Extras 1984 - 1985

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1984 EXTRAS

Curt Hennig & Irish Pat McGhee vs. Rip Oliver & The Assassin (Finish Only) (1/21/84)

Matt Borne + Rip Oliver (1/28/84)

Tony Borne Interview (2/11/84)

Buddy Rose + Rip Oliver (4/21/84)

Rip Oliver + Stan Stasiak (6/23/84)

Brett Sawyer vs. The Assassin (3^rd Fall Only) (6/23/84)

Buddy Rose Interview (6/30/84)

Buddy Rose + Matt Borne (Buddy Rose Heel Turn) (7/14/84)

1985 EXTRAS

Mike Miller & Mr. Ebony Interview (1/5/85)

Kendo Nagasaki/Ed Wiskowski Interview (1/12/85)

Billy Jack Haynes & Ricky Vaughn Interview (2/16/85)

Bobby Jaggers Interview (2/16/85)

Billy Jack Haynes Feature (5/18/85)

Ric Flair Promo (5/18/85)

Bobby Jaggers & Mychal Thompson Interview (5/18/85)

Talk Show: Roddy Piper (5/21/85)

Portland News Special on Wrestling (5/21/85)

Buddy Rose & Mega Maharishi Fashion Show (5/22/85)

Mega Maharishi & Playboy Buddy Rose Interview (6/29/85)

Mega Maharishi & Buddy Rose Interview (7/6/85)

Bobby Jaggers Heel Turn (9/28/85)

Billy Jack Haynes vs. Diamond Timothy Flowers (Santa Rip Incident) (12/21/85)

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​Tony Borne Interview:

 

​Tony's here to give Oliver and the Assassin a chance to attack him and for Matt to make the save. That means that we shouldn't expect much out of him, and we don't get it. It's been previously established that he's not much of a talker, so this segment just kind of meanders until it's time for Oliver to show up.

 

The beatdown's good for what it is, but I would have expected a former wrestler to put up more of a fight. Tony being treated like any random fan out of the stands who shouldn't be touched doesn't make the Clan look more dastardly for attacking him or Matt look like more of a hero for saving his dad; it makes Tony look like a fool for accepting an interview in the first place when he's not able to cope with a possible attack from Oliver and his men.

 

Matt was decent here, but again, it took too long to establish that Tony wasn't hurt. I'm not saying that Tony should have beaten the hell out of Oliver and Assassin singlehandedly, but watching Matt cry like they'd attacked someone who never raised a hand to anyone in his life, let alone been one of the toughest wrestlers the Northwest has ever seen, rang completely false to me. There should be a middle ground between putting the younger talent over as tough and making retired legends look completely helpless.

 

Stasiak has a long way to go as a broadcaster. He didn't sell the attack much at all, only repeating that Matt would have his chance for revenge the following Tuesday night over and over again. I get that they really didn't want someone so recently retired getting physically involved, but surely he could have done more than that. He mentioned at the very end that he was getting tired of the Clan's tactics, so maybe something will come out of that a little way down the road.

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​Hennig/McGhee-Oliver/Assassin:

 

​I think Owen's done the surprise turn once too often. Everyone played their parts well, but it sure seemed to me like the fans were cheering Oliver and the Assassin for beating Matt bloody. Speaking of which, this had to be the single bloodiest interview segment I've seen yet that wasn't from Puerto Rico. Between Oliver going nuts with the cowbell and Assassin repeatedly bellowing, "Nobody messes with the Clan!", I'm sure that quite a few people were legitimately frightened out of their wits.

 

For the second straight beatdown (at least that I've watched), Assassin went to Stasiak's eyes to take him out of action. Based on the disc listings, I'm sure that this will have quite the payoff in a very short while. I noticed Coss made sure to say that Oliver and Assassin ran when they thought that Stasiak might get physically involved.

 

Coss and Stasiak do an excellent job of capturing the confusion surrounding the Crow's Nest and the program in general, even to the point of having to put together a standby match to fill the remaining TV time. There are times in earlier segments where I've lamented Owen's lack of attention to detail, but he was right on the mark this time.

 

I hope we hear the justification for Matt's turn in an upcoming segment; we were just getting to that part when Oliver and Assassin launched their attack. In what little we heard both before and after the attack, he sounded totally unhinged, which can't be a good thing for the Clan moving forward.

