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​Buddy's Back on the Bad Side (6/30/84): ​Well, Buddy's traded in his halo for horns again. Seriously, he's such a tremendous heel that a long-term babyface run would be wasting his true talents. It takes a while for Buddy to get warmed up on the stick, and some of his bad jokes about Stasiak in the first part of this segment remind me of Attitude Era Jerry Lawler at his worst. He warms to his task eventually, though, and promises the same old domination, starting with his second eternal enemy, Matt Borne. (The first, of course, is Piper.) I liked Stasiak's introduction of Buddy as "poison" and Buddy agreeing with it. That leads to Buddy's best line in quite a while: "If a rattlesnake bit me, the snake would end up going to the hospital." For those who may not know, Portland's nickname is really The Rose City, and unfortunately it has nothing to do with Buddy (although he certainly would have claimed otherwise). Furthermore, the main arena in Portland, the Memorial Coliseum, is nicknamed the Rose Garden. I know Owen owned the Sports Arena outright, but I think he missed an opportunity not using the Rose Garden at least once for a big main event involving Buddy. Think of the fun Buddy could have had with that on interviews!

​Buddy and Oliver (4/21/84): ​What a bump Buddy took on the chair when Oliver dropped him. If it's a fraction of an inch too hard or he lands in the wrong spot, he has major internal injuries and maybe a concussion. Billy Jack as the referee for the next Rose/Oliver match? Based on the disc listing, I fear for Billy Jack; we all know Buddy can't stay an angel (albeit one with tarnished wings) for much longer. Oliver has a bunch of people mad at him right now: Buddy, Billy Jack, Stasiak, Borne. He's the very definition of a top heel, just like Buddy was before him. Seeing him juggle all these feuds as well as he has so far makes me lament the fact that the Big Two rarely tried to book like this. Usually, the top heel and the top face went at it and everyone else stayed out of the way. The only exception on any sort of regular basis was the Horsemen, and even that feud managed to boil itself down to either Dusty/Flair or Dusty/Tully more often than not. The only time Hogan had more than one feud going is if Vince was trying to set up a pay-per-view tag match of some sort. I noticed that Buddy used the Scorpion Deathlock in the portion of the match we saw before Oliver's run-in. I'm surprised he used such an intricate hold, and this again plays up how much he was wasted later in his career, when Verne turned him into a punching bag and bump machine for the Midnight Rockers' amusement and education.

​Oliver and Stasiak: ​Who didn't know that was going to happen eventually? This is another difference between Oliver and Buddy; as nasty as Buddy could be, I'd have been shocked if he'd actually attacked an announcer. Of course, since Frank Bonnema has done most of the interviews I've seen with Buddy, I knew it would never happen in the first place. This is yet another time when the heel launched a straight-up, face-to-face attack. I wonder if that had something to do with how the Crow's Nest was situated, or if it was simply the way Owen booked his brawls. In the WWF, for a contrasting example, a good ninety percent of the attacks were Pearl Harbor jobs off of a distraction by a manager or second. I guess now Stasiak will get back in the ring against the Clan on at least an occasional basis. It'll be interesting to see how much The Man has left in the tank. He still talks a good game, but so did Tony Borne, and we all know what that got him.

