Last Battle of Atlanta

[WingedEagle]

So it really was that incredible to see this match after hearing about it for so long. Not quite how accurate my initial thoughts are after watching this without context, but with pictures and an imagination, as well as without any time to look back objectively, but here we go.

 

- Loved the opening with Buzz seizing the opening to work the arm after Rich misses an elbow and hits the cage. The arm work here was probably the highlight of the match for me and I only wish it wasn't abandoned so quickly.

 

- They got to the blood very quickly and wasted very little time, space, motion or offense here. Just about everything was conducted in close quarters after the opening lockup, with great pacing and every big shot was sold

 

- Did I mention the blood? Two classic gushers, and bonus points because blondes really do bleed better.

 

- Really dug the PA announcer counting both men down at various points. In some ways I preferred the audio environment here to Magnum vs. Tully, as the screaming and use of the mic there became grating very, very quickly. This never crossed the line from violent to something hokey that took me out of the moment.

 

- Did it live up to expectations? No, its not a five star classic here but its tough for anything to carry that kind of weight for years. My biggest issue is that the match it didn't take me on that much of a ride. They kicked things into high gear from the arm work on and never really relented or changed paces whatsoever. Additionally, the finish felt a bit flat and looked like any of a number of spots we'd seen earlier. Hey, not every match can be an all-timer, even if this is an all-time find. The matches I hold as classics have their ebbs and flows and will generally build to a peak. That's just not what they were aiming for here.

 

****1/4 feels about right.

 

Its neither here nor there, but the WWE Network is phenomenal. Perhaps the time I spend watching non-live wrestling is often dedicated to older material or recent footage from Japan, but they've given us a ridiculous archive of footage to go along with all of the PPVs for less than I spend on lunch some days. There's always lots to complain about and they could add so much more, but it really is special.

[The Chief]

I feel some of Duggan's matches with Buzz were around this level, maybe even slightly better.

I agree with this. Not to take anything away from Last Battle of Atlanta as those Duggan brawls are awesome.

[peachchaos]

I watched a few hours of GCW TV leading up to this match to get hyped up. These shows are sometimes rapid-fire and also sorta clipped by nature, so this is more of a listing than a review I guess:

 

 

World Championship Wrestling with Gordon Solie (and Ole Anderson)
October 15, 1983

 

- Features NWA President Bob Geigel commenting on the "Last Battle of Atlanta" between Tommy "Wildefire" Rich and "Mad Dog" Buzz Sawyer.

- Buzz Sawyer w/ Paul Ellering vs. Pat Rose

- Promo for the 10/23/83 Omini Card.

- Gary Hart pre-taped promo.

- Paul Ellering promo on the Last Battle of Atlanta.

- Jake Roberts vs. Paul Donner

- Buzz Sawyer & Paul Ellering promo on the Last Battle of Atlanta.

- Promo for the 10/23/83 Omini Card.

- Gordon Solie interviews Jake Roberts.

- Gordon Solie talks about Paul Ellering's cage.

- Jimmy fucking Valiant ya'll (w/ brief Roddy Piper cameo).

 

 

- Roadies squash.

- Paul Ellering promo on The Last Battle of Atlanta, questioning who he will wrestle if Sawyer loses.

- Wahoo McDaniel squash (from Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling).

- Abdullah the Butcher vs. Randy Barber (Abby throws Barber into Ellering's tiny cage!)

- Jake Roberts promo on Brett Wayne (Sawyer).

- Les Thornton vs. Joe Lightfoot (10 minute draw)

- Gordon Solie interviews Paul Ellering and still won't tell him who he will have to wrestle if Sawyer loses the Last Battle of Atlanta.

- Great Kabuki w/ Gary Hart vs. Ken Kims (Kims gets to use a kendo stick - from Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling)

- Buzz Sawyer & Paul Ellering promo on Dusty Rhodes for Grand Rapids, Michigan

- Dusty Rhodes promo on Buzz Sawyer for Grand Rapids, Michigan

- RIc Flair vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (from AJPW)

- Jake Roberts promo on Brett Wayne for the Omni 10/23.

