Matt D

Once they add JTG to the group, you know they're in trouble. Seriously, though. They will get the depush. No new talent in "WWE" history has survived without it. You can look at everyone from Bryan to Barrett to Sheamus to ADR. New character debuts. Gets over. Is pushed hard. At a certain point they get depushed heavily to see how they'll take it. When pushed again they've immediately become just another guy. In a lot of ways I don't think the Shield should have gotten over. Rollins' in the flack jacket is just a weird visual. There was so much room for them to screw up their six man tag style and it's a miracle that they've been all on the same page and have shown proper cohesion and restraint, especially given the indy bullshit background of two of them. Their whole "justice" purpose is pretty shoddy and they were outright shown to be flunkies for Heyman at one point. Really, there's nothing separating them from the Nexus except for the fact that they've been hugely protected in the ring. It's a lesson of how almost anyone can get over if handled well and almost anything can fall apart if not handled well.

Rose/Rogers vs Starr/Adonis 2/3 Falls - 7/7/79 Buddy and Rip are sporting bandana headbands. For those who care, Rip is clean shaven which looks weird but sort of highlights the physical resemblance between he and Buddy. Pretty sure this for the held up belts. Rose stooges all over for Starr doing a pretty good job flailing about and selling. He eats one killer dropkick after they break up a Rose attempt to interfere. It wasn't so high but he leaned into it. Nice little spot with a begging off Rogers getting pushed from behind by Adonis right into a headlock takeover. Buddy takes a huge looking bump off the screen in a heel miscommunication spot. Faces take out Rose, trying to come back in with charging billy goat headbutts and then Adonis wins fall#1 on Rogers with the spinning toehold. Buddy didn't get in at all. Fun shine. Rip is pretty good at starting falls by selling. In Portland, btw, the person who loses the fall has to start the match and can't tag until there is physical contact. Rip gets pulled right back into the faces' corner. We get some comedy stooging Heel In Peril as Rogers tries to make the tag until Bully runs in and hits. It was pretty entertaining, flailing stuff but this is a fairly big match in context and I think it went on a bit long in general. I really like Adonis FIPs from this era. Rose's stuff looks really good against him and Adonis is great at making desperate comebacks only to get cut off at the last second. It took me a while to really start to buy him as a babyface wrestler but he's really dynamic in these tags. Anyway, Rip cuts him off with a long chinlock/sleeper, which doesn't look great except for the fact that they keep moving with it. I do like the Rip/Rose pairing. It brings out a different dynamic than Rose/Wiskowski (which I of course liked). More energy, some more stooging, a little more desperation, a little less methodological. Here they keep cutting off hope spots by putting on a desperate hold. Starr finally has enough on the outside and comes in. Barr stops him and the heels hit first a double clothesline which Starr manages to break up and then a head-held second rope flying knee strike which looked pretty brutal for the second fall. Third fall has Adonis fighting out of the corner. I really love the structural shortcuts in these 2/3 fall matches. You can get the hot tag at the start of the third fall, which is what we get here. Starr gets in and starts unloading on Buddy but buddy hits a quick cheap shot and they trade blocked atomic drops. Roddy comes out and Buddy collides into him on the apron letting the faces roll him up for the win and the titles. This was a pretty abrupt third fall but felt totally in character for Piper as his sort of punch drunk way of interfering cost the heels the belts and moves us right back to Rose vs Piper which is what the crowd really wanted anyway. Good functional stuff.

It really is amazing how meaningless Mania has become. If I had to choose I'd choose going to the Raw after over Mania itself in a heartbeat.

I would have liked a bit more wearing down and beating on each other personally but it was brisk and interesting at least. not sure I'd call it necessarily good.

The eventual Shield depush is going to be nasty.

Traditionally, I feel like Vince's biggest issue has always been not knowing what to do with their excess money. Part of me thinks that if, instead of screwing around with icoPRO and the WBF and the XFL and the movies, they had created a more robust developmental system or focused even more money into breaking into international markets like it looked like they'd be doing with Shane in Japan or whatever, and just doubled-down on their main product, they would have been so much better off.