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​Matt Borne and Rip Oliver (1/28/84):

 

​Portland just keeps bringing the wild beatdowns. This time, though, Oliver's the victim, as Matt gets his revenge for the beating he got a couple of weeks back when he turned on the Clan. Oliver's just as bloody a mess after this as Matt was back then, and we almost have another riot on our hands as the fans go wild at the thought of the leader of The Clan getting a taste of his own medicine.

 

Matt does look quite a bit like Rip with the bleached blonde hair and dark beard, which to hear Matt talk is one of the flashpoints of the feud. Overall, Matt's promo is excellent, and he looks positively Doink-like at times in the face as he talks. No wonder he understood that character so well.

 

Owen better have paid Sandy Barr a ton, considering the beatings he's taken over the past two discs. No wonder there aren't any other referees in Portland; who in their right mind would want any part of trying to control these maniacs?

 

Oliver's answer promo is pretty good, considering that he's supposed to be weakened by loss of blood. He isn't the talker that Buddy is, but he may actually be scarier; he even looks like thirty miles of bad road, which Buddy can't really pull off because of his excess weight. I can definitely see how he became the promotion's top heel once Buddy left for Minneapolis. As for Assassin, he's not useless on the stick, but he's definitely one of those who mistakes volume for substance. I give him credit for running down the week's itinerary so effortlessly, though.

 

It sounds like Stasiak's actually doing play-by-play here, with Coss acting as his color guy. That seems like a bit of a weird arrangement to say the least, especially since Stan doesn't have much broadcasting experience at all.

 

I wonder if anyone got in trouble for Oliver saying that he was going to cripple Matt's ass up right at the end of his interview. "Ass" wasn't totally taboo by this time, but it wasn't heard all that often either, especially on shows where it was assumed that children were a big part of the audience, like wrestling.

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​Oliver and Stasiak:

 

​Who didn't know that was going to happen eventually? This is another difference between Oliver and Buddy; as nasty as Buddy could be, I'd have been shocked if he'd actually attacked an announcer. Of course, since Frank Bonnema has done most of the interviews I've seen with Buddy, I knew it would never happen in the first place.

 

This is yet another time when the heel launched a straight-up, face-to-face attack. I wonder if that had something to do with how the Crow's Nest was situated, or if it was simply the way Owen booked his brawls. In the WWF, for a contrasting example, a good ninety percent of the attacks were Pearl Harbor jobs off of a distraction by a manager or second.

 

I guess now Stasiak will get back in the ring against the Clan on at least an occasional basis. It'll be interesting to see how much The Man has left in the tank. He still talks a good game, but so did Tony Borne, and we all know what that got him.

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​Buddy and Oliver (4/21/84):

 

​What a bump Buddy took on the chair when Oliver dropped him. If it's a fraction of an inch too hard or he lands in the wrong spot, he has major internal injuries and maybe a concussion.

 

Billy Jack as the referee for the next Rose/Oliver match? Based on the disc listing, I fear for Billy Jack; we all know Buddy can't stay an angel (albeit one with tarnished wings) for much longer.

 

Oliver has a bunch of people mad at him right now: Buddy, Billy Jack, Stasiak, Borne. He's the very definition of a top heel, just like Buddy was before him. Seeing him juggle all these feuds as well as he has so far makes me lament the fact that the Big Two rarely tried to book like this. Usually, the top heel and the top face went at it and everyone else stayed out of the way. The only exception on any sort of regular basis was the Horsemen, and even that feud managed to boil itself down to either Dusty/Flair or Dusty/Tully more often than not. The only time Hogan had more than one feud going is if Vince was trying to set up a pay-per-view tag match of some sort.

 

I noticed that Buddy used the Scorpion Deathlock in the portion of the match we saw before Oliver's run-in. I'm surprised he used such an intricate hold, and this again plays up how much he was wasted later in his career, when Verne turned him into a punching bag and bump machine for the Midnight Rockers' amusement and education.

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​Buddy's Back on the Bad Side (6/30/84):

 

​Well, Buddy's traded in his halo for horns again. Seriously, he's such a tremendous heel that a long-term babyface run would be wasting his true talents.

 

It takes a while for Buddy to get warmed up on the stick, and some of his bad jokes about Stasiak in the first part of this segment remind me of Attitude Era Jerry Lawler at his worst. He warms to his task eventually, though, and promises the same old domination, starting with his second eternal enemy, Matt Borne. (The first, of course, is Piper.)

