Islanders v Bulldogs

The Islanders v British Bulldogs (MSG, 1/25/88)

This feels like it should be a better match-up than it is. The Bulldogs doing a Steiners and launching Tama around for a while sounds great on paper, but I've watched a few Bulldogs/Islanders matches now and unfortunately that never really transpires. This was the best of them, but it still only topped out at decent-to-good. The Bulldogs were a pretty weird team around this point. I remember them often guzzling opponents and giving them hardly anything (not that the Steiners weren't guilty of this from time to time as well). In fairness they don't really do that here, but...well maybe it's because I'm watching these matches after the Islanders/Strike Force feud, but there is just no energy from the Bulldogs shine segment at all. It's all pretty basic headbutt and headlock stuff. Neither guy is a particularly compelling face in peril, either. Dynamite does take a back suplex on his neck, which I guess leaves little surprise as to how he wound up in a wheelchair shooting jackrabbits with an air rifle for a hobby, but either way his FIP section was mostly fun because of the Islanders. Haku has a bunch of cool chop variations (he'll chop you across the chest, Mongolian chop you Killer Khan style, Kabuki uppercut you in the throat, etc.), they run some amusing shtick with one of those invisible dog leashes, and at one point Dynamite has a foot draped over the bottom rope so Tama grabs both legs and yanks him into it balls-first. Davey's run of offence post-hot tag was more like it with the big piledriver and running powerslams, but then it quickly goes to a disappointing DQ finish. Dynamite putting the pensioner referee on his backside was probably warranted, at least. There's probably a pretty damn good match in this pairing, but this one was only halfway there.