They're really quite good at finding new revenue streams. Doesn't that basically make everything else moot? If the product ever really does get hot again, everything's going to light up like a jackpot because of how well diversified they are. If it doesn't, they'll keep plodding along indefinitely.

It's interesting to me how thoroughly they retooled things for Ross in 93-early 94. I hadn't realized that the opening to Wrestling Challenge was as centered around him as Superstars' opening had been centered around the Ultimate Warrior's entrance in 90-91.

Rose vs Tim Brooks - Dog Collar Match - June 2, 1979 Been looking forward to this. Hey! Don Owen and his technicolor sports jacket sure looks a lot like Boyd Pierce! bossing around Buddy. Sandy Barr looks like a sesame street character with his shirt and red pants too. They really milk Rose putting on the collar. Part of the story was that Buddy agreed to the match but he didn't want it to be televised (Owen: "We should have known better than to put this on TV anyway" Awesome). Roddy comes out and holds Buddy still as they get the collar on him. Great performance by Rose here. Buddy uses the chain as a weapon from the get go but Brooks fights back and it's impossible to concentrate on anything but Buddy sticking his tongue out and selling everything like brutal death, especially once Brooks starts using it as a weapon. There's a bit too much choking/guzzling here which doesn't work well since we can't see Rose's face. Buddy comes back with a low blow which pisses off the fans and then he starts coming up with plenty of interesting ways to use the chain. After some nasty stuff Brooks hits a low blow of his own. This is pretty back and forth but the chain is such a game changer that it works. Brooks opens up Buddy and then wraps the chain around the wound. Just brutal. They make sure to mention that there's security keeping Wiskowski from coming out from the dressing room. The beating is nasty enough that they have to explain it. Brooks slams Buddy into the metal of the turnbuckle and when he goes for it again, it's reversed, but Brooks stops him and hits a haymaker, only to get his neck (hurt badly weeks before by the tandem in the face turn) jerked hard by the momentum of Buddy bumping. Awesome transition but they really don't capitalize on it. Brook is fighting back immediately. And then they end up doing this great spot with Buddy ending up tied around the ring post. Wiskowski finally escapes and makes his way out with a chair. Match is thrown out as Wiskowski gets the chain off of Brooks and starts pummeling him. Piper makes the save. They call it a dq win for Brooks. The fans consider that a huge win even though Buddy didn't quit. They set up a tag cage match out of this. What's here is really interesting but if they had given us 4 minutes of Heat after the neck injury before the come back and the crazy corner tying post at the end, it would have been borderline great. Rose/Rogers vs Adonis/Star - 2/3 Falls Match - June 30, 1979 We're into the end of June and they're saying Wiskowski is out with an injury so 24 year old Rip Rogers is subbed in as the Hustler. I like Ed but I've always liked Rip too, so I'm not complaining. Rip brings a different energy then Wiskowski. Early on, we get a pretty frantic shine with lots of arm drags and Buddy getting clotheslined over one rope and then the other. Babyfaces look good. Rip can stooge already and we get heel miscommunications and comedy setting up a first fall from a spinning toe-hold. All faces in the first fall. Second fall has Buddy being amazing pretending to be the one who was hurt instead of Rip. There's so much stooging here. Starr holds Rogers' leg out and Adonis hits a top rope elbow drop on it. Then Adonis holds it down and Starr hits a top rope splash on it. They're just dismantling poor Rip. Adonis does a leap frog over his partner onto the leg. Adonis gets kicked off RIGHT into Buddy's corner though. Great transition as Buddy keeps slamming his arm into the pole from outside letting Rip make the tag and immediately start on the arm. Buddy's so scummy that he can grab the tights on a hammerlock and you think logically that it really wouldn't make that much of a difference, that bit of extra leverage, but the fans hate it since it's Buddy. Adonis is pretty good at working babyface spots in and making them look good. The story here is that everytime he does, the heels are able to get a quick tag and go right back to the arm. Rip is definitely not as polished with is armwork but in this framework it still does its job. They even explain it a little that Buddy is teaching Rip to be a crippler too. They do the hope/tag spot three times to really ratchet up the heat with Starr and the crowd getting more and more frustrated. Then they start doing the more dirty southern tag stuff to ratchet it up more. Adonis finally fights back with one arm, gets overwhelmed and tossed into the corner, but Starr does the ol' "jump in the way to protect your partner" move and the fans go nuts as we get one of the hottest tags I've seen in Portland. Starr's offense looks really good with a hip attack and a nice butterfly suplex, but Rose comes out of nowhere to break up the russian legsweep. The heels keep swarming back though and it basically breaks down here. Heels finally hit a double clothesline in the chaos to take the fall. It was all a bit of a mess at the end there. There was good stuff after the hot tag but it all could have used a little more space and focus. Third fall starts with a fairly long Rogers chinlock and they go back to the face escapes/heels tag heat set up. Buddy hits a nice neckbreaker (the old "Tony Borne hold"). Rose is a great cut off guy, just when it comes to timing and in giving the face enough to make it a real hope spot. One problem with current WWE tag wrestling is that you can tell when something's going to happen just by seeing where it is in the match and a few visual clues. It's all paint by numbers. There were hope spots here that I would have sworn would lead to the hot tag but Rose bore down believably and effectively. When the hot tag finally comes it's awesome with Star crawling backwards on his back at hyper speed to make the tag. Adonis comes in with a lot of fire and it breaks down again. Rogers tosses Rose the time keepers chair but Starr gets it and nails Buddy causing the heels in front of the ref. They give the belts to the heels despite the DQ and Dutch Savage comes to argue about this. The fans are irate in the face of the confusion until the faces attack them and Barr takes the belts back away. Barr, at the end DQs both teams and holds the belts up. There's this great moment where Buddy forces himself into the foreground and looks pissed off but the VQ is too poor and it's too quick to get a good screencap of it. The heat segment on Adonis was super as was the stooging in the first fall. The whole thing doesn't entirely hold together out of context, but in context to set up the belts being held up it works well.

