garretta

​First fall: ​I've been looking to dive into this feud for a while after seeing it on the extras. We start with Buddy's patented stalling, this time because Tony, who's seconding Matt, won't leave the ring. Eventually, Buddy gets in after Sandy starts counting him, and for most of this, it's the same old same old, as Buddy takes an almost uninterrupted beating. But he finally wriggles out of Matt's airplane spin attempt, and we see some sustained offense focusing on Matt's back which is very well done. The inside-out (side) backbreaker is treated as a killer move, and although Matt kicks out of one, he goes down to the second and Buddy takes a 1-0 lead. I thought this would be more heated than it turned out to be, but we may be too early in the feud for any sustained heat. It's their first match in the set, if my memory serves. We've still got about twenty-four minutes to go for two falls worth of action, which is unusual pacing for a Portland main event. Usually the first fall is the longest one. I wonder if there's some special reason that it's been booked this way; I guess we'll find out soon enough. Piper's returns are already a big deal, as Frank has to read two separate lists of towns to cover his appearances. This is long before he first made his name nationally with GCW on WTBS in 1982. He's not quite Bruno in the Northeast yet, but he's well on his way to getting there. ​Second fall: ​You seldom see a match centered around back work, but that's what we have here, as Matt returns the favor for the first fall by targeting Buddy's back with hard slams and suplexes. It's basic but effective, especially when you consider that slams and suplexes were still big moves (and even occasional finishers) in 1981. I thought for sure that Matt's back would give out when he had Buddy in the airplane spin, but it doesn't, and that's the move that evens the bout at a fall apiece with about fifteen minutes of disc time remaining. We've either got a massive run-in and beatdown or a time-limit draw (which I haven't seen yet on this set) coming up. ​Third fall: ​Well, I was right. Oliver interferes to give Matt the match by DQ, which leads to a doubleteam and Tony making the save for his son. In the postmatch interview, Tony challenges Buddy and Rip to a tag match with Matt as his partner, and the Army accepts. Before the bleeding started, I marveled at the fact that these two make seemingly basic holds look devastating, like Buddy's reverse chinlock, which he applies with such force that he gets a believable knockout spot out of it. These two also engage in one of the most interesting tests of strength I've seen in quite a while, which is noteworthy because neither one of these guys is your classic power wrestler. It took until the postmatch interview, but we found out why Matt was so anxious to make Buddy bleed, and make no mistake, bleed he did. I'm surprised that we were allowed to see that much blood on TV, quite frankly. I liked the symmetry of Matt biting Buddy until he bled because Buddy had done the same thing to Tony the previous week, and also that Buddy promises to make Matt bleed again the next time they meet. Somehow, I believe him after what we saw here. I'm not quite sure if Oliver knows what he's saying on interviews or not, but someone should tell him that it sounds stupid to call a veteran like Tony "boy" as if he's a raw rookie. Between "boy" and "punk", both of which are way overused in wrestling interviews, there are times that I'm ready to pull my hair out. I've seldom heard an interview cut off in midstream before, but it works well here, as Frank says goodbye with both sides still yelling at each other. Speaking of Frank, his call was steady as always. It's hard to think of any clever or funny lines he used, but his call was good enough not to need things like that. He reminds me of a slightly folksier, less erudite Gordon Solie, and that's definitely a compliment. I'm kind of sorry that the tag match I mentioned above won't be on the set, but we get another singles match between Buddy and Matt later on this disc, and I'm looking forward to it.

Not much to comment on, really. Kozlowski eats Ishikawa's lunch on the mat, then slaps on some sort of armbar to force a tapout. He looked really good here, and I hope to see more of him. Incidentally, this is one of the few shoot-style matches I've seen that didn't have at least one knockdown.

Yet another upset, although Vale wasn't nearly as far ahead as Flynn was earlier. Still, Vale was pretty clearly having his way until Malenko managed to trap both of his legs and slap on what looked like a half-STF. Vale had nowhere to go, so he tapped. It's a shame that this was Vale's last match; he seemed comfortable working the mat in a way I hadn't remembered him being before, and it's not easy to look comfortable trading holds with someone like Joe Malenko. With that mat ability plus his striking skills, Vale could have gone far in shoot-style; he already had, due to his series with Fujiwara.

This goes to show you that anything can happen in wrestling, no matter what the style. This looked like a total squash for Flynn, who was stretching Anderson on the mat and connecting at will with his kicks. All of a sudden, he missed a kick, and Anderson, who'd had almost no sustained offense up until that time, slapped on a half-crab and got the tapout. Unbelievable. This may be the second-biggest upset of the year in wrestling, right behind Waltman-Hall. I wonder if these two ever had a rematch. If they did, I'd pay big money to see it after this!

Did this make the actual Yearbook? I can't find it on Discs 20 or 21.

First of all, are we sure this match was in Morgantown, West Virginia? The reason I ask is because Morgantown is served by the Pittsburgh television stations, and as a native Pittsburgher I don't remember SMW airing here. That's not to say that it might not have at some obscure time or other, but if it did I don't remember seeing it, and I would have definitely stopped to watch if I'd seen Corny or Rock 'n' Roll on my TV. At any rate, if you take away the fact that this was a manager against a guy in a ninja turtle costume, this was perfectly acceptable, well-done filler. Trust me, there were plenty of WWF opening and second matches that were a hell of a lot worse than this. Both Corny and Curtis showed great grasp of wrestling basics; any sloppiness was due to the fact that they simply weren't experienced enough to be smooth. Curtis looked at home using the ropes, and the costume didn't get in his way like it might have with some other guys. The Undertaker-style rope walk looked particularly good. As for Corny, I didn't know he could execute backdrops and suplexes at all, let alone as well as he did. He looked acceptably sloppy, which was just fine for a match like this. I certainly wouldn't have expected him to bust out moves like this against Bullet Bob, who not only was way more experienced, but also wanted to squash him flat. Cowabunga, by contrast, had nothing especially against him, and Curtis was a close friend in real life, so it's natural that they would help each other look good to the extent possible. Corny was also great on the mic, and even though no human being presumably has much to fear from a turtle, ninja or otherwise, he played the coward to the hilt here, as you'd expect. I loved the "I won't wrestle and you can't make me!" bit that ended with the ref threatening to fine him, and the sight of Curtis making the chicken motion in his costume is a genuine laugh-out-loud moment. So is Corny trying to cut a promo after the match when he's so blown up he can barely breathe. (I'm guessing that it wasn't all an act; it was 87 degrees in Morgantown at 7PM that night, so that building had to have been an oven. In fact, in one town that summer, it got so hot that Corny told Curtis in the middle of their match to get rid of the turtle suit and wrestle as himself before he either suffocated or died of heatstroke. He did, and it didn't matter to the crowd either way, according to Corny.) Move of the Match: You've heard of Lawler pulling down the strap? He's got nothing on Cowabunga, who removes his shell to signal a comeback. Hokey and cartoonish or an ingenious tribute? You decide.) I wonder if Corny knowingly stole this gimmick from Memphis (where Chris Champion used it, if you'll remember) or if this was a case of two minds having a single brilliant idea. Either way, I think Curtis did a better job with the gimmick than Champion ever did.