​Matt Borne and Rip Oliver (1/28/84): ​Portland just keeps bringing the wild beatdowns. This time, though, Oliver's the victim, as Matt gets his revenge for the beating he got a couple of weeks back when he turned on the Clan. Oliver's just as bloody a mess after this as Matt was back then, and we almost have another riot on our hands as the fans go wild at the thought of the leader of The Clan getting a taste of his own medicine. Matt does look quite a bit like Rip with the bleached blonde hair and dark beard, which to hear Matt talk is one of the flashpoints of the feud. Overall, Matt's promo is excellent, and he looks positively Doink-like at times in the face as he talks. No wonder he understood that character so well. Owen better have paid Sandy Barr a ton, considering the beatings he's taken over the past two discs. No wonder there aren't any other referees in Portland; who in their right mind would want any part of trying to control these maniacs? Oliver's answer promo is pretty good, considering that he's supposed to be weakened by loss of blood. He isn't the talker that Buddy is, but he may actually be scarier; he even looks like thirty miles of bad road, which Buddy can't really pull off because of his excess weight. I can definitely see how he became the promotion's top heel once Buddy left for Minneapolis. As for Assassin, he's not useless on the stick, but he's definitely one of those who mistakes volume for substance. I give him credit for running down the week's itinerary so effortlessly, though. It sounds like Stasiak's actually doing play-by-play here, with Coss acting as his color guy. That seems like a bit of a weird arrangement to say the least, especially since Stan doesn't have much broadcasting experience at all. I wonder if anyone got in trouble for Oliver saying that he was going to cripple Matt's ass up right at the end of his interview. "Ass" wasn't totally taboo by this time, but it wasn't heard all that often either, especially on shows where it was assumed that children were a big part of the audience, like wrestling.

​Portland Wrestling News Feature (6/11/83): ​This piece made the wrestling fans of Seattle look like a bunch of bloodthirsty hillbillies. Almost all of them ​sounded ​like hillbillies too, come to think of it. I guess if you didn't know what wrestling is really about, or if you knew and thought it was ridiculous, you'd have gotten a laugh out of this. But it's not meant for the serious fan who knows all about how wrestling works (or thinks they do) and loves it anyway, like we do on this board. There weren't a whole lot of fans like us back in June of 1983, but I'll bet there were more than the media (or promoters like Owen, for that matter) cared to admit. There's one saving grace: We don't have a smarmy narrator telling us what idiots the people being interviewed are for liking wrestling. The anchor sounded a bit condescending, but that could have been her natural on-air presentation. The action clips we got looked good, and most of the people seemed to be having a good time, regardless of their perceived intelligence level. Abut the "smartest" fan we saw was the one who knew about blading, or at least acted like he did. My other favorite was the white-haired old lady who claimed that there wasn't a wrestler alive whom she was afraid of. I'll bet a lot of the boys were afraid of ​her, ​though!

​Hennig/McGhee-Oliver/Assassin: ​I think Owen's done the surprise turn once too often. Everyone played their parts well, but it sure seemed to me like the fans were cheering Oliver and the Assassin for beating Matt bloody. Speaking of which, this had to be the single bloodiest interview segment I've seen yet that wasn't from Puerto Rico. Between Oliver going nuts with the cowbell and Assassin repeatedly bellowing, "Nobody messes with the Clan!", I'm sure that quite a few people were legitimately frightened out of their wits. For the second straight beatdown (at least that I've watched), Assassin went to Stasiak's eyes to take him out of action. Based on the disc listings, I'm sure that this will have quite the payoff in a very short while. I noticed Coss made sure to say that Oliver and Assassin ran when they thought that Stasiak might get physically involved. Coss and Stasiak do an excellent job of capturing the confusion surrounding the Crow's Nest and the program in general, even to the point of having to put together a standby match to fill the remaining TV time. There are times in earlier segments where I've lamented Owen's lack of attention to detail, but he was right on the mark this time. I hope we hear the justification for Matt's turn in an upcoming segment; we were just getting to that part when Oliver and Assassin launched their attack. In what little we heard both before and after the attack, he sounded totally unhinged, which can't be a good thing for the Clan moving forward.