As a kid I much preferred Out of this World to Small Wonder. I am glad that I will never, ever see it again though. Some things should be kept in one's dusty childhood memories. It's given me a lifelong love of "So you want to swing on a star." though.

Rose vs Piper, Lumberjack match, May 19, 1979 Fairly heated arm stuff to begin with Piper in charge. Wiskowski cleverly trips Piper from the outside to lead to the first transition and Buddy taking over and grinding down on Piper. Buddy hammers away on Piper, alternating between corner throws, clubbers and a pretty nasty chinlock. Wiskowski goes for another trip but Stasiak comes around to police him. This is a one fall match so it has a more traditional shine/heat+Comebacks+cutoffs structure. Piper does one of the best wristlocks out of a chinlock I've seen. They really fight for it and Rose's facial expressions are great, and then Buddy takes the hair and puts a headlock back on. They make great use of the lumberjacks with Buddy kicking Piper out over and over again as Wiskowski pushes him back in. Super simple spot but it looks great. Just endless stomps. Piper has really good haymaker comeback punches and Buddy makes them look great, but a clubber cuts off Piper again and Buddy hits a HUGE back body drop. He goes for another and Piper kicks him. Buddy still goes a pin attempt but it's really the start of Piper's full punchdrunk comeback. Rose goes out to escape it but he keeps getting tossed back in by the lumberjacks. Fun stuff with just no escape for Buddy. Piper had a great act in 79. He's really a perfect foil for Buddy. He just mauls away until he misses a dropkick and they go back and forth for a minute until Piper puts on an airplane spin which is somewhat less impressive than it'd be ten years later. It end up on the floor with all the wrestlers fighting Buddy and Wiskowski in destroying Piper. Killer Brooks comes out of the crowd (he'd been put out in the big turn for Piper) with a chain and clears house as the crowd goes nuts. Huge moment. They roll Buddy back in and Piper wins as Brooks gets the biggest pop possible. Match itself wasn't as good as the last one but they used the lumberjack gimmick well and Brooks' return worked as well as it possibly could have. Buddy Rose vs Johnny Eagles - 2/3 Falls - May 26, 1979 I've never seen any Johnny Eagles but he's announced as the Houdini of the Mat. Lots of BS about whether Wiskowski will stay or not to begin. Eagles gets pissed off, nails Buddy out of nowhere and rolls him up for the first fall, just like that. Mid-Fall we get Brooks swearing more vengeance. Second fall starts with some fun comedy wrestling with Buddy trying escapes and just getting made to look like a goof in the best way possible. Just these awesome lackadaisical headlocks that Buddy will escape and just end up right back in. The absolute coolest was this reversal of an ankle lock type position that I can't even explain. I just loved it though. I'm sure this stuff was super comtaamon in WoS matches but in this setting it's fun and the crowd eats it up. Buddy keeps going to the hair to get the advantage as the crowd gets more and more pissed. There's the impression of poor Buddy watching a magic trick unfold before him as Eagles escapes from a headscissors in this weird obtuse way, helpless to stop it no matter what he did. You get the impression that buddy was having the time of his life eating all of this stuff. Oh man, then Buddy keeps doing headstands to get out of a headscissors and Eagles keeps jamming him. This stuff is hilarious. Buddy finally has enough and starts unloading only to make the mistake of putting on armbar. Even after a bit of chicanery, Eagles reverses it. Buddy catches him in the corner and puts on the Billy Robinson backbreaker but ref Sandy Barr gets kicked in the face. Buddy then hits an illegal karate chop, wakes Barr up and gets the