As a match, this was very good. As a coal miner's glove ​match (note the emphasis), this was terrible. Simply put, what did they even need the glove for? It played no part in the match whatsoever, and even Les said on commentary that Tracy and Brian forgot about it for long stretches of time, which they did. It's almost like they had a regular bout and threw in a few half-hearted climbing spots because they knew they had to (and as an excuse to give each other low blows). In a match like this, the whole bout should be built around climbing the pole, getting the glove, then using it, I'd rather see a total climbing contest with almost no other action than what we got. As I said, this was a very good regular brawl, but it wasn't designed that way, which makes the match a failure for what it was meant to be. Another problem I had was that it took ten minutes to get to the action. Was Brian that limited that he had to be protected even in a big match like this? Apparently so, and if that's true he shouldn't have been champion no matter how good his act with Tammy was. The battle of words was a three-way draw; each had their good and bad points. Tammy has incredible natural instincts for promos and such, but she needs to learn how to get her wrestlers over first and herself second. Tracy being in love with her wasn't the focus of the match; she should have been talking about how Brian was going to stuff that glove down Tracy's throat. That will come in time, though. She also needs to learn to talk over the crowd instead of stopping dead when they boo her, which slowed the prematch to a crawl. Brian's improved from his face days, but he's still not great. As for Tracy, could we please stop with the "witch with a capital B" routine? That sounds like fifth-grade stuff, especially since he out-and-out called Brian a faggot during the match. "Bitch" is by no means a nice word, but it was more acceptable than "faggot" in 1993 and still is today, especially since, as Kevin said, Brian's character had nothing whatsoever effeminate about him. I liked the finish, especially since I remember what's coming. Corny sure must have thought a lot of Tammy even then, because she's going to get to work alongside a legend like Ron and a tremendous talker like Tony, which can only aid in her development. About the only thing better for her would have been a spot with a tag team opposite Corny and the Bodies, which she never got because the Armstrong feud and all of its offshoots ran for so long that she was already Sunny in the WWF by the time it finished. Tony ought to teach Brian something about working in the ring as well. I also think we start to see Candido on a more regular basis, which will only add to the fun, as he was great both by himself and with Tammy. I had no problem with Tracy spanking Tammy after how she'd interfered throughout the match. Yes, the spanking spot's offensive to women, promotes domestic violence, and just plain looks lousy, but they were determined to have it, and they set it up well enough so the fans could understand why Tracy did it. As I said, though, if respect for women doesn't stop promoters from using it (and it didn't), the fact that it looks terrible should. Tracy couldn't (and presumably didn't want to) really smack Tammy hard, so he basically played patty-cake with her behind until Brian attacked him, which he could have done without Tammy ever being touched. Les and Dutch were great here. Dutch has really toned down the heelishness noticeably since Fuller and Golden left, and here he was almost neutral, even to the point of encouraging Tracy during his (Tracy's) time on the mic. He and Les had a nice little dialogue about what role the fans actually play during matches, and they even talked about the matches they had against each other way back when. Les is probably the best part-time play-by-play guy in the business; when Corny trots him out, you know it's a big card, and Les always lives up to it. Dutch's best segment came when he talked about how Brian had to take all the breath out of Tracy's body before he could attempt to climb the pole; it made a routine reverse chinlock sound like smart strategy. I still say Jesse Ventura's the best color guy in the business, but between Dutch and Larry Zbyszko, the margin's getting smaller every day. I loved Les showing enough respect for Tammy's womanhood to call her "Miss Tammy". Almost any other announcer would be frantically searching his mental thesaurus looking for vile names to use that wouldn't get him thrown off the air. I also liked Dutch complaining about how some of the previous matches tore down the announce position; they must have had some real donnybrooks that didn't make the set for some reason.

The closing montage made this match. Seeing Corny do the stretcher job from beginning to end was worth the price of admission, both live and on tape. Corny talks about this match on a recent podcast of his when he discusses how an injury angle should be done, saying that he never, ever smartened up the EMTs or led them to believe that his neck hadn't been severely hurt. This led to him being taped to a backboard at the nearest hospital until almost four in the morning, at which point he declared that his neck had miraculously "healed" and walked out with no one any the wiser. At any rate, the match is the one-sided bloodletting that everyone wanted and expected. I disagree that Corny looked bad on offense; compared to most managers, he looked damn good, in fact. Of course, as Pete said, it never lasted for long, even after Dr. Tom blinded Bullet Bob with the powder. The first piledriver in particular looked vicious, and I really don't see why Bullet Bob needed another, except that it made Corny wearing a neck brace afterward more believable. Want to know how little danger Bullet Bob was in? He was never touched by any of Corny's lumberjacks and their racquets. Not once. If it hadn't been for each of the Bodies' interference spots, none of the Criminals would have laid a hand on Bob, Bossman wasn't as much of a factor as I thought he'd be once the match started, though he looked good decking Del Rey. I loved how he appeared to take Corny's hand in friendship, only to whip Corny right into Bullet Bob and start the match. Corny's time to shine was in the prematch, with the note from his mother and the thousand excuses he had not to get in the ring with Bullet Bob. Unfortunately, the announcer (Phil Rainey?) wouldn't stop talking, even though we could hear Corny clearly underneath him. I wonder if he did the commentary for the match in a studio and couldn't hear Corny talking for some reason. From what little I've seen of Rainey, he doesn't seem to be the type that would talk over important stuff just to hear his own voice. One thing he ​could ​stand to do is learn the difference between a piledriver and an atomic drop, since the two moves look absolutely nothing alike. Normally, a beating like this would end a feud, but we know this one's far from over. It'll be interesting to see where exactly they go from here.

