What started as a comedy match devolved into a down and dirty scrap, and then towards the finish, veered its way back into the realms of comedy. There wasn’t a second wasted and the action was brisk. Faulkner was certainly the star, leading his team’s mischievous tactics and then taking the brunt of the beating when it was time for the Rockers to take over. The Royals had a sort of Funk Brother vibe, it could have just been Bert’s receding hairline, but he definitely felt like Dory’s straight man to Faulkner’s wild insanity.
The nominal heels, Lapaque and Lorne, played their part of the fools to start with, but when the real action got under way they acquitted themselves really well. As a team they were cohesive and they laid a real beatdown on Faulkner in particular. 
It would be hard to go through each point of action piece by piece here, and I presume it would be a terrible read, but believe me this match had character bursting from the seams and the already lively crowd were brought to a fever pitch at various different points. Comedy matches often have a ceiling for me, but this certainly was brushing up against it - an absolute blast to watch.

This was a major step up for Robinson as a tag worker compared to his showing paired with Wahoo. He seemed a lot more comfortable here, spending a large chunk of the first half working as the face in peril, and we even got a fired up hot tag from him at the end - which was a nice shift, as I often view him as a clinical technician, especially in Japan.
I won’t belabour any discussion on Terry, as he was excellent in all the ways you would expect. In fact, he was so good despite it feeling like he was merely going through the motions, or at least his version of it. I will say that he really stands out as a top tier apron worker, which was particularly obvious in this match.
Their opponents however were what surprised me. I will say I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out which was which. Cagematch said that Asteroid (Scott Irwin) was the shorter, and Avenger (Moose Morowski from recent German Catch vs Dieter fame) was the taller. The commentator’s had it the other way around and I’m liable to believe them here. Either way, both men worked pretty similarly, but they were agile in the Slaughter/Eadie mould. Masked US wrestler’s have always intrigued me as they seem to have vanished by the time I started watching, the hood reserved for Luchadores mostly, but at this point in time we were awash with them, including The Assassins, Masked Superstar, Mr Wrestling I & II and all the Super Destroyers. I’ll admit in some ways it comes across like a second rate gimmick to me, not having been raised with the concept, so I had some trepidation about these two. But as I said, they were a pleasant surprise. Solid meat and potatoes offense, could move about the ring with no problems and operated functionally and effectively as a team, allowing Robinson and Terry to do their thing.
This match also ended in a classic call, the commentator shouting over and over again “Terry Funk, Spinning Toe Hold!”, for every revolution he made of the move. Needless to say, The Avenger tapped out. This was all the more enjoyable for how infrequent these kinds of clean finishes seem to be.
On the same note, I’d be interested if anybody could identify the commentator in question. A cursory google search led me to this blog, but I couldn’t pinpoint which ones would have worked this match, but my frontrunner would be Kousuke Takeuchi (竹内 宏介).

The first long singles match I’ve seen of Flair so far on tape for the year. This definitely had a house show vibe, and a house show finish, but to just go out there and deliver a strong 3 star match shows what these guys could do.
This was chunked up into a beefy shine sequence -> heat -> comeback stretch -> finish. Flair seemed to handle Valentine pretty handily for the first 5-8 minutes. He had the bravado and the ADHD energy and after the initial use of punches and forearms to the head, he wrestled Greg down into a hammerlock and maintained his control. Flair had been pretty decent up to this point, but I was concerned about when Valentine was going to show some stuff. He’s always been a subdued seller (face flop spot aside) and often that’s a plus, but I also wouldn’t say it’s his strength either and being rammed face first into the mat for several minutes didn’t give him a lot to work with. I shouldn’t have been worried though, as we got the transition soon enough and boy did Valentine not pull any punches when it was his turn to lay them in. His strikes were fast and vicious and looked fantastic. I love it when the heel can actually dish it out when required. He went to the same well that Flair did and ground Flair down into a hammerlock of his own. This time however they really slow burned the comeback. Flair got to his feet, then back down they went. Once again he managed to get to his feet, but he couldn’t lift Greg, and back down they went. Finally, amid a torrent of crowd noise, he managed to stand for a third time, and it was this time that he managed to lift Greg, dump him in the corner and then the comeback was in full swing. I’ll briefly stop to mention that the crowd were solidly behind Flair all night, but at this point they were thoroughly and totally losing their collective shit. One of the more veracious crowd’s of the year no doubt.
Flair ran through his stuff, did his strut and woo’d to the crowd when needed before we had the countout finish with Greg on the wrong side of the apron. Despite being the main event, and part of a pretty heated feud, this felt very meat and potatoes from a structure standpoint. They weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel here, but deliver a satisfying match. The crowd didn’t get the result they were hoping for, but they were completely invested, and at least their guy picked up the win. I would say very good performances from both men in my first long hard look at either in a singles setting. Valentine gets kudos for his offense while Flair’s comes from being a ball of charisma.

This was a great character performance from Patera for sure. When he was on top, he wouldn’t stop running his mouth, denigrating Andre the whole time, which made the comeback all the more sumptuous as Andre repeatedly beat away at Patera’s braced knee and Patera sold that like an absolute champ. They perhaps spent too much time with Andre in a front face lock and the finish, with Patera deciding to cut bait and leave, wasn’t the most satisfying, but they delivered something fun at least for a sub ten minute match.

Dieter is the local babyface technician who can kick ass if necessary. Morowski was a canadian worker who is used to these stipulation matches. No gimmicks required, they just beat the shit out of eachother. The technician vs. brawler story makes this unique as it leads to some unusual matwork and struggling. Dieter wants to do holds and takedowns into a pin, but Morowski throws punches and pulls his hair. This leads to Dieter visibly aquiring Morowski's tactics over the match and fighting fire with fire. It develops into a really compelling bout with great selling. Dieter has this great punch drunk selling and at one point does this ridiculously great sell of a Morowski heart punch. Morowski on the other lands punch after punch and does a very convincing job selling that he is slowly punching himself out. After 7 rounds with no winner, the announcer says the 8th. round will be endless until there is a decision. At this point both guys look like they have been beaten past the point of human tolerance. It builds to really nifty, albeit clunky finishing sequence.

Great bout, one of the best from germany, and according the Dieter himself the best of his career.