 

I liked Stasiak's introduction of Buddy as "poison" and Buddy agreeing with it. That leads to Buddy's best line in quite a while: "If a rattlesnake bit me, the snake would end up going to the hospital."

 

For those who may not know, Portland's nickname is really The Rose City, and unfortunately it has nothing to do with Buddy (although he certainly would have claimed otherwise). Furthermore, the main arena in Portland, the Memorial Coliseum, is nicknamed the Rose Garden. I know Owen owned the Sports Arena outright, but I think he missed an opportunity not using the Rose Garden at least once for a big main event involving Buddy. Think of the fun Buddy could have had with that on interviews!

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​Buddy and Borne (7/14/84):

 

​I had a long post ready that the server ate, so I'll just summarize it and move on.

 

This wasn't a shock to me like it was to everyone else because of Buddy's past; they ​way​ oversold that part of it.

 

Buddy was actually pretty disgusting here with making Matt lick the bottom of his shoe and such, and I hope that's not an indication of how his character will change moving forward. I expect a lot more out of him, heel or no heel. In a similar vein, I was surprised that he got away with the homosexual jokes at Matt's expense, which were pretty bold even by today's standards and sounded ten times worse in the context of 1984.

 

Sorry if this was short, but I don't feel like recopying my longer post, especially with so much other stuff to watch.

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​Sawyer vs. Assassin:

 

​The match here was pretty much ignored because it came in the aftermath of Oliver's attack on Stasiak. The only thing that got Coss to pay attention to what was happening in the ring was when Brett posted Assassin's leg.

 

We eventually get the inevitable DQ finish, with Ebony and Assassin doubleteaming Brett until Dr. Tom made the save for him. Even at this young age, it's obvious that Dr. Tom is loaded with potential. He's not doing his Piper impression on the mic yet, at least not here, but he shows a lot of fire.

 

Interesting that Coss refused to do the interview at the end of the match because the "no blood" clause in his contract had been violated. I've seen him do interviews after this, though, so maybe that was just an excuse to have Stan come back out and announce that he was suing Oliver for assault.

 

Coss suggested that the director may have to do the interview after the match, but I guess they didn't want someone with no experience (and maybe not smart to the business) to have to come on camera and do an interview and risk making a mess out of it.

 

Matt's extended promo on commentary makes me want to see that cage match between him and Oliver. I'm guessing that he really was​ friends with Stasiak for a long time, considering that both Stan and his dad Tony spent a long time in the Northwest.

 

I kept waiting for Oliver to return, but after what he'd already done, it was a smart move to hold off on any more appearances from him until the following week.

 

Nice sales job by Stan to put over the fact that he was still woozy from the attack during the interview. I wonder if he ever got back in the ring to wrestle Oliver after this, or if the rest of the faces took up his cause instead.

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​Mike Miller, Mr. Ebony and the Cuban Assassin:

 

​I'm not sure what the point of this was. I've seldom seen a guy hijack an interview featuring his own stable before, and this Cuban Assassin wasn't very good. I caught the stuff about crippling American wrestlers and putting them in the hospital, and that was about it.

 

Miller sounds too much like Oliver for my taste. I realize he can't help his accent, but that doesn't make him any easier to listen to. Right now, there seem to be too many of the same type of heel in the territory, and no one except Buddy really stands out on that side of the fence.

 

I hope I like Jaggers here better than I did in Puerto Rico. He wasn't bad as a worker, but I couldn't stand him on commentary with Hugo Savinovich. He was a lot like heel Lawler in that he never let a good match get in the way of his bad jokes, and he'd have made the top of my crap list if Rip Rogers hadn't been so much worse.

 

I see that Coss is doing the interviews now. Has Stasiak left? I guess we'll see in the clips ahead.

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​Ric Flair Promo:

 

​This was the typical stuff TBS viewers heard from Flair every week around this time, but in a different territory and with a different opponent, it all sounds.........well, not quite so old.

 

I didn't think Owen ever ran the Rose Garden, but with Flair, Sarge, the Road Warriors, and Piper on the card, if ever there was a time to try it, this was it.