First off, what's up with just a thirty-minute time limit here? I know this wasn't the last match on the card; were they anticipating another long match after this? (Jeannie mentions a tag match, but she doesn't specify which one. Turns out that it was the Road Warriors/Billy Jack-Sarge match.) According to Don, Flair's held the belt for all but nineteen days (Kerry Von Erich's reign) over the last four years. I guess that means Harley's last reign was ignored, at least officially. I had no idea that Magnum started in Portland; I was wondering why he was the one chosen to go against Flair. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that the fans didn't care, at least not as much as they would have if Billy Jack had gotten the shot instead. They wasted him here, teaming him with Sarge against the Road Warriors. They got into the match by the end because of all the false finishes, but the first part of this was borderline dead despite Flair's best efforts. Once again, we got way too much of Sandy Barr. It's not that he did anything much different than Tommy Young did in Flair matches at this time back home in JCP, but we've already seen this act far too often from him. It didn't help that Flair felt the need to draw attention to him in order to wake the crowd up a bit; he's bad enough on his own without the World champion egging him on. Magnum spent a lot of his time working Flair's leg, which was something I don't remember seeing much from him. Flair did a great job selling for him, to the point that I'm sure people were wondering shy he was going for the figure-four himself after Magnum had injured him with it earlier. If Dusty hadn't already been using the hold, I'd have liked to see Magnum's use of it played up more by the JCP announcers; he looked like a natural applying it. Jeannie was great again. Her only questionable moment came when she said that she'd never seen Magnum apply the belly-to-belly. Then again, if she didn't get WTBS and had only seen him in his rookie days before he used it regularly, I suppose it's possible. She was obviously enamored with Flair, but stopped just short of slobbering all over him and offered just as much praise for Magnum. It's a shame that this is probably the only time we'll see her on the set, because she conveys excitement better than Coss does and is just a half-step below him as far as calling ring action goes, and she'd make up that half-step with more experience. Flowers didn't have much to say for himself, and stuck to offering general praise for both men (slightly more for Flair), and getting on Sandy's case, which was understandable. If I have a problem with the finish, it's that Magnum didn't go for the belly-to-belly at least one more time after Sandy came to. Once he started throwing punches and fighting Flair for backslides, it was obvious that we were going to a draw. Maybe that's part of why Billy Jack didn't get a rematch; he'd already fought Flair to a draw in May, and unless Don was going to run the Rose Garden a third time before the end of the year (which I don't believe he did), there would have been no way to bring Flair back for a final blowoff. For the record, the LOD beat Billy Jack and Sarge by disqualification.

People who read these reviews are going to think I hate this set, but that's not true. I'm glad I ordered the set so I know what Portland was like; it's just that I don't like what it was like at times, if that makes any sense. Here's yet another example. I don't like mixed matches like this where two different types of wrestlers are on the same team because in most of these, the different types aren't allowed to interact, in essence making two matches out of one. In this case, it would be the midgets against the midgets and the normal-sized guy against the normal-sized guy. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that all six men would be allowed to interact in this one......until I saw Buddy constantly being made a monkey of by Cowboy Lang. I couldn't wait to dive into the matches on the set to see the masterful worker that Buddy supposedly was. Admittedly, it's still relatively early (about four and a half discs in for me), but I have yet to see it. Great workers don't allow themselves to made a fool out of by midgets and legends who are past their prime. I understand that the booking isn't really Buddy's fault, but he's been used terribly so far on this disc, what with getting his hat handed to him by Tony Borne and now being consistently outsmarted by a midget. Did Don really ​see him as top heel material, or was he just the best of a questionable lot? I'm used to top heels steamrolling everyone in their path until they meet the absolute top babyface, then​ getting theirs. What's it going to matter if Piper or Matt opens a can on Buddy? Everyone ​gets to do it, both the tall and the small. He's even been slapped around by a woman (Princess Victoria) on at least one interview. At some point, great interviews and promos simply aren't enough if you can't deliver in the ring, and Buddy really hasn't yet. (I'm not talking about bumps, either; I'm talking about giving out almost as good of a beating as he takes.) In other news, I was surprised to see the midgets work an actual match with holds instead of comedy spot after comedy spot. I was similarly surprised when a midget match made it on to the Texas set and they wrestled an almost-normal match too. The only other promotion I'd really seen the midgets work in before that was the WWF, and the matches there were almost pure comedy, with the referee (usually the shortest one they had working a particular card) almost serving as a fifth participant. Of course, lucha takes its minis matches a lot more seriously than even the most serious American midget matches could ever hope to be, but it's still a revelation to see them as workers, much like it was when I saw joshi for the first time. Frank has some odd names for holds; he calls a backdrop a shoulder throw, a bearhug a body lock, and an atomic drop a backbreaker. You can hardly call him ignorant or misinformed, so I tend to believe that these were old-fashioned names for the holds/moves in question that he still uses out of habit. I'm sure I'll get used to them in time. I'm shocked we didn't get a mass midget uprising when Buddy used the backbreaker on Lang the way we did at Mania III when Bundy squashed Little Beaver. It was probably because they'd interacted through the match and Lang had gotten the best of Buddy consistently, as I stated above. (By the way, what a feat of strength it was for Lang to pick Boyd up on his shoulders. It reminds me of the story Gorilla Monsoon supposedly told about being picked up in a fireman's carry by Frenchy Lamont and carried across a room. Of course, Little Tokyo couldn't hold Buddy for more than a step when he tried the same thing!) I loved the promo with the dogs before the match. I have no doubt that they were Buddy's own dogs, but I wonder how he really got them. Something tells me that they weren't really a present from Wiskowski!

