[1980-10-24-Houston Wrestling] Dusty Rhodes vs Ivan Koloff (Coffin)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[shoe]

This just popped up on nwaclassics.com. I thought this was a fun little brawl. Ivan was great at bumping and making Dusty look good. Dusty had a lot of energy here. This was super heated with the crowd. Dusty vs Foreign Menace has been a big draw. They are both busted open. I didn't quite understand why we had Texas Death Match rules if the finish was putting your opponent in the coffin. Still the crowd ate this up, and it was different. 3*

[Jetlag]

This was such a fun pro wrestling spectacle. Technical classics aside, you gotta have something like this once in a while to spice things up. Aside from the nonsensical rules they did very well. Boesch talks about Koloff having talked about burying the american wrestlers and bringing a red shovel to the ring which sounds fantastic. Dusty is so electric and Koloff is cool too. The early going with the standing exchanges built around Dusty's elbows and the falls for psychological effect was fun and the second half with the double blood was really good. You get Dusty throwing punch combos, and just when I wanted to complain that he wasn't in peril enough for the match to be dramatic Koloff bashed him in the face with the boot. Dusty's really good at selling blood and drama and Koloff bashing his head into the casket was great. Then there's that great finish. Extremely entertaining match.

[paul sosnowski]

The date of this match is 10/24/80

[SAMS]

1980-10-24
Houston
Ivan Koloff vs Dusty Rhodes
Texas Death Coffin Match
Sam Houston Coliseum, Houston, Texas, USA
★★
Card

I always associated the Coffin match with the Undertaker, but I guess that proves there are no new ideas, only recycled ones. They had an interesting spin on this one though, unlimited falls. I’m not sure how well this worked in practice compared to concept, but at least the inclusion of falls meant that these two actually attempted to wrestle each other for the most part, even if the falls (it ended 2 apiece) were ultimately meaningless. We weren’t subjected to them struggling over pushing/forcing each other into the coffin for 15 minutes. 
They set up the coffin in the middle of the ring, and it served as an unusual and interesting obstacle for them to navigate around. Occasionally one would get thrown towards it and they would take a side bump to narrowly avoid it. Really though, this was just a slog it out fight, both were busted open from chair shots and Koloff was flung into the coffin for the finish. No need for a closing the coffin lid finale, he just lay there in his own blood, resigned to his defeat. As I said already, the falls were pretty meaningless, and they were pretty pathetic to boot (Dusty was pinned after Koloff countered a back body drop with a simple kick for example). Fun little brawl and certainly one of the better coffin matches I’ve seen, but that isn’t really saying much.

[tcg91]

This is easily the toughest match to rate yet. A coffin is involved and the rule is that the loser will be put in the coffin AFTER the match, but then Dusty wins by simply throwing Koloff inside the coffin without any pinfall procedure. While this is so confusing and made the previous pinfalls useless, it is also true that the match itself ruled in its simple format: a very nice brawl, a bit of juice, Dusty wasn't lazy, the crowd was quite into it etc. Imagine watching a movie where actors, dialogues, scenes, pictures etc. are quite good, except the plot makes so sense at all. The fact Dusty created this is even more shocking
**