​Tony Borne Interview: ​Tony's here to give Oliver and the Assassin a chance to attack him and for Matt to make the save. That means that we shouldn't expect much out of him, and we don't get it. It's been previously established that he's not much of a talker, so this segment just kind of meanders until it's time for Oliver to show up. The beatdown's good for what it is, but I would have expected a former wrestler to put up more of a fight. Tony being treated like any random fan out of the stands who shouldn't be touched doesn't make the Clan look more dastardly for attacking him or Matt look like more of a hero for saving his dad; it makes Tony look like a fool for accepting an interview in the first place when he's not able to cope with a possible attack from Oliver and his men. Matt was decent here, but again, it took too long to establish that Tony wasn't hurt. I'm not saying that Tony should have beaten the hell out of Oliver and Assassin singlehandedly, but watching Matt cry like they'd attacked someone who never raised a hand to anyone in his life, let alone been one of the toughest wrestlers the Northwest has ever seen, rang completely false to me. There should be a middle ground between putting the younger talent over as tough and making retired legends look completely helpless. Stasiak has a long way to go as a broadcaster. He didn't sell the attack much at all, only repeating that Matt would have his chance for revenge the following Tuesday night over and over again. I get that they really didn't want someone so recently retired getting physically involved, but surely he could have done more than that. He mentioned at the very end that he was getting tired of the Clan's tactics, so maybe something will come out of that a little way down the road.

​Buddy Rose Feature (9/25/82): ​We've seen the vast majority of this footage before, but to hear it set to the likes of Diana Ross and Olivia Newton-John makes for an entirely new experience. For the record, the only two parts that definitely seem new are the opening which compares Buddy to Mt. St. Helens and the footage of him playing hockey. As nice as it is to see Buddy as a face for a change of pace, he's more at home as a heel, and it's no wonder Owen eventually turned him back. Not even Ric Flair played the jet-setting playboy as well as Buddy did, and it's a shame that wrestling ignored classic heels like him for the most part in the expansion era in favor of more over-the-top characters and monsters with size and not much else. Forget the WWF; not even Verne, who prided himself on his basic approach to the business, found a way to use this man to everyone's best advantage. As much as I like the Rose/Somers team, Buddy had potential for so much more in a promotion that was desperately in need of a figure that could have set it apart. Would Buddy have saved the AWA from extinction? No, of course not. But he'd have been a damn fine challenger for Bockwinkel in '86, and he might have made a more believable mentor figure for Curt during the first days of his heel turn than Zbyszko did (and I like Larry).

​Oliver/Assassin-Hennig/Haynes: ​I thought I'd seen it all, but this took the cake. Not just Buddy's face turn, but the people's reaction to it. The only face turn that got a pop resembling this one was Nikita joining with Dusty in '87, and that one was just as unexpected. I'm pretty sure that Owen expected a pop when he booked this, considering that Buddy was his biggest star even as a heel, but there's no way he expected a near-riot from pure joy. As ecstatic as they were, the crowd dispersed quickly when asked to. Part of that was for security reasons, but I'm sure most of them were anxious to hear just what had possessed Buddy to do something like this. Dynamite could really fly before his back got so bad. Seeing him make the save for the Clan in the way he did makes me wonder if we didn't miss what could have been his true glory days, or those of the Bulldogs. Buddy's interview was tremendous, but that's really nothing new. What shocked me is how easily Curt and Billy Jack accepted him. Of course, they needed him to fight the Clan, but there was no hesitation on their part and no warning to stay on the straight and narrow or else, like we see in some other similar situations. I don't know if Billy Jack really looked for help from Buddy when he wanted to break into wrestling, but the story behind it is great stuff, especially the part where Billy Jack kicked Buddy's ass at Christmas. I'm not just saying this because he picked Buddy up with no problem, but Billy Jack looked like a real stud here. His arms and shoulders are massive in this clip, and he really stands out because there are so few musclemen in the territory. On a personal note, Billy Jack is the only wrestler I've ever met face to face. I went to the matches twice at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh in the summer and fall of '86, and prior to the second card I got to shake hands with him. Sadly, he didn't stand out much compared to the other monster types that Vince was pushing at the time, and that may have been part of his problem. He seems to genuinely love being a hometown boy here in Portland, and as I just said above, he's a physical specimen the likes of which this territory hasn't seen in a long, long time.

