Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

Titans of Wrestling #7


Recommended Posts

Big thanks to James and Martin for joining me on this show. I had a great time guys.

 

Join us as we take a slight detour from the usual WWF journey to look at Portland Wrestling from the late-70s! Parv graciously steps aside as Kelly takes the hosting seat for the first of a proposed series of periodic specials documenting wrestling even more obscure than Backlund-era WWF. For this episode Kelly is joined by Titans co-founder James and rising star Martin (Superstar Sleeze) to look at wild and crazy action from the Pacific Northwest.

 

http://placetobenation.com/titans-of-wrest...land-wrestling/

 

Posted Image

 

On the docket tonight:

4/7/79 PLAYBOY BUDDY ROSE, ED WISKOWSKI, ROWDY RODDY PIPER, KILLER TIM BROOKS vs ADRIAN ADONIS, RON STARR, GEORGE WELLS, HECTOR GUERRERO

8/31/79 PLAYBOY BUDDY ROSE vs ADRIAN ADONIS

9/8/79 PLAYBOY BUDDY ROSE vs ADRIAN ADONIS

5/12/79 ROWDY RODDY PIPER vs PLAYBOY BUDDY ROSE

5/19/79 ROWDY RODDY PIPER vs PLAYBOY BUDDY ROSE LUMBERJACK MATCH

1/12/80 HARLEY RACE vs RICK MARTEL NWA TITLE MATCH

12/1/79 ROWDY RODDY PIPER, STAN "THE MAN" STASIAK vs THE SHEEPHERDERS / KILT BURNING ANGLE

 

Also on tonight's show:

-Martin's history as a wrestling fan, featuring his Stan Stasiak-hating father

-A brief look at the history of Portland Wrestling

-Don Owen: Great promoter; terrible announcer

-Numerous jokes at the expense of elderly wrestling fans

-Come visit Sandy Barr's Flea Market!

-Opinions on Buddy Rose, Roddy Piper, Harley Race, Rick Martel, Dutch Savage, Ed (Col DeBeers) Wiskowski, Stan Stasiak, and others

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for having me and it was a true pleasure. I hope that I get the chance to do many more. While my Dad may hate Stan Stasiak, he sure loves DISCO INFERNO! Not the wrestler actually, but the song (we were an Alex Wright family). I actually got him a birthday card this year that played the song for him. It was amusing that you chose that song totally at random.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Loved hearing about all the people in the crowd but when I tried watching Rose vs. Piper last night, I was too distracted by them. Great show and good debut for Superstar Sleeze (Martin). I have talked about this some recently but the discovery and looking back at old footage has become my favorite thing in wrestling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Been listening to this off and on all day seemingly. And still have 25 mins or so left. Just some notes before I pop out:

 

- First off, good job with hosting and editing Kelly. I like the idea of the Titans crew being a bit like Wu Tang where you could get 2 or 3 members or the whole crew, but everyone is solid. Sorry if the analogy is lost, they've been on my mind recently.

- Really great podcast debut from Martin, thought he brought great energy as well as the top analysis he's been showing us on the boards.

- Love the idea of that old man in the front row. May have to track this stuff down just to see him, especially if that's him in Kelly's photo!

- The guy Martin mentioned is a total 100% spitting image of Buddy Rose. It's uncanny.

- I know of Rick Hunter, he was basically a midcard guy for most of his career who jobbed for a bit in mid-80s WWF.

- Was the third tag partner of Big Josh and Tommy Rich ... JYD? I have a memory of JYD being one of the 6-man champs.

- The talk of "NWA champ style" reminded me of a conversation about it I had here once (search function playing up) with Dylan Waco. You guys summed up pretty well what I was trying to describe as "NWA champ style". I believe at the time some people said I was basically talking about Ric Flair ... I was talking about what you guys were talking about here.

- Thought James's point about preferring the idea of Harley Race more than actually seeing him was really good. That said, I quite like watching Race matches.

 

I look forward to more of these "specials" down the line, between us I think we have some interesting stuff planned.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gonna have the Taxi theme in my head all night now. Thanks, Kelly!

 

I know very little about this territory in this time frame. I am about 40 minutes in and am loving it...smooth conversation and lots of interesting tidbits and clips mixed in.