- Brett Wayne vs. Pat Rose

 

October 22, 1983

 

- Gordon and Ole open the show and talk about the NWA potentially banning Jake Roberts' DDT.

- Jimmy Valiant & Pistol Pez Watley squash.

- Jake Roberts vs. Tracy Storm

- Ric Flair squash (from Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling)

- Jake Roberts, Road Warriors promos.

- Promo for the 10/23/83 Omini Card.

- Buzz Sawyer w/ Paul Ellering promo for the Last Battle of Atlanta (Sawyer's whole forehead is cut and Ellering is also a mess).

- Roadies squash.

- Brett Wayne vs. Jason Walker

- Bill Apter interviews the fake Mr. Wrestling #2

- Gary Hart & the Great Kabuki

- Great Kabuki squash

- Buzz Sawyer w/ Paul Ellering promo for the Last Battle of Atlanta.

- Gordon Solie interviews Jake Roberts about the DDT.

- Dick Slater vs. Larson (from Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling)

- Brisco Brothers squash (from Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling)

- Gordon Solie interviews Buzz Sawyer

 

 

Gordon Solie: You know in every sport of course, injuries are...expected, and, many times, however, injuries can be so debilitating that they begin to effect you emotionally. And I can't help think that Mr. Sawyer that emotionally perhaps you're just a little bit...

 

Buzz Sawyer: There's a lot of emotional things going on in my life right now, a lot of things happen, a lot of people in my life that I haven't seen in a long time. It's bringing back memories, bringing back times when I was a little boy...bringing back times when I think I'd grow up to be a bigger boy. You know, sometimes I sit back and I think, yeah, I'm the Mad Dog and I'm The Best There Is and I've never denied that and I've always said that and I always believed in it. But get that camera up here on me and you'll see that I've changed my mind! Life has changed me!

 

Wrestling has changed me!

 

 

Tommy Rich...you have changed me.

 

Thanks for watching the Best of Championship Wrestling. The announcers on this program are employed by Georgia Championship Wrestling.

[Hegs]

I remember the pure hatred between Rich and Sawyer-the attacks during matches and interviews. You would never see those 2 debating for 15 minutes at the beginning of the show. I'm happy I finally got to see the match after all this time. For some of the newer fans, I'm sorry there isn't some context for them. I also wish Gordon was doing the announcing. I thought some of Ole's work overshadowed Rich and Sawyer.

[sek69]

According to the WWE Archivist twitter, they found a tape with the whole show on it.

[Johnny Sorrow]

This was fucking awesome. Totally lived up to my thirty three years of expectations. I give it eleventy billion stars.

[Childs]

On first viewing, this did not strike me as anything close to an all-time classic. It featured a pair of epic blade jobs and I loved the sequence with them slugging it out from their knees. But the heat and the violence were pretty pedestrian for the blow off to a blood feud, and they tried to sell total exhaustion before they earned it. I particularly expected more from Buzz, who was neither particularly nutty nor particularly dynamic on offense by his standards. The whole thing just didn't sweep me up the way I hoped, even though it was a very good match.

[Matt D]

Where I did absolutely love Buzz was in the pre-match where he kept shaking the top of the cage and came off like a trapped animal exploring his surroundings.

[Ricky Jackson]

Loved the whole thing. Bonus Jake Roberts beatdown was the cherry on top

[Tabe]

I agreed with Childs. My repost from Facebook:

 

I thought it was OK. Super bloody but not enough hate. I thought the finish was kinda weak. Couple dumb spots, like the Rich piledriver that came out of nowhere. Too much selling of mutual exhaustion, too.

 

I wonder if the crowd was tired of the feud? They were not into it nearly as much as I expected and were way more heated for the followup match.

 

Speaking of which, the whole thing struck me as a way for Ole to put himself over. There was no need for the second match at all, then Ole is the one getting attacked with a weapon and double-teamed. If all seemed to me his way of taking the spotlight back from Tommy.