​Curt and The Assassin: ​That was one of the strangest setups to a match that I've ever seen. Not that I'm against the idea of a coal miner's glove match, but to set one up just because Assassin loaded his mask? Wouldn't a match where Assassin has to unmask if he loses, or even a match where Curt could wear a loaded mask of his own, be more fitting? I'm guessing that Curt supposedly couldn't talk due to excessive blood loss and/or head trauma, which is another strange thing considering how many promos wrestlers have given in these first two discs while covered in blood from head to toe. I can't wait to see the reason for Billy Jack's neck brace. He wasn't all that bad of a mouthpiece for Curt, actually. Something tells me that the Billy Jack we see in this set is going to be much different (in a good way) than the one we saw work for Vince. Dutch got a little too personally involved in wanting to see the match signed for my taste, but I'll give him a pass because 1) He's the "inventor" of the coal miner's glove match and 2) He did such a great job conveying his disgust for Assassin's tactics in the clip we saw, which added so much to the atmosphere. I hope he's this good calling full-length matches.

​Rose-Oliver Confrontation: ​I watched this specifically to see if it was Buddy's face turn, and it wasn't. It's still weird to see him come to the rescue of any other wrestler, though. Whatever else you can say about Sandy Barr, he sure does take pretty big bumps for a ref. Oliver chucked him halfway to Seattle, and he still managed to come down without breaking his neck. I know he used to wrestle, but taking a bump like that only occasionally as a ref is a whole different ballgame. The brawl during Oliver's interview was one of the more spirited I've seen. Most of the time the heel will back off, particularly if there's a match coming up between the men in question. But these two went at it with gusto. I particularly loved the chair-swinging stalemate; it almost made me wish that Owen would have found a way to book a steel chair match (whatever that may have ended up being) between these two. I hope we see at least one match between them on the main set, because I'd like to see who would survive between them! Nice nod to continuity with Buddy's "Sassy Chassi" T-shirt. I guess he really ​does ​play softball after all.

​Buddy Introduces Dynamite: ​So Buddy and Dynamite started out as partners. Yet another odd couple I would have never thought of. The story here, though, is the tension between Buddy and Oliver. I'm guessing that Rip went out on his own when Buddy was hurt, had a taste of power, and is in no hurry to be second in command again. We all know that they're going to feud at some point; there's not even a real attempt to keep them friendly here. It's just a matter of what's going to cause things to go south and how quickly. They aren't even teasing an alliance to help each other out with common enemies like Curt and Billy Jack. It's a reminder of how different the world is from 1983 that only fifteen thousand dollars, a paltry sum by today's standards, would be enough to lure one of the world's great wrestlers from England. (actually, from what we've already seen in the eighties sets, Japan would be more like it in Dynamite's case.) Buddy's almost too generous for his own good, allowing Oliver to take his interview time. Could the unthinkable be happening? Could Buddy be turning into a.............good guy​?

​Buddy Rose Promo (10/1/83): ​Now we get to see the whimsical side of the Playboy. I watched this way out of order; I haven't even seen Dynamite's debut yet. But that didn't stop me from enjoying Buddy's hijinks with the mop and the (supposed) stick of dynamite. Buddy's quickly becoming one of my favorite talkers of all time because he can do any type of promo that's called for in a given situation: funny, serious, sympathetic heel, racist asshole, you name it. There have been many great talkers in wrestling, but even among the unquestioned best few are this versatile. I have a hard time guessing who's going to win the match being talked about here. Buddy without hair makes no sense, and neither does Dynamite challenging Harley. On the other hand, even from just watching the promos it's obvious that this promotion needs a shakeup. Buddy's carried the load for too long by himself, and Dynamite causing Buddy to be shaved bald, then challenging Harley for the World title (even though he won't get it) might just be that shakeup. I can't wait to see what caused the rift between him and Buddy in the first place.