 

The Trail Blazers had actually made the NBA playoffs and gone 3-1 at home in them, including a win that clinched their first round series against the Dallas Mavericks. Note to wrestlers everywhere: If you're going to go for cheap heat against a sports team, at least say something that's partially true do you don't sound like a total idiot. I don't blame Flair for this; I blame the people in Don Owen's office who, as Portland natives, should have known exactly what the Blazers did where and informed Flair so he could find another local target, or better yet focused on Billy Jack for the whole promo.

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​Buddy and the Mega (6/29/85):

 

​I've heard of the character of the Mega Maharishi, but I haven't seen him until now. I wonder if we'll see anything on this set that explains how Wiskowski became a guru, even if it was only in his own head.

 

No matter what he calls himself, Ed pushes the envelope on the mic; his attacks on Jaggers' war record were almost DeBeers-like. As unpopular as the Vietnam War was, those who chose to serve were still proud of that service, and calling a vet a coward regardless of which war they were in is about the worst thing anyone can say to them.

 

Buddy almost sounds like he's new to the territory, talking about how he'll do anything to get noticed, including running guys out of Portland and/or shaving their heads. I know that it's a typical heel talking point that everyone ignores them, but after Buddy's been in so many high-profile feuds and been both the most loved and hated wrestler in the Northwest for so long, it sounds ridiculous coming from him.

 

(No, the above wasn't a typo. While Piper and Billy Jack among others may have been number one in the fans' hearts for a time, I maintain that no one has been as consistently well-liked, even while he was being booed, as Buddy. Want proof? Check out the riot that occurred after his face turn, and also how deflated the crowd was when he officially turned heel again.)

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​Billy Jack Haynes and Ricky Vaughn:

 

​Boy, were the girls screaming loudly for Billy Jack. He almost seemed legitimately embarrassed by the attention, especially since this wasn't his interview time.

 

I can see why Fritz tried Vaughn as a Von Erich; if we're being honest, he just might have had a better body than Kerry, plus he had a quick smile and the girls were nuts about him. He also had a slight southern accent that can be explained as a Texas drawl. If he hadn't run out on Fritz and had stayed a while longer in Texas, he wouldn't be the joke he is today. Not that he'd be seen on the same level as Kerry, Kevin, and David, but he wouldn't have been so easily dismissed.

 

Billy Jack has shown more of a sense of humor here than he ever did for Vince, as witnessed by his "125-pound weakling" crack about Coss. He's still not the above-average talker that most guys had to be in order to get over in New York, but he's miles better than I ever remember him being.

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​Bobby Jaggers and Mychal Jack........er, Thompson:

 

​Thompson takes most of this interview, and he's positively giddy to be in the presence of the wrestlers. Most celebrities come off as basically ignorant of wrestling, or even contemptuous of it, but you can tell that his love of the sport is legit. In fact, I think he pours it on a bit too thick; there's no reason to denigrate your own sport and career in order to put the wrestlers over. Still, better that than someone who comes across as not knowing why the hell he or she ever agreed to be part of a stupid wrasslin' match. At least he was smart enough to say that he liked the day he met his girlfriend better.

 

It's Jaggers who comes off as the ignoramus here, repeatedly referring to Mychal as "Jackson". Did they not meet before they went on camera? One slip is perfectly understandable, as big as Jackson was in the music world at the time, but three or four? It got to the point that Coss had to acknowledge and correct it, which is never good. This segment would have been much better if Thompson had come out by himself and they'd saved the Jaggers interview for later in the show.

 

Coss goofed by not saying which match Thompson was going to be guest timekeeper for, unless they hadn't worked that out yet, which is hard to believe just three days before the card.

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​Bobby Jaggers Heel Turn:

 

​This was a very logical turn, particularly after Bobby explained himself. Why shouldn't ​he be mad? Billy Jack wrestling Flair in May was bad enough, but to fly in Magnum to wrestle Flair just four days before? I'd have gone after Billy Jack too.

 

Did Owen ​really ​say that he didn't want the Road Warriors to wrestle local talent because they'd eat them up? The LOD ended up fighting Larry and Curt Hennig, which makes at least a little sense given Curt's past in the territory, but that was a totally counterproductive thing to say, and it's not like him (from what little I know of him) to put down his own people like that.

