and almost threw a punch before checking himself. He went in for a knucklelock and pulled back to do a strut instead, just to remind everybody who he is. I also liked how he sold Steamboat's Boston crab after the fact, how he'd do some quick stretches and try to loosen out the lower back. By the halfway point he hasn't acted like a prick once. By the forty minute mark he's only thrown one chop and that was a miss. Then he cracks and shoves Steamboat, backs him into the ropes...and everybody knows what's coming. When he connects on that first chop and chucks Steamboat through the ropes the whole atmosphere just picks up. Flair going to the ribs not long after that was some good stuff. Steamboat sold all of it like he's Steamboat, but I liked how Flair barely threw any more chops and instead kneed and elbowed Steamboat in the side. Some of his forearms to the head looked really nasty as well and I sort of wish he did more of them. His abdominal stretch also ruled and I loved how it looked like he was trying to rip Steamboat in half. Last ten-fifteen minutes were my least favourite of the match, as they kind of moved past all that awesome build and struggle in the first three quarters to go into your big Flair stretch run. There was good stuff in there. Steamboat staggering around like he'd been shot in the stomach was that guy in a nutshell and you know the crowd was biting on just about everything, but for all the work Flair did on the midsection it felt like they probably could've dropped the headlock-into-bridge sequence just this once. Still, the Flair staple spots are a horse long dead and beating on it at this stage is something neither of us can be arsed with. At its best this was terrific, at its worst it was good, and as a whole it was a remarkably quick sixty minutes. That in and of itself is impressive.
Jimmy Valiant v Assassin #2
This was what it was, which meant it was exactly what it needed to be. You'd think after a half hour cage match and an hour long title match this crowd might've been burned out, but then you'd be dead wrong because this was about as much sustained heat as you could want. The pop for Assassin #1 being escorted from ringside, Paul Jones' reaction to being tied to Dusty with no help, the Boogie Woogie Man beating Assassin #2 around the place, the people were through the roof for all of it. Once or twice Jones would try to scoot around and give his man some advice, but Dusty would yank him back with the bullrope and ring that cowbell like "oh no you don't." The pop for Valiant pulling #2 into the post by the balls, then the gasps of horror when #2 loaded up the mask and bonked Valiant with a headbutt. The finish, the set-up, the post-match. A great little spectacle to cap off a killer show.
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