​Buddy in Bed (4/16/83): ​This sounds like a promo that an injured face would give where he promises revenge on the heel that hurt him. And, of course, it is, except that it isn't. Why you'd want to make a heel a sympathetic character in this way is baffling to say the least, even if the heel in question is ​your biggest star. Buddy's tremendous here as always, but the psychology of this setup is way, way off. Also, Buddy makes it sound like the match where he was hurt took place in Portland, but the footage he shows is clearly from a WWF taping, more than likely Championship​. You can hear Vince's voice clearly describing the dropkick Curt hit Buddy with in the chest. How Buddy's supposed to have a major neck injury out of that I can't even begin to guess. It seems like Buddy hurt his neck somehow, and this is the way they chose to cover his absence. That's fine as far as it goes, but their attention to detail could have been a whole lot better. By the way, this puts the lie to Curt claiming that he chased Buddy all the way to the WWF after Buddy hurt his (Curt's) knee, but couldn't get a match with him. Owen and his people must have really been asleep at the switch whenever they taped this segment. Nice use of Buddy's photo collection, although if I'm not mistaken he's getting pummeled by Piper and Andre respectively in the pictures he shows. At least we (presumably) get to see his bedroom.

​Dutch Savage Retirement Announcement: ​This was a really classy sendoff for an important part of Portland Wrestling. It's hard to be sad under the circumstances, because Dutch was going on to something much more important than pro wrestling ever could be. I liked how he made sure to thank the sponsors as well as the front office people and the fans. Considering the gift he got at the end, I'm guessing that Tom Peterson was properly appreciative of his efforts. Considering how few relationships in the major organizations end on a positive note, this was refreshing to see, and there was a hominess about it that could only have come from a "community" promotion such as Memphis or Portland. Nice job by one and all.

​Buddy and His Softball Team: ​At first I thought that this was just a rib, but the softball players seemed sincere enough, and the trophies definitely looked real. Buddy wasn't quite as cocky as usual at first, and seemed as anxious to put over the rest of the team as they were to salute him. Of course, he was back to himself by the end. Somehow, I don't think Dave Schultz is going to be too impressed with Buddy's softball prowess. I loved Buddy getting carried far enough away that he turned the one player's offer to try out for a semipro team into an honest-to-God Major League Baseball tryout. Could you imagine someone like Buddy actually getting a tryout with the New York Yankees (or any other team, for that matter)? I wonder if the real Paul Perschmann was as athletically accomplished as the character he played. Hockey, bowling, softball, Buddy could do it all. It's enough to make one wonder why he wasted his time with this pro wrestling stuff. I think Frank was about to gently suggest just how full of bologna Buddy was at the end of the interview, then decided against it like the gentleman he is. I don't recall raising his voice to a wrestler in any clip we've seen, in fact. As much as I like interviewers like Mean Gene Okerlund, this is a refreshing change of pace. I hope that Don Coss is cut from a similar mold.

​Ric Flair Promo (5/14/83): ​This is a real meat-and-potatoes job. Flair only lets his cockiness show briefly as he puts over Portland as one of the toughest areas in the world. Billy Jack and Piper are mentioned by name as the toughest challengers he faced on this tour, and he expects to see both of them again when he returns. Piper's earlier promo isn't even referred to here, and that's a smart move on Flair's part. It couldn't be improved on or topped, so Flair just left it alone and did his own thing. Flair must have been serious about loving to work for Owen, because he made trips to Portland long after he stopped appearing for other NWA territories. In fact, his last non-JCP appearance as NWA World champion came in Portland in the fall of 1988, as most of you know. I can't wait to see him and Billy Jack go at it, and I hope a title match of theirs made the main set. Flair and Oliver are a bit of an odd couple, but their shared attitude makes them two peas in a pod. I'm looking forward to the tag match where they go against Billy Jack and Piper, who don't seem like a natural pairing at first glance either.