 

I'm guessing that the reason Flair worked with Magnum in September was because JCP wouldn't have sent talent to Portland if they couldn't book the main event to their own taste. By the way, Jaggers' reference to "kicking the Russians' butts" comes from the fact that he and Steve Pardee wrestled Ivan Koloff and Khrusher Khruschev on the September card. (They lost.)

 

Jaggers sounds a bit like Dusty at times and a bit like Michael Hayes at others, particularly with the references to growing up in "the last house on the left" in his neighborhood and "the further you went down the block, the badder everybody got". He seemed a lot more like an original on the Puerto Rico set; here, he's just another cookie-cutter blond southern heel in a promotion that has too many with at least a few of those characteristics. I'll wait to see how things shake out, but at this point I'd rather have just had Rip injure Billy Jack, since all Jaggers seems to be is a clone of his anyway

 

Nice backhand shot Jaggers took at Buddy. Could Owen have been thinking about turning Buddy babyface again and having him resume his war with Oliver and company?

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​Bobby Jaggers Interview:

 

​This is one of those interviews that can only be done in a local promotion. Jaggers really put over just what a loser-leave-town match means when he talked about having to pull his daughter out of school and leave a house that was just three doors down from his brother's. I also liked his emotion when he talked about his family members who lived in the area. You really get the sense that he's fighting for more than a belt in his upcoming match with Miller.

 

Interesting that Billy Jack's father got to hold the belt off camera while Jaggers talked, considering that jealousy of Billy Jack and his success was one reason for Jaggers' heel turn several months later.

 

I wish we had the angle where Miller presented Jaggers with the diaper. It's an obvious way to call another wrestler a crybaby, but the only time I've seen it used is in Mid-South, when Jim Cornette lost a match and had to actually wear ​a diaper.

 

So Oliver had already been run out, huh? It had to be no more than a sixty-day stip, since he was back to engineer Jaggers' heel turn in late September.

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​Billy Jack Haynes Feature:

 

​From the way they hyped this match, it almost seemed inevitable that Billy Jack would get the belt at least briefly. The setup was all there: he almost had Flair beaten once, only to have Oliver interfere. He then beat Oliver bloody to get him out of the way, and he's trained like a maniac to get another shot. He has the people behind him, including the governor of Oregon. Unfortunately, the so-called World title belongs almost exclusively to Jim Crockett, and he's not giving it up because Flair's Ted Turner's favorite wrestler and maybe the only one he really knows. What a shame.

 

Seriously, this is ​the kind of hype job that usually preceded at least a brief title change. It's about as well put together a segment of its type as I've ever seen; it does its job without too much obvious sentimentality, unlike some. Maybe the letter from the governor was a bit much, but I saw Memphis stop in its tracks for Lawler when he beat Curt for the AWA belt, and this seemed like a moment on par with that one, whether the belt actually changed hands in the end or not.

 

It seems like Billy Jack got more shots at the NWA World champion, whoever he was at a given time, than just about anyone. I would have thought that Buddy might have gotten a few more, even if it meant that guys like Harley and Flair ended up babyfaces for one night only.

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​Buddy and the Mega (7/6/85):

 

​Now I know where Verne got the idea for DeBeers from. Wiskowski's rant about the brush fire is one of the most daring things I've ever heard in wrestling under the circumstances. In its own way, that's like going to New York after 9/11 and calling the police and fire departments cowards for letting parts of New York burn. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that KPTV wasn't inundated by cards and letters afterward, and I'm surprised that the Mega Maharishi character was still allowed to be on TV at all.

 

Buddy is the most unlikely religious freak I've ever known, but since everyone with two eyes knows that the Mega is his friend Wiskowski, that doesn't mean as much as it ordinarily might. At any rate, I guess they've targeted Vaughn, if the rant about him being on steroids is any indication. For my money, they're absolutely right, but of course no one admitted to such things back in the day.

 

I'm not sure I believe that Buddy has nineteen-inch arms, since the rest of him is so flabby and he has no definition in his biceps. But he probably used his physical gifts (whatever they may have been) to better advantage than Vaughn, who seemed to vanish from the landscape once Fritz was finished with him.

 

Again with the calls for hair matches and loser-leave-town matches so Buddy can make his mark. It's almost like Buddy's being rebooted a bit along with Wiskowski, and I don't think it's necessary at all. We'll see how things shake out in the ring as we move along.