 

Also, loved the anecdotes about your fathers...whether it was the Buddy Rose, Curt Hennig Bump Loving Dad or the Stasiak Hating Father...nice touch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just started listening an hr and a 1/2 ago.Portland is such a fun territory. Kelly your line about being too cheap to buy something at a flea market was gold. James uneasiness towards Killer Brooks is fun. A little side note he's either Dick Murdoch's brother or cousin. Martin bringing up Street's baby face work in Alabama was cool. It really is some amazing stuff to watch. I don't know if you've ever seen him visit a sick girl in the hospital as a heel. It's such a touching piece on the news.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry it took me SO long to get to this, guys. It's been a bit of a tumultuous month for me. Thanks tremendously for the shout. Made my day to hear it. I really want to tackle the Piper/Rose and Martel/Rose feuds the same way I did the Rose in 79 essay, but we'll see if I get to it. Anyway, thoughts:

 

First and foremost, I'm really glad you guys are watching this stuff. I enjoyed it a ton. It's really a treasure of a territory between Buddy, the logical builds, the amount of time given to matches, Bonnema and Barr and the family feel. Everytime I see people complaining about current wrestling, I just want to shout at them to watch this stuff.

 

It's also interesting to see the difference in backgrounds in watching this. I've seen a ton of Rip Rogers, for instance and a lot of other stuff that was really out there before this dropped by some of you hitting the older stuff more piecemeal prioritize differently and all of the different backgrounds creates a plurality of thoughts.

 

I don't have a ton of other comments since I think, from reading my write-ups, we were on the same page on a lot of things:

-How great the callbacks in the Portland matches are (like the headbutt in the first one).

-How weird it was to see Adonis as a face but that it very much worked.

-How the second Adonis/Buddy match wasn't as strong as the first, but instead served its purpose

-How great Piper was here (and yeah, it's totally okay for Piper to be an asshole in a way that it's not quite as okay for Greg Gagne or Shawn Michaels to be)

-How Portland had to balance the TV and setting up the Tuesday shows and the loop. Owen claims that the big matches on TV are for the sponsors' sake and that may be kayfabe bs or it may be actually true.

-I didn't love the Martel vs Race match though I did think Bonnema was great in calling the armwork that was most of the first fall as "control and containment" since it's really what it was. It sure didn't go anywhere. This was part of a huge push for Martel. He comes in very shortly before this and is a major babyface for the first half of 80. I get the feeling that Race enjoyed him as an opponent but I'm not sure about that. I do think it got Martel over in the territory almost immediately.

-I really like Stasiak as a Rose opponent and I think OJ actually said something similar recently. He had a different sort of presence. I haven't seen a lot of his other stuff but he did pissed off old guy well. It could be a real testament to Buddy mind you. Most things are.

 

Anyway, great job. Sorry it took me so long to get to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Hold up! Now, first of all Superstar Sleeze is a turncoat! I'm sure you enjoyed Game 1 when the Tigers almost got a no hitter and all but the right team won in the end! Hope your dad beat you with a wiffle ball bat after that series. :lol: Should have been a loser leaves town match with Sleeze ending up in Detroit getting gouged by The Sheik every night. I'm totally partial to the WWF Titans shows but I do like you guys throwing yourselves into other territories. Great job by Kelly running the show. Parv who? I was so waiting for James to take on the Johnny role and start doing some impressions. Martin has that young baby face fire that is a welcome addition to these things. He needs to drop the Tigers fan act so not go heel on us.

 

New to Portland myself and didn't watch all the same matches as you guys though I am eager to jump into new territories. I so had to look up that Buddy Rose ring sinking match. Just wow. I love how they continue to try wrestle as they sinking into the earth almost. The wheelbarrow of belts was great visual. George Wells had a big difference in body type as this guy is in much better shape than his WrestleMania 2 match. They seemed to be destined for a really long match until heel issues at the end. The announcer referring to "count outs" for pinfalls was throwing me off. Adonis is so slim! It is hard for me to accept him as a face. Hmm, no match. Buddy must have fast forwarded and deleted this since he wasn't wrestling in match. The arm wrench 10 count spot seems to be a big thing for this era with Stasiak using it in Portland. Does Portland have the oldest live crowd for their shows? Like the average age had to be 87 here. Must have been the reason they didn't stick around with their fan base just dying off naturally. Piper battling the inferno while Frank Bonnema was just laughing about it was a hoot. Needed a run in by Firebreaker Chip. Frank had the whole blue tooth thing going with the extra mic. He must have been doing on an air podcast with Super 8.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...