The Good, the Bad and the Rowdy

Roddy Piper v Ric Flair (Mid-Atlantic, 1/1/83) - EPIC

I'm not sure how JIP'd this is, and as it is I'm not sure it's a great match, but it is a fucking rampage of a Piper performance and I loved every second of it (we get about 12 minutes and I'd be shocked if it went substantially longer as a whole). Flair gets pretty much nothing here. A few sneaky knees to the gut (or perhaps lower), a couple failed figure-four attempts, a chop or two and that's about the extent of it. I don't even know how many times in recent years I've said I'm more interested in Flair on the offensive at this point, but the crowd wanted Piper to maul him and maul him he did. And this was some really good back-pedaling, scared for his life Flair. His punches were wild and missing by feet rather than inches, not so much because he was bad at making it look like he was trying to connect, but because he was swinging in any direction and hoping against hope that he might connect with something. It didn't look like those punches overshooting Piper's head were INTENDED to be missed punches; it looked like he was so loopy he had no control over them whatsoever. Piper's flurries were some of the best he's ever thrown, those jabs, the big hooks, his unnecessary head bob coming off almost mockingly because there was not a chance in hell Flair was retaliating with anything. He picks Flair up by the throat, rams his head into the post, tries to yank his nose off, bites the cut, grinds Flair's face into the mat (as revenge for Flair and Valentine doing it to him in the lead up), it was a total curb-stomping. His eye poke was a thing of beauty and a little different than usual, as this time he did it with only the index finger while Flair was lying face up on the mat, the finger dropping straight down into the eye, and then it looked like he tried to gouge the whole eye out! Piper applying the figure-four obviously drew a huge pop but the reaction for the sleeper was off the charts. The longer it went along as what was basically an extended squash you knew Flair was stealing it in the end, but there was that part of me hoping for Piper to put him away. Even some sort of Dusty finish just to see the initial reaction. Piper is about as fresh an opponent for Flair as I'll find at this stage of the game so I would be very okay if several more iterations of them doing this were to show up.


Complete & Accurate Hot Rod