 

And then to have Buzz and Tommy teaming together a month later...

 

**1/2

[Johnny Sorrow]

I will find and bite everyone with their dopey modern nerd criticisms of this.

[topropepodcast]

I just wish the crowd was a little bit more excited for this. Sure, there was some noise, but it felt like it was missing the atmosphere to truly be this fucking epic classic war they were going for.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I just wish the crowd was a little bit more excited for this. Sure, there was some noise, but it felt like it was missing the atmosphere to truly be this fucking epic classic war they were going for.

Dude....you do know this was filmed on a camera that wasn't mic'd for the whole aren.... You know, I quit. 😐

[Coffey]

On first viewing, this did not strike me as anything close to an all-time classic. It featured a pair of epic blade jobs and I loved the sequence with them slugging it out from their knees. But the heat and the violence were pretty pedestrian for the blow off to a blood feud, and they tried to sell total exhaustion before they earned it. I particularly expected more from Buzz, who was neither particularly nutty nor particularly dynamic on offense by his standards. The whole thing just didn't sweep me up the way I hoped...

 

Sort of where I am at. I thought it was a fun brawl but I'm not seeing this 5* or 4*+ that others are seeing. Honestly, I don't really have a desire to watch it again but I probably will because there's just so much hype around it & maybe I missed something as I was watching it with company over. They did both bleed buckets though.

 

I will say, I was genuinely surprised that the video quality was as good as it was. I was definitely not expecting that.

[Dylan Waco]

I thought it was exactly what it needed to be. I don't get the dislike of the finish as I thought it worked perfectly and made both guys look like badasses. I agree that it wasn't an all time "holy fuck" classic on first viewing, but I have zero problem calling it a great cage match.

 

That said the real revelation was Ole and Ellering which was every bit as good and in some ways better. Easily the best Ole Anderson match I've ever seen and the finish shoot punch flurry from Ole was as great a fired up sequence as I've ever seen.

 

The whole thing kind of reminded me of Blackwell v. Superstar from the AWA Set where you have a real fun war between two stars, but then Blackwell wins and gets his five minutes with Adnan and that just takes it to the next level.

[JerryvonKramer]

I really liked the Ole segment too.

[shaneduder]

ditto. I'm with the both of you. i was kinda impressed with ellering and couldn't believe Ole sold as much as he did either.

 

My girlfriend who is a non wrestling fan walked by and was confused as to why there was a man in a cage suspended above the caged ring. figured he should be go-go dancing.

[shoe]

I rewatched the Ole segment this morning and really short shrifted it. I thought it was a hell of a fight. Ole was incredible here.

[stomperspc]

Put me in the “very good but not a classic” camp.

 

They worked it like I would expect a blow off in this particular context (early 80’s, Georgia) to be worked. The punch/kick style, the early & double blood, and the dual piledrivers as the big spot they built to all being examples of that. The near falls all worked which was doubly impressive since the referee counted the pin fall attempts from outside the cage. The comebacks and finished happened at the right times in the match I thought. From a layout standpoint I found the match to be very effective.

 

What they did within the layout I found far less interesting. Buzz Sawyer’s early match offense didn’t do much for me and he never drew much in the way of heat (I did love the one big bump he took into the side of the cage). The crowd reacted to Rich’s comebacks but not overly so and they didn’t resonate with me in any significant way. Sawyer and Rich took a tried and true template for a blow off match but didn’t do anything all that special with it. I didn’t have much in the way of expectations in terms of what they were going to do or the overall quality of the match so I don’t think it was an expectations issue. If I didn’t know the backstory of the match, I would have thought this was a very good blow off to a normal, multi-month feud. Not sure I’d ever guess this was the blow off of a one year+ feud and a match that reached mythical status as an all-time great.

