I should re-watch the North-South/Briscos match from late '84 that everyone loved for a minute then decided it wasn't actually that good after all. I last watched it 15 years ago and loved it and if this is anything to go by I'll probably still like it today. When the crowd are sort of lukewarm towards participants in a match at the outset, only to be fully invested in them by the end, you know everyone involved did something right. You never had to worry about Murdoch and Adonis; they'd been in the WWF for about a year already and they were getting heat everywhere - Boston, the Meadowlands, St. Louis, the Garden, here in Philly, pretty much wherever they worked. Jack Brisco was a former NWA World Champ so he's hardly a no-name scrub rocking into town, but I'm not sure how often he'd have wrestled in Philly before coming to the WWF a few months earlier. The Spectrum was a WWF venue throughout the 70s and 80s. Honestly I don't know shit about Gerry's career and I can't be bothered checking, but either way the Briscos weren't big WWF names in the grand scheme of things. The crowd weren't cold on them as such, but they weren't behind them the same way they'd be behind a team of, say, Ivan Putski and Tony Garea, folk they'd seen countless times over the years. By the end everyone was molten for them winning the belts though, chucking garbage into the ring after Murdoch pulls a fast one and sneaks a chair shot on Jack while the ref' is distracted. As Tracy Smothers would say: "That's called WORKIN', motherfucker!" Murdoch and Adonis were of course a pair of awesome bumping stooge idiots. Murdoch got smacked in the mouth and did one of his all-time greatest punch drunk walks where he's swinging wildly at thin air. Adonis started the match by taking four armdrags and two scoop slams one after another. Then when they took over they were choking the life out of Gerry, yanking his head back by the hair so they could measure point-of-the-elbow shots right to the nose, cutting the ring off while building the heat. They really feel like one of the best teams ever when you consider how effective they are at both taking a beating and dishing one out, flipping that switch and going from stooges to killers in an instant. Yeah, I should re-watch the '84 match.
Hulk Hogan & Jimmy Snuka v Bob Orton Jr. & Don Muraco (WWF, 5/18/85)
Totally out of nowhere awesome match. I'd never seen this talked up before, then last week our good man Elliott on the GME discord said it was great and wouldn't you know it but he was not wrong. Hogan was a whirlwind here and it might be one of my favourite performances of his. He was off the charts charismatic, off the charts energetic, brought simple offence that was sold like it mattered and then sold the effects of a beatdown like that mattered even more. The early segment was Hogan on a heater, going after Orton's cast arm and firing back when it looked like the heels had him cornered. The problem is that the hot streak always comes to an end and this time he got cornered once too often. There was no big transition spot as such, no single move or double team or even any overt cheating - Orton and Muraco just swarmed him, got him in the corner and put as many boots to him as they could before the ref' counted to five. After the hot tag to Snuka, Hogan doesn't just step out onto the apron and wait in the corner. He sells the beating by lying on the floor, trying to climb back up to the apron only for Orton or Muraco to kick him down again. This is also happening after the heels have taken over on Snuka, so the heat is double nuclear. The actual transition to Snuka in peril is one of the best of the decade. Snuka comes flying off the top with a cross body on Muraco, who catches him and staggers back. He's about to go down, but Fuji has the referee distracted and just as Muraco topples backwards Orton comes in from the blind side and cracks Snuka in the head with the cast. Snuka is lifeless for like a minute and comes up GUSHING blood, and before long Orton's white cast is about 50% red with blood. With every shot Hogan takes trying to climb onto the apron the more desperate he gets, and I think Hogan as an apron worker is something he probably deserves more credit for. He's great at it. His timing in general has always been wonderful, but the way he milks the heat for everything it's worth, still selling from when he was being worked over before, you kind of wonder why more people don't do it because the crowd are rabid for him to finally get back into things. And then when he does the roof comes off, Orton and Muraco backing away like they knew they'd fucked up. The finish is maybe a bit of a letdown, but the post-match is wild as they brawl around ringside and chuck each other over barricades and police are running around trying to keep the crowd in check.
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