Double Denny Brown of the Day!

Tully Blanchard v Denny Brown (Worldwide, 1/4/86)

This is from the episode where Tully and Baby Doll have their unceremonious split and the latter ends up with Dusty in very dodgy-by-modern-standards circumstances. Either way Tully is not quite right during this and it's an awesome performance from him. Brown tries to control early with an arm-wringer and I loved Tully just punching him in the throat to shake him. The match was kind of back and forth the whole way (the whole way being like seven/eight minutes), but it worked because it played to the idea that Tully's head was elsewhere. He worked super aggressive, yet he couldn't quite keep Brown leashed because sometimes that aggressiveness worked against him. Then the crowd start a big Dusty chant and Tully is livid. He basically decides to milk this for everything it's worth. They know it gets to him and he sneers and snarls at people ringside, so each time they start it up it gets louder and louder. It distracts him long enough for Brown to fight back, then each time Tully takes over again he looks possessed, and each time THAT leads to him making a mistake. It's not even a particularly impressive example of a wrestler playing off a crowd given it's such an obvious thing for him to do in that moment, but he does it expertly and he has the people eating out of his hand. 

Arn Anderson v Denny Brown (World Championship Wrestling, 2/22/86)

This got decent time and was a nifty little studio bout. Flair was ringside doing some commentary and walked that fine line of being super entertaining and adding to the whole thing, without being TOO distracting by basically just being who he is. He came close to the latter once or twice, though it was through no real fault of his own as a group of frat boys (or as Flair called them "sorority kids") in the crowd started getting on his case (and he played off that a little, because obviously he did). His actual commentary was really good and I like that he tried to put over Denny Brown as a threat. It wasn't condescending, he praised him for being the junior heavyweight champion who's fought all around the world just like himself, so the fact he was giving Arn trouble shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. Match itself made Denny look like the threat Flair was actually presenting him as and his work on the arm early was solid stuff. When Arn takes over you question if that forearm wasn't really a fist, or if it WAS a forearm maybe it was lower than just the abdomen. His bodyscissor work was fine, Denny hung tough with the TV champ, but in the end that Gordbuster did for Denny the same as it did for many a man.