[1990-03-18-AWA] The Destruction Crew (Mike Enos & Wayne Bloom) & Tully Blanchard vs The Trooper & D.J. Peterson & Paul Diamond (Elimination)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Elimination match. Wayne Bloom and The Trooper get eliminated quickly, which is fine by me, as they are probably the two worst guys in the match. Tully is still way too good to not be working in a major promotion. He's so far above the other guys in the ring that even in not trying to outshine them, he does, more in terms of being smart than anything. Watch him sell the clawhold for Baron Von Raschke, who is at ringside. The execution just looks off for most of these guys, and it makes no sense to have the babyfaces with the interfering manager. In spite of that, this is a solid match, especially when Tully and Enos start working over Peterson's knee.

[Childs]

If Jerry wants to push his Tully-as-all-time-great argument, this wouldn't be a bad addition to the dossier. Blanchard felt like a throw-in to a meaningless match in a dying promotion, and yet he still wrestled like a total star. Everything he did on offense looked great. His timing couldn't have been better. He did expressive heel things without going cartoonish. Just a great pro.

[PeteF3]

Really, no one in this match can be accused of taking the night off, as both DCs bump pretty huge, especially Bloom going absolutely balls-out in the opening. Peterson and Wilkes aren't great but they at least work hard. The Von Raschke stuff is annoying as hell, but outside of a few spots he doesn't overshadow the match too much. All action with a fun finishing stretch of reversals and reversals of reversals with Tully picking up the victory. Blanchard appeared to be as good as he ever was here.

[soup23]

Pretty much the bottom of the barrel and a nothing match besides the performance of Tully. The main plus I give Tully as a worker as its tough for me to see him taking a match off and here he is by far the best person in the match.

[shoe]

Tully was great here. He was the total glue that held this together. Heck he even stooged for the Baron.

[Kevin Ridge]

AWA! Feel like a lot of groups these days wish they could get a crowd that big. Elimination match and two guys are out pretty quickly due to a double count out. Lame. Tully seems out of place here as much better. I thought Enis botched his elimination but with the irish reversal made sense on second viewing.

[Cox]

How did Tully Blanchard's career peter out the way it did after he didn't go back to WCW in '89? It feels baffling to me that Tully didn't eventually wind up back in WCW after sitting out a year or so. For that matter, how did Tully not wind up in Smoky Mountain in '92? How did he not have a Global run when they were throwing around money in '91? Even a short Memphis run would have been interesting, as I don't think he would have necessarily fit in well there, but he probably could have had a Unified title run and a few good matches with Lawler.

 

Anyway, the match was good. Enos and Tully in their brief moments together worked better as a team than Enos and Bloom did for much of their existence, but that might not be fair to Bloom since Tully Blanchard is one of the best tag workers who ever lived. In a 1990 hair update, I think The Trooper has a jheri curl. Glad to see some AWA represented here.

[garretta]

Tully was the star here, no doubt about it. I wonder if he wouldn't have gotten the belt in Larry Z's place if he'd come in a bit earlier and established trust with Verne.

 

Agree about Tully and Enos working well as a two-on-one team against Peterson; that segment was the highlight of the match.

 

I know the crowd went crazy for Baron slapping the claw on Tully, but if you're going to have him interfere, why not have Zbyszko (who I'm assuming was at ringside as captain of his TCS team just like Baron was) do the same? At least have him interfere first so the Baron's spot can be justified as "turnabout is fair play". And did Baron need to interfere three different times?

 

I thought that was Heyman in the heels' corner until I remembered the TCS and that Larry was the heel team captain.

[drew wardlaw]

Everyone works really hard here, this is cool. This looks like a pretty sizable crowd for 1990 AWA. I love a veteran in the ring with younger guys and being able to see them run things. Even something small like him directing Enos to stay out when it first becomes 2 on 1, a lot of authority.

[rainmakerrtv]

On 12/20/2014 at 3:44 PM, garretta said:

 

 

I thought that was Heyman in the heels' corner until I remembered the TCS and that Larry was the heel team captain.

It was actually Christopher Love/Bert Prentice.