Rick Martel v The Magnificent Muraco (WWF, 6/8/81)
Perfectly solid midcard bout. When Muraco can't be arsed he's hard to watch, but this was apparently his first appearance in MSG so maybe he was up for it. Martel is Martel and thus awesome and usually enough to drag something to watchable on his own. The rough collar and elbow tie-ups early suggest these two might've had a nice heated feud in them somewhere. Martel's headlock work was pretty decent, really grinding it in and kicking his legs wildly when Muraco tried to suplex his way out of it. Muraco has a taped thumb gimmick which I always thought was reserved for wrestlers who'd just come back from extended excursions to the orient. It's been so long since I've seen a Muraco match that I couldn't even tell you when he started doing that. Was he doing it from the start? He works Martel's throat after taking over, jabbing him with the lethal thumb and slingshotting him up into the bottom rope. Martel's bump at the end certainly looked like it could plausibly keep a man out of the ring for a count of ten, so I'll take that as a count out finish. Muraco tends to swing wildly from being really good to really atrocious, but if he was motivated I could see this being a super fun twenty minute match. Would've been an interesting comparison with Muraco/Steamboat if nothing else.
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