Buddy Rose

[elliott]

I agree with all of this. Both I could see him taking a tumble, and hoping he doesn't. He's right there with Lawler & Flair as the best US worker of his era. What do Buddy skeptics need to see?

[El Dragon]

On 6/14/2021 at 10:34 PM, elliott said:

I agree with all of this. Both I could see him taking a tumble, and hoping he doesn't. He's right there with Lawler & Flair as the best US worker of his era. What do Buddy skeptics need to see?

I personally think Bock needs to be added to this conversation, but, personally, I’ve got Buddy above all of them at present. Not sure if it will hold that way long term, but man do I ever love Buddy Rose. His Portland stuff is outstanding.

[elliott]

1 minute ago, El Dragon said:

I personally think Bock needs to be added to this conversation, but, personally, I’ve got Buddy above all of them at present. Not sure if it will hold that way long term, but man do I ever love Buddy Rose. His Portland stuff is outstanding.

Absolutely agree re: Bock. That's the Mt Rushmore of US based workers for me. 

[Matt D]

Buddy feels like the middle ground between Flair's ability to make every single moment as entertaining as possible and Bock's ability to make every single moment as purposeful as possible, while sharing the absolute and unyielding presence in the moment that both have.

[Matt D]

Who's seen the most of Buddy's 87-89 PNW? Has anyone seen the Windy City tapings from 89?

What about his 91-92 PNW? How about his 1992 WCCW work from Canada. Did any of that make tape?

And do we have any of his 85 Florida?

[CheapPop1999]

Finally doing my full due diligence on Buddy by just going through every bit of footage I can find for him. Starting off with his 77 and I think he might truly be the greatest physical actors in wrestling history.

He's got a formula for sure when he's working lesser opponents, like Cocoa Samoa, where he works solely on action and reaction, but in a run of three matches from September 10 to October 1, he runs the gamut on everything.

The first of two singles against Jay Youngblood is worked around the fact that Jonathan Boyd, noted Rose antagonist, is the special referee. These two milk every possible bit you could out of this and Buddy is getting constantly poked, prodded, and cheated against to the crowd's delight, while he throws giant animated tantrums.

The rematch from two weeks later on September 24 is not much of a match but Rose's chance for revenge. He feigns a knee injury with pitch-perfect limping and hobbling around, which leads to Wisowski pinning Sandy Barr into the corner and allowing Buddy to gleefully destroy and bloody the arm of Youngblood, resulting in a stretcher job. Buddy is doing arm work here that is as vicious and maniacal as I've ever seen, bending the arm in a keylock AROUND the turnbuckle and then just repeatedly rowing Youngblood's shoulder and arm into the metal while flopping his hair and body around. This beatdown leads to Lonnie Mayne making the save and Buddy scampering away as fast as possible after getting a few licks taken on him.

The Mayne singles from the next week is the masterclass cherry on top from Rose, who puts over the legitimate danger of being around Mayne better than anything else by being terrified to be in the ring in close proximity with him at all. After losing the first fall in like six seconds with his robe still on, Buddy gets ahead by Mayne simply overexerting before a fantastic cathartic beatdown third fall where Mayne is straight Popeye punching Rose with huge windups that he sells like Daffy Duck, whirling around and landing like a psycho wounded animal.

Excited to explore more, but to me, he feels like one of the only people I've seen besides Funk that does so much with selling alone.