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​Portland News Special (5/21/85):

 

​They actually showed more footage from WrestleMania than from Portland, which I guess shouldn't be a surprise. I also finally got to see Dave Schultz slap John Stossel around, and while I'm not for a second suggesting that Schultz should have put his hands on Stossel, judging by how hard Stossel looked to be hit he might have exaggerated his injuries a bit in order to win his lawsuit against Vince.

 

I liked Savage's attitude: Any time that the mainstream media features wrestling, even in a negative light, it's good for the business. If more officials had thought that way and been a bit more cooperative with the media (without breaking kayfabe in the process), maybe the media wouldn't have been so hell-bent on "exposing" wrestling.

 

Jaggers also brought up a good point when he said that one of the reasons fans love wrestling so much is because that start to watch it in their homes, and thus the wrestlers become familiar to them. Of course, that also has to do with good booking and the wrestlers' physical and verbal talents.

 

So that's ​what Wiskowski looks like as the Mega. I wondered what kind of gear he wore to the ring.

 

I found it interesting that Savage supposedly wouldn't be a wrestler again; it's his notoriety as a wrestler that allowed him to be taken seriously in his church work at his advanced age.

 

I liked Wiskowski bragging about how he could have already retired with the money he'd made. "My banker knows me by my first name" is my Line of the Segment.

 

Here's a news flash, Billy Jack: Most of the people who say that wrestlers aren't athletes aren't fans, and they wouldn't soil their hands on you. Challenging them to get in the ring with you may make you sound tough, but it really doesn't accomplish anything.

 

On the positive side, I admire Billy Jack for wanting to be a wrestler so his father could be there when he performed. That's a privilege he wouldn't have gotten as often if Billy Jack had been a baseball or football player. Billy Jack sounds extremely levelheaded whenever he's spoken so far; how on earth did he get to be such a nutjob?

 

No Buddy to be found anywhere? Maybe he was on vacation while this was being filmed.

 

Most of the interviews except for Billy Jack came from heels like Wiskowski and Miller, which I found odd to say the least. (Actually, I think Jaggers was still a face, but we only got one brief clip from him.)

 

I guess whoever sent Will the tape of this forgot to include Part 3.

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​Wiskowski and Nagasaki:

 

​Most of the titles that Ed brags about holding are believable, but knowing a little bit about how Baba booked All-Japan I seriously doubt that Ed ever held a title there. He might have done well on tour, but I don't think he ever got a ​belt, much less the top one.

 

I was surprised at what a good mouthpiece Ed was without assuming a character other than himself. He seems like the type who could have played the Million Dollar Man if DiBiase hadn't been interested (and if DeBeers hadn't existed) with his bragging about his financial wherewithal. Hell, he even looks a bit like Teddy.

 

I didn't know that whatever Nagasaki did to Billy Jack was supposedly one reason why he'd left Portland for Texas (which, come to think of it, is another place where he wasn't used to his full potential).

 

This was the same Kendo Nagasaki who was a major heel in Florida among other places, right? I ask this because there's at least one other guy who has used the name in the past. Whoever this one is, he sure can use that kendo stick.

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​Billy Jack and Santa Rip:

 

​This did nothing for me at all because we didn't see the attack. How do we know Billy Jack didn't just blade for fun? The answer, of course, is that we don't. If an angle's important enough to run, it's important enough to tape, and nobody should have to tell that to Don Owen, of all people. Couldn't we at least have seen Billy Jack's blood on the tire iron?

 

I liked Oliver's retort when the fan threw something at him: "Keep doin' that, it's money in my pocket."

 

I had no idea that the Billy Jack-Oliver issue spanned three different promotions: World Class, Florida, and Portland. You never hear about this one when the legendary feuds are discussed, but it should be on that basis alone.

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​Buddy and the Mega's Fashion Show:

 

​The hosts seem like they don't quite know what to make of wrestling, which is typical. Is there anyone working at a television station who will both admit to liking wrestling and have the class to treat wrestlers as normal interview subjects? It doesn't look like it, even in 1985.

 

The footage they showed of Piper-Rose spoiled the finish, which Vince would never have allowed the day after a match. I guess Don figured that any publicity, even after the fact, was good publicity.

 

I loved Buddy coming out with his Dachsunds in response to Piper's crack about Dobermans being the only things that would go out with him. It showed the even heels can laugh at themselves under the right circumstances.