second fall. Third fall has Buddy go for another immediate chop but Eagles counters and takes over. Buddy manages to get him into one of those catapault into the ropes, land on the knees moves which I haven't seen him do before. He hits another Billy Robinson backbreaker and gets a quick pin. This is all set up for Brooks coming out with a chain though. Buddy blades and Brooks just keeps dragging him around the arena with the chain, all the way to the interview area where he gets rose to cry uncle. Buddy gollums until Wiskowski comes out to talk for him. Hugely entertaining match which had both guys looking good and pretty effective post match to set up the chain match.

I've made the argument before and I really think it's true: The shift to El Matador really helped Tito's matches in 91-93. Up until then, he'd hit a real formula where whenever Tito was going to lose, he'd hit the flying forearm but the heel would roll out of the ring or get his foot on the ropes and at that point, you knew Tito couldn't possibly win. Having El Paso de la Muerte in his back pocket suddenly made everything a heck of a lot more interesting.

Rose vs Piper 2/3 Falls - May 12, 1979 This is something. It's super heated compared to almost everything I've seen. Rose just works and works and works at the wound on Piper's head that he inflicted the previous tuesday. It's brutal, and makes the opening stretch where Rose gets the advantage totally believable. The nastiest part is sort of an atomic noogie of doom into it from a chinlock position. At one point Rose is literally putting his hand on either side of the cut and pressing it open. Piper grabs sympathy out of this, which is amazing since just a few days before he was the centerpiece of a battle royal with women in it because he'd been brutalizing one of them. Piper tries to fight out but Buddy keeps grinding him down with the nastiest chinlock variations there are, fishhooking and gouging and rabbit kneeing him and nooging again. Piper does a punch drunk facial expression better than anyone. Piper's comeback is something of a medium burn. He fights back. Buddy stomps him down but it's too late. The momentum has shifted and it feels not like a hulking up but like a hope spot come unglued. The crowd comes unglued too as Piper just starts to deconstruct Buddy with methodological violence. He picks him up after the first swinging neckbreaker and Buddy is BRILLIANT with these dead-armed flails against Roddy's torso, complete futility as Roddy hits another neckbreaker and takes the first fall. Second fall: Piper shows amazing restraint here. He's really picking Rose apart. After a couple of minutes of this, he tosses Rose into the turnbuckle. Then things break down, literally. The second turnbuckle comes down and Piper misses this amazing flying front drop kick into the turnbuckle allowing Buddy to pick up the turnbuckle/hook and maul Piper until Dutch Savage can come in and stop him. I have no idea if the dropkick was supposed to be what dislodged it and it went early but it looked like Buddy was able to get out of the way because of it so it still works. Rose starts really working on the back as they fix the ring, including a great charge into the pole with Piper in his arms. Buddy goes nuts and dismantles more turnbuckles and there's just a great manic energy to the match. He hits the billy Robinson backbreaker but then picks him up just like Piper had. Piper fights back (which is a great tease of buddy's comeuppance) but Buddy gets him in it again. Awesome stuff. Third fall begins with both guys really spent. Buddy puts on a bearhug, keeping on the back but Piper punches out including a nasty one to the lip. They end out on the floor and Wiskowski comes out nowhere to cheapshot Piper in the chaos. Rose gets back into the ring and that's the countout. No wonder this popped the territory. Great great match.

