I needed a change of pace from all the joshi, so I started going through '79 Portland. Leading up to this Piper and Rose had been teaming together along with Tim Brooks and Wiskowski (like during the awesome 8-man tag from March), then they had the big falling out and spent the last few weeks taking shots at each other. I watched all of this stuff about ten years ago and I thought they turned Piper babyface in the traditional sense, where they had a specific moment that made you go "oh, he's one of the good guys now!" But apparently as this is Portland they just had him wrestle Buddy Rose. Piper was still Piper and mere days before this he was tossing women about the place in a battle royal, stating that their place was in the home doing menial chores, but he's not Buddy Rose and if you're AGAINST Buddy Rose then you will be cheered. Even Bonnema is stunned that people are actually behind Piper and ponders, "who would've thought two, three weeks ago that people would be cheering for Roddy Piper?" The first fall was badass. It picks up from their arena match a few days earlier that I assume wasn't taped, but Bonnema tells us it was a real barn-burner that went all over the place. Piper still has the plaster on his forehead so it doesn't take long for Rose to zero in on it. Some of the close-up camera work is gruesome as Rose just digs his knuckles into the wound and tries to peel it apart like a tangerine. At one point he has Piper in a sort of chinlock where Piper's neck is twisted and Rose is grinding away at that cut. Piper is all cross-eyed with his face contorted and turning purple, like the scene in Casino where Joe Pesci has the dude's head in a vice. There was lots of awesome limb/body part work in this match. It came in short spells as they'd transition out of it and move onto something else, but it was all focused and it made sense when they did move off whatever they'd been doing before. You get some working of THE CUT~, some neck work, some back work, and all of it came about inventively while still feeling organic. After Piper makes his comeback he jabs Rose in the throat - he's still the same Roddy Piper, after all - and starts working the neck. He clubbers the neck in really nasty ways, then we get an awesome end to the fall where he hits a big spinning neckbreaker, picks Rose up at 2 even though the fall is academic, and hits another just to put the exclamation on it. As the second fall starts he keeps up with the neck work, and I don't know if what happened next was entirely intentional but an Irish whip with some extra venom behind it results in the middle turnbuckle breaking off. Rose uses the turnbuckle bolt to choke Piper and that serves as our transition to him eventually working the back (after Roddy spills out to the floor and Rose slams him into the post). Rose was amazing during this, looking semi-crazed trying to stop anybody putting the ring back together, a man with his back truly up against the wall. Picking Piper up at 2 after the first Billy Robinson backbreaker almost leads to Piper making a comeback so I fucking love Rose immediately hitting it again and hooking the leg just to be sure. The third fall starts with Rose jumping Piper before the restart and staying on the back, and even if the finish is maybe a bit of an anticlimax it sure sets us up for the feud kicking into a higher gear. It wasn't just that the pacing, layout and execution all ruled. All those things can be great and a match can still fall flat because the wrestlers don't elevate it. These two were awesome and brought so many moments of individual brilliance to fill all the in-between stuff, to actually bring this thing to life. The selling of exhaustion, the hatred, the setups and payoffs, the way Rose went from begging for his life to immediately tasting blood in the water, the way Piper took his revenge, how they did all of it while leaving so much more on the table. A match-up made in heaven.
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