​Roddy Piper Promo (5/14/83): ​I've actually seen this one before. It's probably the most effective rebuttal against negative mainstream press coverage of wrestling that I've ever seen. There are too many great lines to sit here and highlight them all, but let's just say that Steve Whatshisname gets as thorough a whipping as any wrestler to ever step foot in a ring, only this one does more damage because 1) It's a thousand percent real and 2) Piper's mouth is a much more dangerous weapon than most physical tools possessed by the average wrestler. I loved seeing Dutch crack up in the background after Rod cut loose with some of his gems. He's probably wanted to tell every smartass reporter who ever questioned his integrity exactly where to go and what to do once he got there, but felt he had to hold back for the good of the business. The funny thing is, Rod probably could have gone on for most of the rest of the program, and I don't even think Don Owen himself could have stopped him. ​​Line of the Segment goes to the finale. To paraphrase: "Doesn't it make you feel good that an eighth-grade educated wrestler is tellin' you how to do your job?" I've seen a lot of Pits​ and heard a lot of Rod's interviews, but this segment just may be his best mic work ever, and I'm not exaggerating one bit. Not even Flair, who's up next, can possibly follow it.

​Roddy Piper Promo (4/30/83): ​This promo had it all: intensity, craziness, nostalgia, humor, and a genuine love for the Portland area. Just from the way Rod speaks here, I can tell why he settled there. It really was home to him, and he gets that across, even more than the particulars of his match with Flair. Wonderful shoutouts to the MD poster boy (whom we saw him with on the last disc) and Frank Bonnema. I'll bet Rod and Frank ​did ​laugh a lot off-camera back in the day; Frank seems like the type of guy who would enjoy hanging with the wrestlers when his schedule permitted. I was also touched by the way Rod remembered Moondog Mayne, who was simultaneously his good friend and his deadliest enemy, depending on which half of California they happened to be in on a given night. (If I'm not mistaken, they were enemies in San Francisco and friends in Los Angeles.) Rod mentioning Kitty and his daughter was another nice touch, and it helped to show how desperate he would be to beat Flair, who was fighting for nothing but himself and a few so-called "bleached blondes". Did they really make such things as diesel Cadilacs, or was that just a figment of Rod's fertile imagination? This promo is repeated for the first five minutes of the Piper clip from 5/14.

​Buzz Sawyer Promo: ​A wonderfully emotional promo from Buzz. He's not quite in Mad Dog mode, but he still sounds really, really scary. It looks like we're going to get some tag matches between the Sawyers and Oliver/Assassin sooner rather than later. Was the story of Buzz's near-fatal car accident real, or did he throw it in just to put a little extra emotion into the feud? I'm sure at least some of the Portland fans were still keeping up with Buzz's exploits in Georgia through WTBS (assuming they had cable), which should have made his return even more emotional than it otherwise might have been. I guess Gordon Solie and Freddie Miller weren't available to do this interview, so that's why they used Simmons. I've heard the name, and I always thought he was a wrestler, not a TV personality.

​Frank Bonnema Death Announcement (10/9/82): ​Even through my (so far) limited exposure to Portland, I've come to like Frank, and I understand why the promotion felt his loss so keenly. I've criticized his lack of excitement at times, but he always seems like a man of class when he's onscreen. Fortunately, I have a few more interviews and almost three years' worth of matches to go through with him as the voice, so this really isn't goodbye for me yet. I'm guessing that all the wrestlers, faces and heels alike, paid tribute to Frank during this show. Does anyone know if the regular card, angles and all, went off as planned, or did almost everything except the matches themselves stop for a week in Frank's memory, just like it did in JCP for Magnum TA's accident?