At least this strap match was more competitive than the other one, though not by much. Destroyer actually got a nearfall or two, which is progress for the Army, but in the end he was no more of a match for Jay than Oliver was. My issues with Sandy Barr just keep increasing. Hey, Sandy, did you not hear Savage say that anything goes in an Apache strap match? The last time I checked, that means ​anything​, including ripping your opponent's mask. As if giving a warning wasn't enough, Sandy tried to physically restrain Jay to the point of damn near tackling him, which probably should have led to Destroyer taking control of the match. It didn't, but that doesn't mean that Sandy wasn't ridiculous. If he's going to get physically involved like this, he should put the tights back on and leave the refereeing to those who'll stay the hell out of the wrestlers' way. Buddy turns tail and runs again when the idea of getting into a strap match with Jay is broached. This time Jay makes the challenge, and Buddy practically breaks the world record scampering back to the locker room. Talk about an effective way to stop him from interfering! I can't wait to see his matches with Jay later in the disc. Destroyer does ​sound pretty gutsy challenging Jay to a title match just moments after getting his ass kicked, but I can't help feeling that the title match should have led to this match, not the other way around. Matches like strap matches and steel cage matches should, in my opinion at least, take place because regular wrestling matches aren't able to settle a feud. I'm not sure I'd buy a ticket to see Jay fight Destroyer again after watching him cut the guy to ribbons and make him bleed through his mask; I'd save my money for his (Jay's) matches with Buddy. Yet another match that wasn't supposed to be on TV. At least this time they had Jay request that the match be televised instead of Tom Peterson, which is a bit of an improvement. To be fair, it was also probably going to be too short of a match to make the public pay for at just about twelve minutes from bell to bell. I know Frank was trying to put Jay over, but I'm sure he's been around long enough to see a masked wrestler bleed by this point. If nothing else, he's probably seen pictures in a magazine; some of them loved to have their covers as bloody as possible in order to make them stand out on the shelves and sell more copies.

I didn't much care for this one. First of all, I can't stand the way Buddy was DQed. If Don waants to make a rule saying that a wrestler's not allowed to pick up his opponent from a pin attempt more than once and the second time's an automatlc DQ, that's fine. But don't simply leave it up ro Sandy, who interferes whenever he damn well pleases to start with. Even spots that other refs do aren't the same when Sandy does them, like going outside the ring to stop a guy from using a chair. You see that fairly often, and most of the time it's understandable and seen as part of the ref's job. But with Sandy, it seems like he's just tired of the heels at times and doesn't want to see them win. Sometime before the end of this set, I want to see Buddy or Oliver crack Sandy right on top of the head with a chair at least once just to show that even someone like him should expect to face the consequences if they're going to get that physical. Second, Buddy gave Tony way too much of the match. I know the school of thought is that Buddy's giving the fans a chance to see someone finally beat the crap out of him, but the wrong Borne's doing the beating. I realize that it probably wasn't advisable to have Tony do a decisive job, but at least let Buddy have more than an eye rake and a post shot. Ideally, this should have gone about five minutes before Matt stormed the ring and got his father DQed for outside interference, followed by a huge brawl that Matt got the better of. Tony looked good for what he did, but his issue with Buddy's only on the periphery. This is another thing Vince got right; when a manager or tag team partner took someone's part during a feud, the match involving the interloper was short, inconsequential, and led to a furthering of the issue between the two main combatants. Don achieved the third here, but he forgot about the first two, Nice tutorial by Frank on the difference between Tony and Toni Borne. It helped those viewers with bad eyesight to no end, I'm sure. Tracking Buddy's Weight: He sure as hell wasn't two-forty. In fact, he was just about as fat here as he was in the AWA. I'm thinking two-eighty with a bullet. I wasn't aware that Buddy was from Texas. I wonder if he ever really met Larry Hagman (J.R. Ewing), considering how much he talked about the character in his interviews.

What was here was too short for mne to give a fair rating to, but Asako really showed guts in cintinuing to battle despite his bloody mouth. For those of you who understand Japanese, did they ever say what was supposed to have caused it (split lip, broken jaw, lacerated tongue, etc.)? There was almost too much action with all four men in the ring, which was convenient for the finish but really shouldn't have been allowed. Furnas looked like early eighties Andre with his haircut. Here's a tip, Doug: If you want to look like a real badass, you need less ​hair in this day and age, not more. I hope we see more of Asako, because he looked like he could go with some of the best that AJPW had to offer. I probably wouldn't put him in with Kawada or Taue yet, even in a tag setting, but given time he'll certainly reach that level.

Now I'm starting from (almost) the other end. We overuse the terms "squash" and "competitive squash" at times, but this was the very defintion of the latter. Oliver got in some brief spurts of offense, but never once did he try and take Jay around to any corners, which is odd booking even for a match which is set up for one wrestler to not only win, but dominate. Of course, that may have been part of the overriding story of the match: Buddy throwing Oliver to the wolves. Remember how in the extras threads I kept saying what a generous manager Buddy was, especially for a dastardly heel? Well, you can erase that with a blowtorch. I loved how he was threatened with a lifetime suspension, then turned around and offered to take the match in Oliver's place. Once Jay agreed, though, he said the functional equivalent of "Haha, fooled you!" and took off never to return. Frank said repeatedly that Oliver didn't look ready to wrestle, and even intimated that Buddy may have promised him that he wouldn't have to wrestle at all, that Buddy would take the match himself. Even when he's barely there, the Playboy's the prime mover and shaker in Portland, and I'll bet that once the euphoria over Jay's victory died down, the fans were hoping that Rip found Buddy back in the locker room and beat the hell out of him. The crowd here was as hot as they've been on the set so far. I've been watching mostly the matches that took place after Vince and Crockett became the Big Two, and the crowds were lukewarm at best except for Billy Jack. This was back when Portland was still a hotbed for wrestling, and crowds like this were the reason why. Frank also did a masterful job explaining the damage that the strap could do, constantly pointing out that it was rawhide. Rip helped the cause by bleeding as much of a gusher as they could get away with on TV. Actually, now that I think of it, Rip bled off of a post shot rather than a strap shot, not that it mattered much. The other strap match on this disc (Jay vs. Destroyer) isn't much longer, and I'm betting that it won't be much more competitive. I've seen guys lose their specialty match on occasion, but not until years after this. In 1981, a strap match involving a Native American is almost always an automatic win (unless you're Jay Strongbow, whose strap match with Greg Valentine at MSG in '79 inexplicably ended in a pull-apart). I'm guessing that the angle where Buddy's Army beat up Jay's dad didn't make the set because the footage was lost or not in good shape. I have a hard time believing that something like that wouldn't be worthy of inclusion otherwise.

