Fuck me if Magnum TA doesn't look like the future of the game. This was white LeBron with curls and a moustache, just a guy very obviously ready to explode. He was an amazing walking tall babyface here, a huge presence hitting everyone with press slams and belly-to-bellies while the crowd went full on apeshit berserk. He catches Ole - NOT a small individual - with a press slam, then throws Flair into the corner, roars like a lion as Flair comes running back out and heaves him into a press slam too. The pop for him hitting the belly-to-belly on Flair is ungodly but then if you thought he was merely here to throw some folks around you would be mistaken because his face in peril stint was magnificent. The heels essentially work over the scar tissue on his forehead which of course was fucking tremendous, raking his face across the ring ropes, grinding it into the mat, digging knuckles in there, all super nasty looking shit that probably gave Morton PTSD from a couple months earlier. Maybe Flair was just trying to disfigure anyone he thought was getting more attention from the ring rats than he was. Flair doing a reverse wheelbarrow thing where he drags Magnum around the ring as his face leaves blood trails on the mat is legitimately the first and only time I can remember him doing that. He never even did that to Morton and his whole motivation in that feud was to leave the wee fella as aesthetically undesirable as possible by the end of it. Morton himself was a rabid maniac around this time and tried to punch or rip someone's nose off at every turn. Prior to Magnum's elimination I think 90% of Morton's offence consisted of him punching someone in the nose, including Flair's when he came in the ring for the first time. He even headbutted him in the face at one point. The Horsemen breaking his nose really must've woken something in him, which leads to his own elimination when he drags Ole to the floor and tries to mash his face into the concrete, oblivious to the ref's count, driven purely by rage, fueled by several thousand shrieking women. Flair v Gibson to round things out is pretty great while it lasts, with Flair working over Gibson's taped up midsection. I love how Gibson sold them the whole way, almost like he was having back spasms and once or twice I wondered if he wasn't working thought a legit injury. Flair busted out a bow and arrow to work him over and that's another thing on the night that I'd never seen him do before or since. The extremely tepid DQ finish is extremely tepid, Morton merely shoving Flair as a response to being spat on and Tommy Young throwing it out, but otherwise this was fantastic and as blistering hot as anything else in wrestling at the time.
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