you know what I actually hate? I hate the Kamala match. I thought it started out really well but it broke down due to, I think, them trying to wrestle a match they thought the audience wanted to see instead of the match that they should have wrestled.

It just boggles the mind that someone who is such a good wrestler is the funniest guy on the roster. I mean, it shouldn't, because they're both elements of performance and timing and what not, but the thing with regal as ninjas he just did, and the bears, and god knows what else, were just amazing. The rap with Kane.

Rose/Wiskowski vs Stasiak/Wells - April 21, 1979 Date confuses me since it's the same as the other match but that's what I have. Stasiak is a guy I've only seen in portland and a few years older at that. He and Wells start out with lots of wrenching armwork on Wiskowski. He has a certain presence to him which lets you buy him manhandling big Ed. Rose is great at getting distracted by the fans to miss the tag and then to pull Wiskowski back into the corner (While in a standing hold) by his foot. Stasiak's rising pumphandle arm wrench is pretty great and the fans respond. Stasiak has this weird greaser look. Heels take over with hair pulling and Rose goes for arm wrenching of his own (good character stuff) but Stasiak almost instantly tags and Wells makes Rose beg off (Better character stuff). And this is pretty engrossing shine work. Great tease of the heart punch (which they were selling as the biggest thing in the world) and awesome underhanded heel tactics to really start the first fall's heat segment. Wells fights back before too long and Stasiak comes in like a madman. There are a couple of weird flubby heel misdirection spots here including Wells not chasing Buddy out of the ring like he was supposed to, but what they were going for was sound enough even if nothing special. During that aforementioned quasi-chase, Ed hits a diving headbutt for the first fall. Second fall starts out with great southern stuff. Desperation heel tags to cut off comebacks. Leverage tricks. Fake tag chicanery. Angry babyface on the apron screwing his own team. Stasiak is good at being very focused in trying to make the tag. Buddy slaps on a chinlock at some point and winds Stasiak around so that he's facing away from his corner. Tiny thing but the sort you'd never even think of. This turns out to be a really great little heat segment. Stasiak fights back but always ends up in the wrong corner. They really delay the hot tag to the point where it's really hot when it happens, but Wells misses a corner tackle almost immediately. His movements are very weird in the ring. He does things like try to fight irish whips in a weird way. I love Wiskoski's body drop onto the shoulders. Wells gets beaten on a bit but makes a hot tag to Stasiak who immediately gets swarmed upon by non-legal man Buddy. Great heeling tactics in this match. We get the 1979 equivalent of the top rope counter RKO as Wiskowski goes for the headbutt again only to get heart punched on the way down for the second fall. And uh.... that's all I've got. Wells was really not so smooth here, but there was a great heat segment on Stasiak and Rose/Wiskowski were so good at callbacks and foreshadowing. I really liked the second fall.

Yoko had amazing timing. Amazing. Especially in cut offs. I'm February 1994 in my WWF watching (watching everything we have available online) but I'm behind on Buddy Rose stuff that's been posted and that's more of a priority. I'll add some stuff while I go. You need to watch the Duggan vs Yoko match from Europe from 93 though. It's really great.

Wait, let me page Fowler.