First fall: ​It's not every day when someone comes into a territory and challenges for a belt right off the bat, so right away we know that Steiner's something special. He backs that up quite well in the ring too, as he shows some definite wrestling ability. Four discs in is a little bit early to be talking about revelations for a whole set, but Steiner's my leader in the clubhouse so far, especially when you consider what most guys do with the evil Nazi gimmick, which is not much of anything. About the only one I've seen do more with it was Baron Von Raschke in his younger days, although I'm willing to change my mind if I ever see some vintage Fritz Von Erich footage. Glad to see that all of Portland's belts have been returned, as Coss makes reference to Jaggers just having gotten his Northwest title belt. Jaggers is a much more complete worker as a face than as a heel. Actually, that's true for most guys, mostly because faces are supposed to be more complete wrestlers. It's rare that there was an exception to this; Randy Savage is the only one that I can think of off the top of my head. Coss does a nice job putting over how tough wrestlers are and how desperate they are to come back from injuries, since they don't get paid if they don't work. Actually, I think that Don paid their medical bills if an injury was serious enough, but I could certainly be mistaken, and in any case the larger point still definitely applies. The cameramen in this territory need to get on the stick and do it fast, and I'm not talking about using a microphone either. We missed Steiner escaping a chinlock because they lingered too long on a shot of Mike Miller (whom Steiner was subbing for due to Miller's supposed ankle injury) at ringside, and we missed the Hangman's Special that got Jaggers the win because they were shooting Steiner from head to toe except ​for the top of his head, where the elbow hit. That's at least three or four major missed moves or sequences on this disc alone, and I have eight more discs of matches to go through. So far, Portland may be the least visually pleasing of all the territories in this project when the matches are shot by supposed professionals, and yes, I've seen cleaner looking handheld footage in at least a few of them. ​Second fall: ​This was almost like a lucha second fall, it was so short. Steiner's on offense from beginning to end, and evens the match with a flying clothesline. We have about eight minutes left for the third fall, according to Coss. Between falls, Coss ruminates on the new managerial career of Ed Wiskowski. I didn't realize this until about the third or fourth time I heard the name, but the "Imed" (I'm Ed) part is an inside joke; he's as much as admitting that he's Ed Wiskowski pretending to be a mystic for reasons only he knows. Not that that's a surprise or a disappointment; it's just something I probably caught about five years after everyone else did. What I'm really ​wondering is, when Wiskowski brought the Col. DeBeers gimmick to Portland, did they "recognize" him as Wiskowski, and if so, how did they reconcile the two? Most viewers should have gotten a clue when they heard him talk; he never even attempted a South African accent. Third fall: ​We get the belt held up, as Miller trips Jaggers with his crutch, allowing Steiner to fall on top of him and score the deciding pin. Sandy was conveniently knocked out, and Don wasn't in the building (really; I'm pretty sure Barry filled in as ring announcer), so it will all be decided next Saturday night once he returns. We'll also have a tag team match: Miller and Steiner vs. Jaggers and Billy Jack. They need to find a new way to knock Sandy out; he's been hit by too many flying feet for that to remain credible for much longer. We missed Miller's initial crutch shot on Jaggers, which is the one that busted him open. Come on, guys, act like you know what the hell a wrestling match is, for God's sake. As I said up above, I've seen better looking handhelds from indy cards; at least the people who film those cards know how to follow the action for the most part. Between this appearance on the set and his next one, someone must have corrected the office on which side of Germany was our friend and which one was our enemy. Here, Steiner's billed from West ​Germany (our ally). The next time we see him, he's billed from East​ Germany (our Communist enemy), which is more in keeping with a dastardly heel. I've never heard of the wrestler who was originally signed to a title match getting the title if his substitute wins, but that's what Coss said would have happened if the belt hadn't been held up. What a week for Don to be out of town (if he really was).

