This was a fun Slater showcase. I don't know if it was intended to be that, but either way it felt like it was his match and Piper sort of let him lead. It worked pretty well, other than a bit in the middle where Piper made his comeback and Slater basically shut him down and abruptly went back on offence. We got one amazing Hot Rod punch flurry, an amazing eye poke, a string of headbutts on all fours - a low key Piper performance, but a good one regardless. "Slater is a poor man's Terry Funk" is probably a tired talking point by now, and might even be a little unfair (they were pretty much contemporaries and started wrestling only a few years apart, so it's not exactly the same as a million indie wrestlers aping Johnny Saint), but it's hard not to make the comparison watching something like this. I don't even mean it as a knock really, because Funk might be the best wrestler ever and if the film was a little grainier I could've been convinced this was actually Terry Funk at points. The mannerisms are striking, from the obvious stuff like the seesaw in the ropes spot to the more subtle, like how he would throw jab combos or even just the way he'd move at times. But it wasn't just the Funk similarities. There were parts of this where it looked like Slater was doing his best Harley Race impression too. He did a falling elbow drop that was pure Race, then hit a falling headbutt and it was the best Harley impression I've ever seen, the way he stepped back and measured Piper, took a wide base, seemed to fall forward in slow motion, even the way he connected with the headbutt. In all the years of Triple H doing Ric Flair and Harley Race cosplays I've never seen him capture the ESSENCE of Harley like Slater did with that one headbutt.
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