​Dave Schultz Interview (7/24/82): ​Dave can't outtalk Buddy and he knows it, so he doesn't try. He still has the "baby" disease, but he does an excellent job of getting over the potential brutality of the match, and also reminds the audience several times that they won't be able to see it on TV because of that brutality. If an interview like this won't help to sell out the House of Action, nothing will. Interesting that Dave teases a heel turn at the very end of the promo, going so far as to call the Portland fans "beer-bellied sharecroppers". I thought he was in as a face who just happened to be feuding with Buddy, but it looks like he's just the people's choice because ​he's feuding with Buddy. There isn't a thing in the world wrong with that, because Dave's one of the best natural heels this sport has ever seen. But if he can't drive Buddy out, what's left for him? No offense to anyone, but all the top heels are in Rose's Army at the moment, and Dave just doesn't seem like the type who would take orders from a man he just tried to cripple and who tried to cripple him in turn (Buddy).

​Brutus Beefcake (Dizzy Hogan) Interview: ​For those who think WWF heel Beefcake or The Barber were brutal, check this out. Beefcake's trying to sound like Hogan here, but unfortunately the Hogan he's trying to sound like is the heel Hogan from his run for Vince the Elder, which is when he was at his worst on the mic. Hogan still had the charisma to draw people to him in spite of that, though; Beefcake doesn't. He sounds more like Dave Schultz than Hogan, truth be told, and he desperately needed Frank to do a Lance Russell and lead him through the interview. Unfortunately, Frank didn't do stuff like that, so we ended up with the slog we saw. Beefcake sounded like he was in a dream as he talked about holding Hogan's money and Hogan's appearance on ​The Tonight Show; it's almost as if he knew even then that being a lackey was basically all he would be good for in the eyes of most people. He spent almost no time talking about himself whatsoever, which only made this whole thing worse. Did Owen actually think Hogan might come in, and as a heel to feud with Rocky Johnson yet? That would have been a giant step backward for him, and it wouldn't have done a whole lot for Beefcake either. Then again, the way this interview was going, it could have been just Beefcake rambling off the top of his head and Frank not knowing how to stop him.

Buddy Rose Interview (7/24/82)​: Five months, and Buddy and Schultz are still trying to kill each other. I'm glad to see we get a full match between them later on the disc, and I hope we get at least one more as part of the top hundred, because the clips I've seen so far look awesome (and I mean that literally). I liked Buddy putting over Dave as much as he did; it really made Dave seem like a threat to him. The more I see of Buddy doing interviews like this, the more I'm convinced that he's one of the top heel promos of all time. You have to hand it to Owen for coming up with new and different stipulations. If Buddy and Dave don't stay in the ring, they don't get paid? You might say that this is the same thing as a cage match, but it's not. They won't have the cage to use as a weapon, and assuming that all the other rules are enforced, we're either going to get an actual wrestling match or a bare-knuckles fistfight. Knowing these two, I'm betting on the latter. I got a kick out of the Fernando Valenzuela T-shirt Buddy wore; this was around the time that he was the best-known baseball player in the country, so it would make sense that a superstar like Buddy would (supposedly) want to hang out with him.

​Vince and the Future Mr. Perfect: ​Vince was at his best setting the scene for the interview; his brief recap of Curt's injury was spellbinding, and if it had been seen on WWF TV, the fans would have been clamoring for a match between Curt and Buddy to be at least the semi-main at MSG. There's only one problem: Buddy's never mentioned by name, not once​. Maybe Owen figured that the fans in Portland already knew the story behind the feud, but most promoters would make sure that their fans heard the names Curt Hennig and Buddy Rose together as often as humanly possible. I know Vince certainly would have. Curt was good here, and bringing up the fact that he couldn't play with his children because Buddy hurt his knee so badly was a guaranteed heartstring-tugger. He would certainly get better on the mic as the years went by, and turning heel really freed him, as it did most guys. Nice shot of the "scar" by the cameraman, I could actually see the outline of stitches, which means that Curt had definitely had surgery fairly recently, whether Buddy was actually responsible or not.