First fall: ​There's not really much to analyze here. Billy Jack dominates, mostly with a side headlock, Normally, that isn't much, but when it's someone as powerful as Billy Jack, it's a fun hold to watch being worked, because the other guy usually sells it like his head's being run over by a truck, as Jaggers does here. Jaggers only gets a few seconds on offense, which ends when Billy Jack sunset flips him from the outside and gets the three count to go up 1-0. They're really hyping the 5/20 card here, which I guess was a rerun of the card from the previous year at the Rose Garden. That would explain why all the stars that Don's supposedly negotiating with come from JCP, as we're well into the era where if a promoter got Flair, they also got the rest of the JCP guys whether they liked it or not. According to Graham's site, Flair ended up wrestling Rip Oliver. I wonder if we're going to see the story behind that in the rest of this match, or if Rip was a substitute because Billy Jack either was leaving or had already left for Vince. But even if that was the case, why wouldn't Jaggers have gotten the shot? I like the black and white tights that Billy Jack's wearing here. In typical WWF fashion, he only wore green trunks with gold letters spelling "Oregon" and gold trunks with green letters spelling "Oregon" while he was there, and after a while only the gold with green letters, the better not to confuse the poor simple little Hulksters. I wasn't aware that leadership in The Clan was disputed at this point. At one point Coss says that Jaggers wants to beat Billy Jack so Rip will name him the leader. I wonder how that ​storyline got started. Something tells me this is over in two straight, as we only have about six minutes of disc time remaining. ​Second fall: So much for my prediction, as Jaggers blasts Billy Jack in the forehead with an elbow and knocks him silly in less than two minutes to even things up at a fall apiece. There wasn't much action in the rest of the fall, so I'm guessing that someone gave them the hurry-up before the fall started. Since Oliver ended up with the match, it's possible that 1) Jaggers won and gave the shot to him as the leader of The Clan or 2) Billy Jack won and Rip took his place once he (Billy Jack) gave his notice. My money's on door number two. ​Third fall: ​I was right; Billy Jack puts Jaggers out with the full nelson to win the match, the title, and the shot at Flair. There's a brief postmatch beatdown from the Assassin, but no major harm was done. I couldn't believe the nearfall off of Jaggers' missed clothesline, as Billy Jack nearly knocked himself out running into Jaggers' rear end. It's something that has to be seen to be believed. It might have seemed a bit odd that Don booked Billy Jack to win this when he had to know that Billy Jack was talking to Vince. It probably also seemed odd to the average fan that Billy Jack would leave knowing that he had a shot at Flair coming up. Of course, said average fan had no way of knowing that he or she had just as much of a chance to win the NWA belt as Billy Jack did: absolute zero. By the way, the first result that Graham has for Billy Jack in the WWF is on 6/1 in Toronto, when he beat Frank Marconi with the full nelson. Graham doesn't list this match as his debut, so I'm assuming that there are provably lost results in May involving him. although the TV taping listing for Brantford and Poughkeepsie (where guys usually made their debuts/returns) seem to be complete.

First fall: ​Here we go again with the "I didn't wanna show this" routine. At least we had a better reason this time, with Oliver threatening to go back to Texas if the match wasn't televised. They need to stop doing this almost every week, though. This fall was actually pretty civilized, considering that Oliver was acting as a hired gun for his pal Miller. There were certainly some fisticuffs and a few illegal maneuvers, but mostly Billy Jack worked over Rip's arm until a coupe of shots from the taped thumb turned the tide, then Rip spent the rest of the fall pounding Billy Jack until he got the win with a nifty-looking flying clothesline to go up 1-0. Billy Jack biting Oliver's taped thumb was interesting, but it might have inadvertently killed the gimmick. If the thumb was loaded like it was supposed to be, wouldn't he have broken his teeth on the foreign object inside? There were quite a few good lines from Coss here, but my favorite was "We should show this to 20/20​ and let them say that these guys aren't doing what they're doing." That incident must have struck plenty of nerves all through the business, because most of the other promotions picked up on it somehow, from what I've been able to see. About the only promotion that didn't ​refer to it somehow was the WWF, for obvious reasons. I know they're trying to put over Rip as really bad news, especially for Billy Jack, but "two Road Warriors in one", as Coss put it, was a little too much even for hyperbole's sake. It might have been a plausible comparison if Rip had been more muscular, but he was nowhere near as fearsome looking as Hawk or Animal. Even Precious Paul was a stretch, at least at this time. We all know that Miller's going to involve himself somehow before this is over, neck injury or not. All that remains to be seen is how. Second fall: ​Oliver takes most of this one, but Billy Jack manages to sidestep him and send him out through the ropes, Oliver takes a hard bump on the floor, and from there on it's all Billy Jack, who evens things up with a flying clothesline off the top, which I never saw him use for Vince. We're starting to hear time calls; the last one was nine minutes, so if we give Billy Jack another minute to wrap up the fall, plus a two-minute break, that leaves about six minutes for the third fall. Coss spends a lot of this fall putting over the May 21 card, which is understandable. I guess Martel and Flair's opponents hadn't been determined yet, even though the card was only a month away. Oliver the most powerful man Billy Jack's wrestled to date? I suppose it's possible, but he simply isn't the first guy I think of when it comes to power wrestlers. Miller hasn't interfered yet, but the match isn't over yet either. They've set it up too well for it not to happen somehow. Third fall: ​Not exactly a fresh finish, but an unexpected one under the circumstances. I thought Miller would stop Billy Jack from getting the winning fall on Oliver and we'd have a two on one beatdown. Instead, Miller clotheslines Oliver off the top, and Billy Jack capitalizes to score the winning fall. They briefly tease dissension between Oliver and Miller, but the two heels hug it out as we go to break. Coss does an excellent job putting over Oliver's prowess with the taped thumb, and also its versatility; it can be used to equally devastating effect on the head, throat, or midsection of an opponent. I'm not kidding when I say that he might have done the best sell job of the damage a given foreign object can cause of any announcer I've heard yet. Billy Jack bleeding was almost done as an afterthought, but given that the match was supposed to be too violent for TV anyway, maybe it was just as well. Oliver must have been going back to Texas anyway, because Billy Jack makes clear in his postmatch interview that Miller is still his main target. Anyone want to bet that that match somehow made it to TV too, despite Billy Jack himself saying that he didn't want it to be televised? There was only one tease of the full nelson from Billy Jack in the entire match, which was a bit surprising. Maybe they wanted to save his use of the hold for his main target of the moment, Miller.

