[1980-10-20-WWF-MSG, NY] Ken Patera vs Pedro Morales

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[SAMS]

1980-10-20
WWF
Ken Patera (c) vs. Pedro Morales
WWF Intercontinental Title Match
Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, USA
★★★★
Card

On a whim I chucked this on, more curious as to what Patera could do with Morales than anything else, but needless to say, it was a surprise. Pedro has always been a guy that I’ve been a bit confused about. How did he have such a lengthy WWF title run? Was he always this boring? And his return in 1980 hadn’t done much to sway that so far from his less than captivating TV appearances (granted it’s pretty hard to distinguish yourself on WWF TV in 1980 unless you’re smashing Bruno over the head with a chair). Well this match is at least one step to answering these questions. Pedro was a man on fire, like he was channelling the blood lust from the crowd. He didn’t give Patera a second to set himself before he was on him, fists flying.
This felt very similar to the Flair/Valentine match from Buffalo a couple nights earlier. Same rabid fans, same kind of structure, but this pushed the pace more. Pedro showed less cockiness and more fury than Flair and Patera, perhaps he didn’t match the nastiness of Valentine’s offense, but he always does an excellent job of representing his character while he’s in the ring, and this was absolutely no exception.
In fact, in addition to the intensity of his offense, Pedro really threw me off with his bumping. He took a big bump over the top rope where he got some significant hang time during the first transition and later on took what looked like a pretty reckless one shoulder first into the turnbuckle post. These were both excellent sympathy generating bumps, made Patera look like a real threat and were cool to watch to boot.
Once they started shoving the referee around the DQ finish was obvious to see, but there’s been worse finishes this year no doubt. I probably could have done with them breezing through the obligatory bear hug spot a bit faster, but otherwise these two knocked it out the park.