[1980-01-05-Portland] Buddy Rose & The Sheepherders & Sam Oliver Bass vs Stan Stasiak & Dutch Savage & Roddy Piper & Rick Martel

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Tim Evans]

I love that Bass is called SOB. This was a long match of armwork and Buddy Rose bumping around. I'll never get 2/3 falls matches that only go 1 fall. Piper and Martel looked good along with Rose. The rest of the guys looked old or didn't do much. Weird seeing the Sheepherders with hair.

[Jetlag]

Lot of future stars in this match. Awesome fast exchange between Piper and Rose to start. Young, eager Piper is just electric, but soon he gets isolated and all the heels pile on him. When Piper tags out to the old guys Rose is off the charts feeding into their punches and flying high into the steel post like a cartoon character. A bunch of armlock work ensues and Stasiak is so rocking the armwringer and the crowd loves it! Savage had a nice high backdrop bump at one point. 2nd fall is much slower with the heels constantly interfering to break the faces momentum, building to Martel tagging in and getting a big run of early 80s spectacular offense before Roddy comes in again and just goes nuts on Rose with punches. Match may have been a little long but you gotta love Portland for getting people in a frenzy with a bunch of really simple armwringer work and a handful of bumps.

[grendel]

Amazing match here! The applying and selling of the pumphandle was great. Having Buddy go to the dressing room to come back with an elbow pad during the match was my moment. And every pin attempt by the faces getting ruined by one of the Sheepherders was also very neat. This is why I love Portland wrestling. And we get to see more Buddy vs Piper for sure! Great, great stuff.

[drew wardlaw]

The big payoff for me was getting a Rick Martel highstep after a hot tag. Great action here, and I agree that Piper, Rose, and Martel were the standouts. I kept expecting something to happen with Buddy and the elbow pad, like it was loaded or something.

[Wahoos Leg]

This was a lot of fun and it's no surprise that Buddy Rose was at the center of the three biggest highlights of the match. The second fall definitely lost some steam but it recovered nicely there at the end.

Check out my full review of this match as part of my 365 Wrestling project.

[SAMS]

This match was pure bedlam for the first five minutes or so. All eight men were coming in and out of the ring and the referee was having a hell of a time keeping everything under control. The entire face team each had their moments to come in and basically tee-off on a heel member and with Martel and Piper I knew what to expect and that’s basically what I got, but the big surprise here was Stan Stasiak. I’m sure I’ve seen at least one of his matches versus Sammartino in the past, but honestly I don’t remember anything from them, I just knew that I recognised his old timey hairstyle. Having said that, the fire that he displayed during his first stretch in the ring was off the charts and truly blew me away as I wasn’t expecting it at all. 
The heel team to their credit also didn’t hang about when they got the opportunity to isolate one of the faces. The Sheepherder’s in particular were brutal in their approach and instead of sitting in a resthold they went straight to a reverse choke hold or other offense that targeted the windpipe and just then backed off before the ref’s five count. 
As the first fall reached the 10-15 minute mark the match lost its way a bit. The face team were able to get some elongated heat on the heels, as they managed a carousel of false tags behind the referee’s back which I wasn’t super into and it kind of killed the momentum of the match. Each member would come in and grab the arm and start working it. So credit for a consistent team-wide approach but the arm work never felt like it was working towards a legitimate submission or to wear down their man, but just as a tool to keep the fake tag schtick going. 
The heels finally got ahold of Stan and went after his leg. Commentary noted that they’d injured it previously so it made sense and they wrecked it against the ring post and got the submission out of a Boston Crab. 
Weird decision to have Stan start the second fall (not sure if the loser of the previous one had to start the following) but he was moving very gingerly on his injured leg and tagged out immediately after Bass went for it again. I wonder why he didn’t tag out immediately or just have somebody else start the fall?
It was pretty clear we were heading towards an expiry of allotted time as the countdown began from the ring announcer. Roddy played face in peril and this was the most invested I was in the match apart from the first 5-10 minutes of the match. Roddy’s selling was pretty good here and he sprinkled in a few fightback spots at the right times. I just wish that this segment had occurred earlier in the match instead of at the end when it already felt like the match had slipped away from the face team. Ultimately, with only a minute remaining, we got all eight men in the ring for a final climax before time expired giving Rose’s army the win 1-0. 
I loved the first 5 or so minutes then the pace dragged down and the faces just got too much control over the match and didn’t do enough interesting things with it. We all know that Rose was the key man in Portland but Piper really stood out here as the huge deal. I had my issues with the match but as a dip my toe in the water match, it’s gotten me excited to work my way through the rest of the Portland stuff.

★★