 

I re-watched the ’83 Chicana/MS-1 hair match over the weekend and I think there was a clear difference in the way that match was worked to make it feel big/epic and the way this one was. The small moments and bells & whistles separate very good matches from the classics. Sawyer/Rich just didn’t have much in the way of those things. I am interested in re-watching Tully/Magnum and Final Conflict soon to see how they compare,

[soup23]

I rewatched the Ole segment this morning and really short shrifted it. I thought it was a hell of a fight. Ole was incredible here.

 

Ditto, I think on first watch I was annoyed at the way it felt like Sawyer and Rich were kind of cast aside for Ellering and Ole but rewatching again it was a hell of a brawl and made sense that business must continue.

 

I am still a bit conflicted on some of the critiques being levied against this. The crowd thing especially. We have seen numerous lucha brawls that have subpar sounding heat that you know are off the charts with genuine heat. A comparison is the Lupus vs. Trauma match that happened on Sunday and comparing the IWRG version with the ringside hand held footage that came out. I think brawls more than any other match really are affected by how much they grab the viewer, but I certainly got a sense that the fatigue was earned here because both guys were essentially bleeding out. As a modern comp, this was why the Wotan vs. Terry match worked for me because Terry is a 63 year old man that doesn't have the stamina he naturally once did. Brawls really need to have a feeling of desperation or hatred for me to grasp the concept and this match had it in spades with the mat brawling.

[Marty]

Absolutely loved this, as good as I hoped it would be. I had low expectations of what the footage would be like, but never mind watchable, it was very prestine! It does make me wonder what other shows from back then are full and in this good of condition. Loved the finish (I normally don't make a big deal out of blood, but Buzz's bladejob was exactly what was needed out of a blowoff like this) and the Ole-Ellering battle.

 

The Hidden Gems collection as a whole is fun. Love seeing any old Thesz title defense where he's playing the heel; he does some great little things where he's still being "legit", but you ask, "Why does he need to do that?". The Muhammed Ali stuff, with Verne, Vince, Bock, etc. felt like the biggest thing ever. Would love to see more big AWA shows from the 70s get released. A lot of other stuff I've seen, but it's nice to see them keep up the historical stuff on the Network alongside the fun, new stuff.

[bradhindsight]

Couple points

 

-- re: Rich and arm selling (to BrianB's post) - Sawyer stopped working the arm fairly early so it would make sense that Rich would get the feeling back and not be selling as much later.

 

-- The surprise snap piledriver from Rich was probably the one piece that was the least believable (he reversed a strike into it) in a well-constructed gritty match for me.

 

-- Buzz's huge crossbody off the cage was a tremendous spot. I don't get the crowd not cheering as much for that as you would like taking away from the work at all.

 

-- I think it's probably fair to say the Ole match had more heat from the crowd, which is definitely interesting given the historical recounting of the build to the LBOA. I think it was Kris that said they fired this feud back up to blow it off and turn Buzz babyface (hence the team-up the next month) so maybe this is the crowd showing they weren't as invested as maybe they would have been a year earlier.

[Tabe]

I thought it was exactly what it needed to be. I don't get the dislike of the finish as I thought it worked perfectly and made both guys look like badasses.

 

 

The finish was a standard slam into the side of the cage. Weak sauce. Better finish would be the slam into the side of the cage then a big piledriver from Rich, assuming he didn't do the piledriver earlier.

 

[JerryvonKramer]

 

I thought it was exactly what it needed to be. I don't get the dislike of the finish as I thought it worked perfectly and made both guys look like badasses.

 

 

The finish was a standard slam into the side of the cage. Weak sauce. Better finish would be the slam into the side of the cage then a big piledriver from Rich, assuming he didn't do the piledriver earlier.

Maybe throw a Frankensteiner or two in there too right?

[Matt D]

I am on my phone, so I will be be vague instead of using spoiler tags. I think the idea was to have a definitive pinfall while keeping both guys strong and because they would need to use Buzz as Rich's partner upcoming.

 

There was a clear winner, both to the match and the feud, but at the end of the day it was about how evenly matched they were and how there was no shame in losing.

 

Tonally, you have to factor in the match that followed too, which makes it less clean than it could have been.