The idea for this match was grand; the execution of the wrestlers was great; the production absolutely reeked. First (and worst), we never saw Oliver's kill shot on Billy Jack with his taped thumb. Regardless of what Coss said later about brass knuckles, the thumb was what put Billy Jack away. What were we looking at instead? A random shot of one of the stretcher bearers. Why? Any idiot knows that when there's action in a wrestling ring and you only have one main camera, that's where the hell the camera goes. Don's production people weren't amateurs by now; they'd been producing wrestling for years and knew how to shoot it. This performance was, in a word, inexcusable. Coss tried to save their bacon by playing up the brass knucks shot, but the audience could clearly see that Billy Jack was already out for good and that Oliver threw it in just because he could. Equally as inexcusable was Don feigning ignorance about the rules of the match. At least I hope ​he was feigning ignorance; if he wasn't, why did he let the match air on TV, Tom Peterson aside? It was like if Magnum had had to explain the I Quit match at Starrcade '85; yes, it would have been a novel idea, but what kind of idiot would Jimmy Crockett Jr. have looked like sanctioning a match he didn't understand? I know Don got away with it because he was Don Owen, but that doesn't mean it was right. Third, I think I'm going to despise Sandy Barr by the time this set is over. Not only is he ​absolutely everywhere​, but he didn't understand this particular match any more than Don supposedly did, and in his case I doubt he was faking. He was seen counting whoever was on the stretcher out of the ring several times, and what the hell was up with him counting a pinfall on Oliver midway through? Billy Jack had the good sense to ignore him and keep right on pounding the hell out of Rip, but it was such a "Huh?" moment that it took me out of the match for a few seconds. Then there was the business with the brass knucks, which like the taped thumb were legal​, since anything went. Or was Sandy out to lunch when Billy Jack explained that? Why else would he make a big show of taking them from Oliver afterward? I guess they were trying to give Billy Jack some sort of moral victory, but if they'd thought of that beforehand, they wouldn't have aired this match to begin with. Incidentally, it's only happened twice that I've seen so far, but the "I didn't wanna air this match, but Tom Peterson insisted" routine from Don is already old. I don't know whether Peterson actually wanted certain matches aired over Don's objections or not, but Don doesn't look too good complaining about it regardless, especially if it's not true. Then it becomes "We thought this might be a good enough match to get you to buy tickets, but we were wrong, so we're gonna blow it off on TV, but it's not gonna be half as good as it could have been since we can't show more than a little blood and we have to watch the violence. Are you jerks happy now?" From the I Can't Beileve They Did That on TV Dept.: Billy Jack's piledriver on the floor to Oliver. For that particular time and place, it didn't get much more hardcore than that. Oliver had no business in the postmatch interview after the beating he took, and he sure shouldn't have sounded half as lucid as he did. You want to know why people laughed at wrestling for so long prior to Vince ending kayfabe? This is one example. He's been piledriven in the ring and ​on the floor, he's bleeding like a stuck pig, he almost was carried out on a stretcher multiple times, and yet there's Oliver spieling away fresh as a spring rain afterward. How some people still believed in wrestling fully after seeing stuff like that is something I'll never come close to understanding.

This didn't seem to be as good as the May match, from what I remember about that one. Santo was superb as always, and Metal was still decent, but there were two many double countout teases for my taste. One or two is fine, but they pulled it at least five or six times, which killed the impact for me. The referee gets credit for making a double countout seem possible by his quick count, though. All three decisions happened too fast. Metal didn't last five seconds in either of Santo's submission holds, and the entire second fall didb't last more than a minute, so Metal's pinfall felt like a bigger fluke than it should have. The way most lucha matches are booked, you can eliminate the first and second falls anyway. I also didn't care for the extended countout tease after the restart. What wrestler in his right mind is going to pass up a chance to beat El Hijo del Santo clean in the middle of the ring twice? I liked the idea of the restart itself, but it's a spot that shouldn't be used too often. Truth be told, the most impressive thing about this match was the fireworks shooting from all the cornerposts during the postmatch celebration. Not only was it a great pyrotechnic feat in itself, but it really made Santo's win feel big. I wish more American promotions used fireworks and similar effects that way today instead of making them part of every card whether they're needed or not.

This one defines the term "war of attrition". Bwtween Harley's ribs and Akira's knee, it was a race to see who could get the win before their injury became too much for them. Akira managed to get the win, but both of them needed help out of the ring afterward. Zenjo brought up that Akira's injury may have been legit because Harley avoided working on it. That may very well have been the case, but it's also plausible that Harley's ribs had been pounded so thoroughly that she was more worried about surviving that attacking Akira's weak spot. Overall, Harley was the much better seller here; Akira went up to the top too many times for someone with a knee injury as bad as hers supposedly was, and looked quick as a cat doing it besides. Harley forgot herself and went up once too, but she mostly stayed on the mat after that. This is the one problem I have with joshi above all the others: the finishes require so many moves off the top that the girls are forced to ignore injuries that they've spent the majority of the match selling. Akira really worked Harley's ribs like a master; by the end of the bout they were so destroyed that even kicking out of pin attempts caused her intense pain. Part of me wishes that the finish had directly involved the ribs, but you could say that getting air was so tough for Harley by that time that any sort of slam or suplex could have put her away, as one eventually did. This wasn't the greatest joshi match I've ever seen, but it was enough to take the bad taste of the Thunderqueen match out of my mouth, which is a definite plus in its favor.

This one was very good, with lots of pro-style moves like the ones mentioned above. Just when Anjo (who was the superior wrestler for much of the match) looked to be running away with it, Sano stormed back to take the next five points plus the winning submission, which fittingly enough was a pro-style crossface chickenwing. As a fan of pro-style, I found this very accessible, which isn't always the case with shoot-style bouts. Maybe having Sano (who was quite a successful junior in NJPW, as most of you know) had something to do with that.

Thanks for the info, Tim. As I recall, Raw ​was only an hour long then, so I guess they didn't need everyone on the roster and could spare a few guys to go to Memphis.

