This is my favourite of all the Reed v Slater matches, and honestly might be the best Dick Slater performance I've seen. They're coming off the heels of Slater trying to cash in Ric Flair's bounty on Reed and in their previous match Reed was in a neck brace, which of course Dirty Dick Slater painted a bullseye on. This time Reed is brace-free so that's great for him personally and pretty soon into the match he pops Slater with one of the best punches of his career so that's great for me personally, and really all of us as a collective. You'd sometimes forget they were working no DQ matches in Mid-South/Houston because rules were still mostly enforced the same way by referees, but you knew this was no mere sporting contest when Reed launched Slater over the ropes to the floor and then dropped him across the safety rail. In their last match Slater worked over Reed's neck when he managed to take control. It makes sense because Reed was in a beck brace and Slater is Dirty by nature. In the end it didn't matter because Reed won and took Slater's North American title. Maybe this time Slater knew a different strategy was in order so when he got his chance he tried to break Reed's arm. This was some awesome arm work, first in how he dragged Reed over to the corner and wrapped the arm around the ring post, then smashed it with the edge of a chair. All of Slater's armbars were rugged as fuck and I loved him kneeling across Reed's head while he applied it, grated his forearm bone across Reed's face, super nasty stuff. Reed paying him back with the post spot later was some great revenge but even that was eclipsed by the uppercut he landed on Slater's chin towards the end. A no DQ match ending in what pretty much was a DQ is sort of stupid, but I did love Slater knowing that Reed was a force not easily stopped and just elbow dropping the ref' in the neck. Part of it was frustration, part fear. Reed WILL keep coming so I guess if there's no referee to count Slater out then he can't actually lose the match. You'd think, anyway. He clearly hadn't considered the possibility of a disqualification in a no disqualification match. This was still top, though.
Chris Adams & Terry Taylor v Iceman Parsons & Eddie Gilbert (3/20/87)
Long, awesome southern style tag. The first five minutes of this - which goes dead on 20 in total - were mostly comprised of Iceman Parsons reaching deep into his bag of shithead stupidity and it was very great. I guess he'd turned on Adams recently and Adams wanted revenge here. He got on the mic and called Parsons buckwheat, then started a buckwheat chant as Parsons got visibly livid. I don't really know what buckwheat is or why Adams chose that as an insult but I hope he wasn't doing a racism. When Parsons grabs the mic to respond the crowd immediately start up another buckwheat chant and Parsons of course milks this like crazy. When he finally gets to speak he calls Adams' mother a hobo and says he had his back when Adams was in the slammer. He makes a salient point but either way wants absolutely no part of Chris Adams and will outright run away from him during the early part of the match. Adams tries to swing on him a few times and Iceman will grab the post and hang waaaaay back out of reach. The heels do manage to take over on Adams briefly during a commercial break, but Boesch points out on commentary that it was Gilbert who did it and Parsons is riding the wave of his partner's success. When Adams rolls away from a Parsons elbow Iceman cuts bait and tags out instantly, another bullet dodged. So most of the babyface shine is Eddie Gilbert getting punched around the ring and this might be my all-time favourite string of Eddie Gilbert getting punched around a ring. He would get pinged with a jab, stumble into the wrong corner, get pinged with another, turn around and get pinged a third time, turn the other way and bump face-first into a turnbuckle. The babyfaces work an armbar on Gilbert and Iceman tries to come in and break it up, but when he does the ref' puts him straight back out and as this happens Adams and Taylor work the blind tag shtick. Parsons is apoplectic and the crowd eat it up and pro wrestling doesn't need to be all that complicated when you get down to brass tacks. On the third attempt Adams is a little too slow in switching with Taylor so it's him the ref' has to put out, so Parsons nails Taylor on the temple with a jumping hip attack and as far as transitions go that was pretty great. In a nice play on the norm Taylor tries to fire back with a headbutt on Iceman and pays dearly as Parsons struts and wiggles like the biggest most punchable idiot you've ever seen, albeit an idiot with a rock solid cranium. The heat segment pretty much ruled. Every cutoff built the heat and Taylor was just a really strong face in peril, and when Adams gets the hot tag the crowd knows he can finally get his hands on Parsons. Even the double count out finish was fine just for the wild bump that led to it. I had no memory of this match at all and it was badass.
