I wanted to watch and write about the whole 7/26 show. But then I only watched parts of it and then had to spend a few days in Orlando and never wrote about anything and now I can't remember things. Here are some words anyway. Accuracy may be questionable.
This wasn't all that different from the match they had earlier in the month, but this one hooked me a little more from the start. Or Precious did, as she told the ring announcer to expressly forbit people from smoking whilst Gorgeous Jimmy is wrestling. Obviously people were itching for Garvin to get mollywhopped after that and when Wahoo whipped Precious on the arse with the strap the place erupted. He then whipped both of them mid-smooch and sometimes yer pro wrestling doesn't need to be complicated, no matter what its most prominent historian and critic might say about it and the brain-rending complexities of how each wrestler worked for a specific crowd on a specific night in a specific point in history. Garvin realises the predicament he's in and tries to bolt several times so Wahoo yanks him straight back in. By the end he's pretty well bloodied up and his decision to wear white ring gear was a good one, at least for us vampires who appreciate such visuals. This is the sort of match I could watch 10 times in a row with a few wrinkles here and there and enjoy 10 times in a row.
Magnum TA v Nikita Koloff
I loved this Magnum performance. It feels almost pointless to say at this point but you watch stuff from that '84-'86 run and think about where the wrestling business was at the time and it's hard not to conclude that he would've been a megastar had he not been involved in the car accident. His crowd connection here was incredible. This was match 4 in the Magnum/Nikita best of 7 series for the vacant US title, Magnum coming in already 3-0 down. His back is against the wall and the crowd knows it, but more importantly so does he. If the series was tied at 1-1 he might've swung for the fences with a little more abandon, some of that rabid Magnum intensity bursting out early on. He wouldn't be goaded into making a mistake though; wouldn't allow himself to bite when Nikita tried faking him out with a cheapshot early. Both guys are great at working around a top wrist lock in the opening third, really milking a basic hold and making it look like a struggle that needs to be overcome. To ram home how desperate a hole he was in Magnum spent most of this on the back foot. When Nikita rams his head into the turnbuckle bolt he's covered in blood within minutes, on the brink of being swept by the Russians. Nikita played king of the mountain and every time Magnum climbed back in the ring he'd be thrown out the other side, bleeding on the concrete selling the blood loss and fatigue like few other babyfaces of the era could. Nobody does a fired up, last-legs, blood-soaked comeback like Magnum, those little staggers and hesitations as he fires back, the crowd coming unglued with every punch. The pop for the sunset flip is out of this world. A very good wrestling match.
Ric Flair v Dusty Rhodes (Cage Match)
This is the best Flair/Dusty match, right? I feel like I've asked that before, probably about a few of their matches. I also feel like I've written about those matches here and prefaced all of them with "I don't REALLY need to see another Flair/Dusty match for the rest of my life" and so I guess I needed to make a liar of myself one more time. But this is the best one. It felt similar in some ways to the Flair/Morton cage match from 7/5, which is the best Flair match, period. He had that nasty mean streak here when he got the chance to cut loose, albeit less spectacularly than against Morton. He was not acting the goofball here when he had Dusty where he wanted him and that Flair is the very best Flair. Both of them bled because of course Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes bled in a cage match. Flair tried to run away, realised he couldn't run so tried to climb, then Dusty climbed after him and almost pulled his trunks off, Flair screaming bare-arsed as Dusty drags him back into the lion's den. It had a metric ton of drama down the stretch and built and built and they even ran a callback to Flair/Race from Starrcade '83. I wish I could remember more but it's been about 10 days now. Either way - the best Flair v Dusty match. Probably.
