Matt D

They're both excellent matches. The Hart match is probably more interesting as it's really a merging of the two teams' styles (and a great showcase of Eadie's versatility since he's so good at knowing when and where to stooge given the stage and the team he's in against after years of not stooging at all). The Rockers match is probably better in a vacuum though. I'm too close to this stuff to really say.

Rose vs Martel - Non-Title - 2/3 Falls - April 26, 1980 Rose obviously lost the hair match vs Piper as he has a mask with a wig on it. It's amazingly awesome. Buddy takes a powder to begin and they start doing their stuff. Martel out-athleticisms Rose in a wrestling exchange. Buddy jumps outside again and tries to calm the hot crowd down. I love watching these two run the ropes. Buddy gets the advantage with a drop toe hold. He looks ridiculous with the mask and does a really killer elevated leglock before slapping on a nasty cross-legged toehold. He puts his weight down upon it and loads up his forearm for the crowd before nailing him. Martel's really selling this. Buddy's stuff is so good here and the payoff is amazing as Martel goes for the wig to get out only to get punched in the leg. Buddy follows up with a bunch of brutal kicks and leg dives and then an Indian Deathlock. Great stuff. I love that they went almost right to the heat in this first fall. After really working it, Martel rolls over to reverse it and it's a much cooler looking visual than a normal figure four reversal. Buddy flips it back over and locks it in again though he has a harder time keeping his shoulders up this time. Again, great stuff. Martel jams his palm against Buddy's chin to force him down and it's actually a pretty dynamic hope spot, especially once it starts to let him unload and escape. He's selling the leg huge though and it lets Buddy keep right on him. Bonnema goes on about the people Buddy has crippled and it's very effective announcing. Buddy goes for another leglock but Martel rolls him up for a hope cradle. Buddy has ton of varied and solid looking leg offense and this is all quite compelling. Buddy wrenches the leg and Martel desperately goes to anything to get out but can't. Buddy goes for another butt drop on the leg in the ropes but Martel moves in a good callback spot into what looked like it'd be a transition but Martel goes for an atomic drop and jams his own bad leg in the process selling it like death. Buddy pulls him out and slams his leg twice into the ringpost then hits a beauty of a shin breaker and slaps on an immediate half crab for the fall. This was a great promise for the rest of the match. It wasn't as dynamic as a lot of other first falls I've seen in Portland because there wasn't much of a shine and no real comeback to speak of but it was super focused and created a mood and feel for the next falls. Second fall starts with an announcement that despite the damage to his leg, Martel will continue the match. He limps down to the ring. Buddy shoots for the leg from the get go and Martel dances back. After a minute or so Buddy scores a great takedown and scissors up the leg. Buddy puts on another half crab but Martel is under the ropes. Buddy's relentless with a damaging blows until he drags Martel out again to slam the leg into the pole but Martel, on the second attempt, grabs Buddy's head and slams it into the pole. Martel, pissed off, rolls out after Buddy instead of taking the sure thing count out and picks him up, slamming his back into the pole. He's selling the leg really well throughout, between every single blow he lays in on Buddy's back. Great performance. He slams his back into the post again and the crowd is unglued here. Martel keeps limping in to break the count so he can do more damage. He finally rolls him back in and hits some great elbow drops, selling after each one. Crowd is still nuts as Martel does axehandle after axehandle into the spine. He's just demolishing him but he's doing one of the best sell-jobs-on-offense I've ever seen. He finally puts on the Boston Crab on and Buddy gives it up. Awesome, awesome comeback. Third fall has Martel taking the fight right to Buddy. He whips him into the corner and stumbles around clubbering the back. He hits a big backbreaker but uses his right leg so he doesn't hurt himself like last time. He's still selling after almost every shot though and it slow him down enough that Buddy can try to fight back but Martel hits a belly to back to reverse an attempt at a stalling headlock. Martel is dogged on the back until Buddy rakes the eyes but can't hit a slam due to his back hurting. The crowd goes nuts and even more so as Martel locks on an Abdominal stretch, but Rose grabs the hair and gets out quickly. Martel comes back quickly and wears him down a bit more before going for the mask. They end up with Buddy on the floor and Martel in the ring and he gets it off but the camera cuts to the Sheepherders coming in to cover him up. The live fans get to see it but the TV crowd doesn't. Buddy runs to the back and gets counted out and you know, I like it even if it's not exactly "Sports-driven" and is a little wonky. It was a great story driven finish that played perfectly into Buddy's character and was a very, very clear victory for Martel that sent the fans home wildly happy. This was tremendous and I'm glad it lived up to the hype. It's really up there with Martel's best AWA stuff. His selling was brilliant and his offense was so fiery and spirited. I think the fact that he wasn't quite as experienced helped in some ways because it meant the match took less tangents. It was extremely focused and that made everything all the more logical and meaningful. That Buddy wrestled this match and really had this performance while wearing the goofy match which is not something he was used to at all can't be overlooked. Ultimately, it used the 2/3 falls structure as well as any match I've seen out of Portland as of yet.

