[1980-12-09-AJPW-Real World Tag League] Ricky Steamboat vs The Sheik

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[JKWebb]

Ricky Steamboat in 1980 is the shit. I push play and immediately get a jumping splits toe touch. The Sheik comes in with a wooden hammer and starts pounding on his head. They go to the outside and Ricky knocks it out of his hand and the brawling begins. I loved the intensity. Steamboat gets spiked in the head and they are both bleeding 3 minutes in. The brawling and spiking continues. They take turns ramming their heads against a standing table. Sheik goes after the ref. After the DQ Steamboat throws some monster right hands to the head of the Sheik and they brawl through the crowd. It basically ends with a pull apart. The match itself was probably under five minutes, but man this great stuff!

[SAMS]

1980-12-09
AJPW
Ricky Steamboat vs The Sheik
Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium, Osaka, Japan
Card

This was barely a match, they went straight into the brawling and it never let up from there. The Sheik did Sheik things, and was pretty bloodied within a minute or so, and his attacks with his hammer did the same for Steamboat (has it always been a hammer? For ages I’ve been thinking it was a spike but he must have just been holding it by the head). Sheik attacked the referee for some reason, which led to the no question DQ. I loved the referee’s sheer fear at being chased but otherwise this approach didn’t make much logical sense to me. Overall there was nothing Steamboat did “wrong” here, but he felt like a passenger, like a school kid in his first fight, like an afterthought. Later on he tried to reignite the brawling even though the energy in the building had completely disappeared by that point. So as far as brawls go, this was nothing special.