Really fun WWF style cage match. The Chicago Bears had just pumped the Patriots at Superbowl XX so Piper comes out wearing a Bears t-shirt and hangs posters of William Perry and Jim McMahon. As soon as Bruno gets in there he chucks Piper into the cage and Piper is bleeding inside eleven seconds. Piper hurtling into the poster makes a really satisfying *thwack*, then Bruno scrunches it up and stuffs it in Piper's mouth, then stuffs the other one down Piper's trunks, and of course Piper sells the latter like he's just been given a surprise prostate exam. Roddy Piper is also the godking of staggering around selling blood loss and obviously we get that here. Bruno half rips Piper's shirt off, so Piper is left bumbling around with the fabric hanging off him like a mummy. At one point Bruno almost rips Piper's trunks off so Roddy spends a third of the match with a sizeable amount of pasty white butt cheeks on display. I loved Piper hitting the low blow to take over as Bruno tries to escape the cage, then he follows it up with a blatant elbow to the plums and I'm wondering if this is actually Puerto Rico rather than Boston but then this crowd was kind of shitty for a match involving Piper AND Bruno and if it really was Puerto Rico Piper would've been hit in the head with a projectile by now. Escape the cage rules are never great but I thought they worked around them well enough, at least in that they showed real desperation whenever the other was heading for the door, lunging desperately for a leg while timing those moments so that nobody had to completely blow off any offence to do it. Bruno's revenge ball shot was sensational as he outright haymakers Piper in the willy and Puerto Rico nods approvingly. Bruno smashing Piper in the head with a chair at the end was a cool way of finally shaking him too. If this happened in MSG it might've been eight stars.
Roddy Piper v Rick Rude (WWF, 9/30/89) - GREAT
This was a real blast, which was not at all surprising to me. I mean both of these guys are probably two of my 10 favourite US-based wrestlers ever, so obviously I was going to like it. If nothing else it's a nice stop to hit before re-watching that cage match I loved way back whenever. Pre-match Rude gets absolutely fucking nuclear heat for calling the New Yorkers a bunch of fat inner city sweat hogs and people will not let him finish a sentence before booing him mercilessly. It was great. The first couple minutes were as much fun as I hoped as Rude asks Piper to remove his mini skirt because he doesn't know whether to kiss Piper or beat him to death. Piper is about as amused as you'd think, then chases Heenan out of town and wraps the kilt around Rude's head and swings him about the place. They have a great fight over Piper's belt, first with Rude using it to whip Piper, both of them lunging for it and having a tug-of-war to see who comes up with it, Piper eventually winning that battle and whipping Rude in the arse with it. Rude's sell is quite frankly immaculate and almost as good as his atomic drop sell. Piper wrapping the belt around Rude's neck and whipping him face-first into the turnbuckle looked brutal as well. Rude eventually slows things down with a bearhug and then by working the camel clutch, but he has good forearm clubs to the back and Piper is always scrappy as a bastard. There are times with Piper where he clearly does shit that his opponent was not expecting and it always gives matches an extra sense of uncooperativeness, a bit of added struggle or tension. This time Rude threw him to the floor so he could do his swivel hips pose, but Piper immediately hopped back in and tried to bum rush him and Rude needed to react. That sort of thing is why Piper would be close to my all-time top 40 at this point. There was a great bit during the Piper comeback where Rude threw a big haymaker with the left that Piper blocked, then threw one with the right that was similarly blocked, then went for a big double club/Mongolian chop thing and Piper blocked that with both arms and rocked him with a punch. If Piper had given Rude one of his GOAT eye pokes as a receipt for earlier this might also have been eight stars. Alas.
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