I wish more people would look at really late Bossman stuff. If you can get away from "Great match" mentality and see a guy in 3-8 minute matches trying to accomplish very specific things and doing an amazing job at accomplishing those things in an interesting way, you can really see how good and smart he was at that point.

Is there any advantage at all to a Texas Death Match over a Last Man Standing match?

Buddy vs Hector Guerrero, April 14, 1979 This should be fun. I don't think I've seen Buddy against someone this much smaller than him in this run. We get a lot of rope running and arm drags. Guerrero works the arm and seems honestly happy that the crowd is behind him. Rose would keep getting a move and quickly go for an elbow drop or something and miss, only to hurt his arm in the process and keep the shine going. Or Buddy will grab the hair to get a mometary advantage but get tossed through with the momentum. This is all babyface in control by numbers but Hector's got some fun stuff (rolling short arm scissors) and Rose's reactions and expressions are great. This sort of thing goes on and on as they switch between holds and rope running and it might go on a little long for the length of the match but Hector's whole sthick here is speed and techniue so I'm ok with it. Buddy takes a powder, goes for the handshake but Hector kicks him with the cheapshot and keeps it churning. You really feel for Buddy here because he's getting out classed no matter what he tries. Finally, Rose hits an elbow out of nowhere and starts to really dismantle Hector using his light frame for all he can get out of it. There are some really gritty looking knees to the side of a prone hector as well. Guerrero gets a flash sunset flip with his speed and starts to take back over (which seems a little much to me, but the flip side is that Buddy is so built up that you know if head more than 2-3 minutes of offense in a row he'd win the match just like that), including this awesome repeated upward mule kicks onto Buddy hanging over the top turnbuckle. Eventually, Hector goes for a cross body and gets caught. Buddy does this awesome little touch of bouncing back against the ropes in order to steady himself before hitting the ribbreaker. Billy Robinson backbreaker and the pin. Wiskowski comes in and they hit the Billy Robinson Polish Doughboy Decapitation again causing Barr to reverse the decision.Hector getting so much offense isn't so bad when Buddy gets the pin so decisively and then they break him in half post-match, but I think I would have liked to see a longer heat segment here. Buddy vs King Parsons, April 21, 1979 This is cut off at the end but Parsons is a hugely different opponent than Guerrero, so let's see what Buddy does a week later. Buddy has a superman shirt on, claims that Stasiak's heart punch can't get through his chest. Rip is seconding Buddy so I find this timeline a little dubious, but I will trust in youtube. Buddy takes an early control with deliberate, cheaty armwork while a very angry granny looks on. Parsons reverses and Buddy pops the crowd by selling his hand huge after he tries to hit Parsons' in the head. They're working the crowd pretty well in this opening. Rose gets a toe on the rope and Sandy Barr goes into business for himself stooging and then kicking it off. For all the crap Buddy puts Sandy through I suppose it's vaguely forgivable. One thing I love about Portland is how much of a family it all seems, whether it's selling the tickets at Sandy Barr's flea market or here, pointing out the news anchor's brother in the crowd. Buddy takes over, hones in on the back and then they start playing up the head again with a big turnbuckle shot that fails utterly. They curtail it quickly enough though and it actually works ok as a hope spot instead of a transition. It's a little back and forth until Rose very dramatically grabs the rope on a dropkick. He starts driving the knee back into the spine which is the only thing that's really worked against Parsons so far and what I'm watching ends. Both of these matches had a lot of comedy and Rose showing ass but they're both quite varied in the actual spots and techniques used. I don't know if I'd call either close to the best of what I've been watching lately though.

There isn't a ton of Colossal Connection on tape and I've already done at least one of the Demolition matches (the MSG match is really good, btw). There's the Rockers match, maybe a few more. How much Machines do we have?

We like Haku a lot, especially for the stuff you seem to have not seen. He's a big part of my #3 on my AWA ballot and we had a match of the week where he had a great performance. Have you turned the corner on Bossman at all?

Chime in on the Bossman thread on what your favorite stuff was.

He was being awesome in Montreal is what.