I make a habit to rarely go outside of our bubble here.

I would take ten minutes of Rip Rogers over a lot of things.

Sid could have been a draw as a face in early 92. I feel pretty strongly about that. It's hypothetical though. He did main event a number of house shows in 91 vs Undertaker so I guess people could look at those figures.

As a draw?

Justin Credible might be a better choice then.

Honestly, I think the issue is that they gave Goldberg the belt in 98 at all. He had only gotten the US title a little while before and he could have held that for a year as sort of a special attraction. Wait a sec, this isn't in the fantasy booking section. EDIT: Or I guess it is.

Reading Bix' Divas recap makes me frustrated that the Bellas didn't have Jimmy Hart as their manager at the fake movie meeting.

Real life struck, but I'm back watching Buddy matches. Unfortunately I don't have time for the April Martel vs Buddy match tonight. I do have time for Rose vs Steve Pardee - 2/3 Falls - March 22, 1980 They're really building to the Piper vs Rose blow off match. Piper's gone through the Sheepherders and taken Luke Williams' hair. Etc. This might be JIP as Pardee starts with a headlock and already looks blown up. Rose does a big suplex out of it and starts to really pick apart Pardee. Knee. Stomp. Choke on the top rope. A really nice open hand strike or two and a crazy back body drop where Pardee got twisted in midair. Robinson backbreaker and that's the fall. Buddy does a Rockers' flip over the rope between falls. Not much to this but all well executed and certainly builds him up for the big match. Second fall is just Buddy grinding down. Eventually he grinds enough that Pardee gets really opened up. He bites the wound and Pardee bleeds all over the place. He's really brutal on the wound-working here. Will would approve. Sandy Barr, however, does not and he awards the fall to Pardee. When Buddy pulls back, pissed off, he has blood over his face from biting the wound. Ghastly. Pardee is just a bloody mess. This was all pretty sudden. They were trying to decide whether to award just the fall to Pardee or the match and Buddy rushes back out to destroy Pardee even more. The crowd is livid. Barr throws out the match and Buddy is beyond pleased. Eventually Piper comes out for a go home interview for the big match. This was pretty effective stuff and it's sort of amazing how much damage Buddy was able to do in such a small amount of time.

Ok, Piper doing a dropkick vandaminator in 1980 in a hair match with Luke Williams is one of the most surreal things I've seen in forever.

It's really interesting to me how Portland tried to get Martel over as lead babyface in early 80. Instant series of matches with Race for the big belt. Trading the Portland belt almost immediately with Buddy over a week. But they also did little things like making an announcement that kids would get in free to the next show because he went to Don Owen and insisted or having a match where the Sheepherders are afraid of Martel but not of Piper.

I really like Harts vs Demos at Summerslam but yeah, that's me. I really don't like that Brainbusters vs Stallions match.

I'm stuck home from work today due to my own idiocy and this is when i learned, suddenly, that apparently I do not have a package with this channel. Ah well.

It's tricky with Scorpio since he was both so dynamic and so over with the studio crowds. I don't know when he started to be over but in 93 he was basically the most over guy on the entire roster if you just watched TV.

The match wasn't built up much, if at all, though it was pretty surreal to hear Vince talking about the RnRs on Raw. There was no angle behind it. RnRs weren't national since, what, early 90? A lot of the kids watching in 93 had gotten in after that. I was in that crowd and was vaguely excited to see York Foundation member Richard Morton. It was Boston. I think it's not that WWF crowds hated wrestling but maybe that they needed more than wrestling for wrestling's sake. They needed context and for it to matter to them.

I feel like it's tricky because crowds varied, much as they do now, geographically. I'm sure some things would come out on average, but it'd be more interesting to me to look at the Center Stage audience vs the 93 Raw audience, for instance.

1-42 are just Dylan talking about Confederate Railroad, whatever the heck that is.

I think Survivor Series can matter, but it's harder in a day and age where you have more big tag matches on the weekly shows, to the point where it's basically it's own Teddy Long meme. Traditionally, it was always a great way to build a feud without giving away another singles match (when such things, televised, were rare) and to transition one feud into another while protecting a lot of guys and their finishes. I think it'd probably work best now if they had feuds dovetail into each other and highlighted the personalities on the various teams and how they interact with one another, but that'd probably involve some semblance of build I'm not sure WWE is capable of anymore.

It's eerie how it's mimicked the DVDVR one. Also eerie, timingwise? http://www.wwe.com/classics/inside-ribera-...house-26137247/

Someone ran a bunch on justin.tv a few years ago but it was pretty spotty. I was excited though because it was a pretty big part of my childhood. I remember being really frustrated coming home from school and finding it preempted by the MLB expansion draft one day.

I could honestly make a list that would look like Eaton & Condrey Eaton & Lane Eaton & Regal Eaton & Arn I think i'd have a hard time putting Eaton & Koko or Eaton & Keirn on it though. Do we have any footage of Eaton and Gulas?

One show can move the mark that much?