I'll get to the match in a second, but first I have to say that Jeannie St. James, the woman who called the match, was excellent. I've never heard a woman do wrestling play-by-play before, and this was a revelation. She probably wasn't a regular wrestling announcer (we haven't seen her so far on the set), but she knew her stuff and sounded like she'd done wrestling before at some level. I'm guessing that the Tim who was her color man was Diamond Timothy Flowers, and even though he was clearly supposed to be a heel, he was very good too. He talked over Jeannie a bit at the finish, but that happens all the time, so it's not that big a deal. I'm looking forward to seeing what these two do with Flair-Magnum from the same card later in the set. I'd like to know where Coss was, though. If my memory serves, this was a Tuesday, and he was a disc jockey for one of the rock stations in town. Could he have been working while the card was going on? He did the May card, since we saw him in a tux at ringside and heard him calling Piper-Rose, but that was Don's 60th anniversary show, so he may have asked for the time off beforehand. I'm wondering if Jeannie may have been a coworker of his who had the night off and was a wrestling fan, which would explain how she got the gig. As for the match, it was basic and solid, but that's all that's needed out of some matches. Both teams looked good, and it's easy to see that Simpson and Savoldi were supposed to be Portland's answer to teams like the Rock 'n' Roll Express and the Fabulous Ones. They looked like they fit the bill here; they aren't the high flyers that the teams I just mentioned are, but they have spots that get the crowd going in their own way, particularly the side headlock grind, which I've seen used before but never quite that often or effectively. Miller and Steiner handled their control segment well, although it never really felt like they would win. They were there to give Simpson a chance to play Ricky Morton for a time, and he was great at it. I'll never understand the need to have the FIP's partner come in to distract the ref every five seconds when once or twice would be sufficient to get the point across, but somehow the formula works. Jeannie and Tim both got on Sandy for his slow counts and occasionally poor positioning, and I'm still wondering why he seemed to be the only referee Don seemed interested in using. I know he was office, but so were a lot of other refs in a lot of other promotions, and you still saw more than one per card, usually at least two. Maybe it was a holdover from the days when there were only three or four long bouts in one card as opposed to eight or ten shorter ones, but Don had plenty of time to adapt by 1985 if he'd chosen to do so. I'm wondering if we'll see him for Flair-Magnum, or if Crockett flew Tommy Young in because the match had two JCP guys in it. Not really a Line of the Night, but I got a kick out of Jeannie's reaction to having garbage thrown in her lap during the match. Announcers really shouldn't react to things like that, but it's refreshing for that rule to be broken at times. I wonder if she ever caught who did it, and if she did, I hope it was a woman, considering her threat to make whoever did it sorry.

I'm not sold on this one, especially not as a WWF Match of The Year candidate. First and most importantly, Yoko looked lousy. Not in a bad worker sense (although he certainly wasn't good), but in the sense that he was too big to get out of his own way, which threw off the timing of the match. Part of the reason Bret laid around so much had to be that there was no sense trying an escape spot if Yoko wasn't going to be able to stop it. How many times did we see Yoko nearly blow himself up trying to get to his feet? Too damn many, that's how. The only other guy I can think of who had so much trouble getting up once he was knocked down was Andre, and he had legit health issues including a back so bad he had to wear a brace in the ring. What was Yoko's excuse except that he couldn't watch his diet? If this had been a shoot, Bret would have been champion fifty times over, and if he'd wanted to go into business for himself here, no one could have done a thing to stop it. Fortunately for all concerned, he didn't. The other big problem I have came after the match. This was clearly supposed to be a case of Yoko scraping by with a lucky win to set up his showdown with Luger at SummerSlam. That was the whole point of Lawler being at ringside in Fuji's place. So why did we get Yoko squashing Bret like a bug afterward and strutting out of the cage like he owned the entire Eastern Seaboard? There's definitely a time and a place for Yoko to look like an unbeatable monster, but this wasn't it. Even if Vince wanted to put across that Luger was the one and only guy who could stand up to Yoko, this was a bad choice, especially since Vince undoubtedly already knew that Luger wasn't getting his hands on the belt. If Luger's not your champion, what's the matter with keeping Bret hot for at least another month or so until you're ready to segue to Taker? Just to be clear, I have no problem with Yoko winning, but he should have taken the win and kept going back to the locker room instead of killing Bret almost dead. I liked what little I could see of Lawler at ringside, and of course the salt bucket spot and the throwing of the salt itself were the turning points of the match. This was probably the best overall heel performance I've seen out of Lawler, and if Vince couldn't have gotten Corny to be Yoko's spokesman, Lawler wouldn't have been a bad second choice. About the only thing missing was the King waving the Japanese flag; if he'd done that and they'd aired this match in Memphis, he could have always said he did it in honor of his old pal Tojo Yamamoto! I thought for sure that I'd miss the finish with the way the camera was moving around like crazy toward the end, but I didn't, thank goodness. God help us all if they worked this same match in December, especially if Lawler wasn't there to interfere. I don't even think Corny can do those spots as well as the King did here.

Yet another finish I wasn't a fan of. Look, if this was just a normal match between these two guys, I'd have no problem with what happened; in fact, it would have been sweet to see Oliver get his after he cheated like it was going out of style all through the match. But this was (supposedly, at least) for a trip to Japan to represent Portland in a major international tournament. No one was expecting a clean match given the history between these two, but couldn't we have at least had a definitive finish? Would it have killed one of these two (probably Oliver) to do one clean job given the stakes involved? He could have gotten back his heat by jumping Billy Jack after the match and having The Clan beat him up until his friends made the save. As it was, we not only had interference from both sides, but a referee knocked so silly that he wasn't even sure who or what he was counting. That's hardly a way to put Portland's best foot forward on an international stage. There wasn't a whole lot of good wrestling here, which was expected given who was involved. Billy Jack threw a good dropkick, which he didn't do often for Vince, and Oliver's "piledrop", as Coss called it, looked nasty. It was probably a botched piledriver, since Rip hit one cleanly later in the match, but it looked like it could have been a hell of a finisher on a regular basis, kind of like Jake Roberts' DDT, which was also born out of a botch. We can be thankful for one small favor: The "lumberjacks" didn't interfere until the finish. If we'd had constant interference from the likes of Jaggers, Miller, and Cocoa, the whole match would have become a joke, especially considering what was on the line. I loved Billy Jack dedicating the match to not only his family, but the people at the Center for the Blind. Yet another touch you don't get with national promotions, except for rare occasions on local insert promos. Coss was very good here, and I take back my reservations about him calling big matches. He's still not in the top echelon of announcers (that's pretty tough to crack), but I can see why he lasted so long in Portland. Like Lance Russell and Dave Brown, he knows how to call a match in the manner which his audience expects. He's not folksy like Lance and doesn't delve much into strategy or motivations, but he keeps up with the action well and genuinely seems excited about what he's watching, which is three-quarters of the battle for any wrestling announcer. I'm guessing that his slip in later years was due to the (mostly) declining product and also having to carry a color man like Scott Levy, who in 1989 knew how to be obnoxious and not much else.