Bruno in MSG!

Bruno Sammartino v Ken Patera (WWWF, 3/7/77)

This was badass. It's their second match from '77 that we have on tape, the first being from January 17th, which so happened to be my old da's 18th birthday! I do not imagine he was in attendance, however. In that match Patera won the opening exchanges and revelled in doing so, his confidence growing every time he got to show the strength advantage of an honest to goodness Olympian. This time the bell rings, they briefly circle each other, then Bruno gives a knowing look to the crowd, boots Patera in the guts and tries to punch the jaw off him. The place went bananas and the match never really looked back from there. There were so many cool little touches in this, usually as a result of Bruno's scrappiness and/or Patera's willingness to stooge. I've always loved Bruno's mule kick but I don't remember him doing it from his back as a cut-off. He did it here as Patera went to jump on him and I don't think Patera was expecting it either, because it essentially became a mule kick to the balls. Patera's wide-eyed backpedalling sell was pretty much immaculate. The first half of this was pretty back and forth, but every momentum shift was earned and made sense and I love that Monsoon was actually really fun as the guest ref'. Somehow I wouldn't have guessed that from his later commentary, derisory as he often was to the men in the white shirts. There was almost a running theme of both guys kicking out of pin attempts as forcefully as possible and every time it happened one of them would land on Monsoon. Gorilla took it all in his stride, then Patera would get frustrated, not just at Bruno kicking out but at Gorilla trying to maintain some distance between the wrestlers if Bruno wound up on the floor. Patera obviously wanted to press the advantage and when Gorilla pushed him back to continue the count Patera cocked his fist like he was about to smack him. Of course like a total stooge he made sure Monsoon never saw it. Later on, after another one of Bruno's emphatic kick-outs, Patera landed right across Monsoon's shoulders. Patera got up raging, Monsoon looked at him like "are you sure you want to pull on that thread?" and Patera backed away with his ego stung. Patera eventually takes over with a couple huge bodyslams before going to the bearhug, and these were some great bodyslams and Patera always has a quality bearhug. Bruno always makes it look like he's actively trying to escape as well, plus he has bucket loads of charisma so if nothing else the crowd are going to be engaged. From there they end up on the mat and sort of roll around trading pin attempts, all while Patera still has the bearhug applied. They roll into the ropes and when Patera releases it, Bruno, from the mount position, starts blasting him with fists. Bruno standing up and immediately collapsing holding his lower back was a fucking amazing little bit of selling and Patera's running elbow drop while Bruno tries to crawl to the corner was honestly one of the best elbow drops I've ever seen. He just murdered Bruno with this thing and left him in a heap in the corner. Bruno dropping about a dozen knees to Patera's lower back later while the crowd heat goes from molten to fully nuclear was unbelievable and I've never bought someone breaking a man's spine with CLUBBERING more than I bought Bruno doing it to Patera here. The revenge bearhug was about as perfect as you could get and obviously the roof gets blown off the place when it happens. Blood stoppages can sometimes be a downer and I knew we were headed that way as soon as Monsoon made a fuss about checking the cut, but Patera being rammed into the buckle as a Full Nelson reversal and his subsequence posting were amazing moments, so it's hard to really complain. Plus you need to give them points for Patera going buck wild with the blade and Monsoon doing his part by getting his crisp white shirt covered in blood. One of the best WWF matches of the decade.