 

Buddy's girls looked beautiful as always. Was the one named Tammy the same Tammy whom Buddy would take his frustrations out on (in a kayfabe sense) a few years later?

 

Buddy naturally made an excuse for his loss to Piper, but there's no denying that it really was ​a fluky finish, as it had to be under the circumstances. More on that when I see the match in its entirety later in the set.

 

The fashion show part of this was played relatively straight, thank goodness. I loved Buddy admitting that his bleached blond hair wasn't real, especially in that tone of voice. You just know he's been asked that question a billion times over the years, and he didn't bother pretending he hadn't been.

 

Buddy's talk about the financial differences between him and Piper would have come off as sour grapes if we hadn't known that Buddy was a part of Mania I too, albeit a much smaller part.

 

We dodn't hear much from Wiskowski at all, probably because he wasn't the one fighting the second-biggest wrestling star in America at the time like Buddy was.

 

Just as I say that, he does a hilarious commentary about Kamala's fashion sense, and even drops the tidbit that he (Kamala) actually comes from Jackson, Mississippi! I guess that was okay in Portland, since I don't think Don ever booked The Ugandan Giant/Headhunter.

 

Wiskowski continues his roll by attacking Sgt. Slaughter over his choice of fatigues (shades of a future feud to come), then says that a then-little known Rick Rude must have a sexual identity crisis based on his leopard-skin trunks. I'll bet you wouldn't say that to his face, Ed!

 

I liked Ed's comment about whether there was jealousy between him and Buddy over their ring attire: "His cost a thousand dollars, I picked mine up for two hundred and fifty. Than I invested the other seven-fifty in AT&T." Say what you will about his various characters; the real Ed Wiskowski seems to have his head on straight.

 

It's kind of a shame that Piper didn't come back to Portland in September for the next big card; I would have loved to see him fight Hogan on that card just to see if the Portland fans would have booed their adopted hero. Vince probably feared that they wouldn't, which is why we never saw Piper-Hogan in the Northwest. Actually, if Vince had been in a charitable mood I wouldn't have minded seeing Hogan come in to fight Buddy either.

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Piper on ​Two at Four ​(5/21/85):

 

​​Even though I knew Piper was going to get cheered, I was still unprepared to hear it, since I knew what he was in the WWF at the time.

 

I liked the hosts basically blowing off the comments of Gloria Steinem and Hogan; at this time both of them were gods in their respective spheres of life, and their word was always law. I wonder what kind of reception Hogan would have gotten if he'd come on out of nowhere and started a verbal confrontation with Piper.

 

The insults for Buddy came thick and fast, but Rod made a good point: Buddy beating him would have done a whole lot more for Buddy's career at this point than him beating Buddy did for his. Of course, there was no chance whatsoever of that happening.

 

Talk about a sucker question: "Is there too much wrestling on TV?", when you have a wrestler as a guest and a studio full of fans!

 

I liked Rod's explanation of why he needed Ace Orton in spite of being such a tough guy. It made sense, considering that he'd had crowds ready to commit mayhem on him in arenas all over the country.

 

Once again, Piper came to the defense of the wrestling fans of Portland without making it about his own legitimacy. He may be the only one I've ever heard do that once, let alone twice. (Lawler may be the other guy capable of this, but I've never heard him defend the fans solely and specifically, although I don't doubt he did it at some point in Memphis.)

 

He may have honestly forgotten that he teamed with Billy Jack at least once, but Rod's advice about not jumping to the WWF too quickly rings prophetic in light of what a relative flop Billy Jack was there. (He actually jumped twice, but left after just one taping sometime late in '84.)

 

Line of the entire Portland set goes to Rod's wife Kitty, when asked if he's truly a good man at heart: "Once you learn to talk louder than him, he's not so bad." No wonder they were happy and committed to each other until Rod died. What a woman. I wonder if she actually had her baby later that day or whether she was just making a joke.

 

I liked the back-and-forth between Rod and the male host over the result of Mania I. That guy's the first person I know to say that Rod wears a skirt and live to tell about it!

 

Rod handled the question from the young fan brilliantly, and just about the way you'd expect him to. He put over the fans of Portland while still guarding his reputation as a heel. The line about him fighting to eat was one he also used in the WWF on the rare occasions when he was asked to explain his philosophy, and it might be the most honest answer a wrestler can give on the subject.

 

Given how offhandedly he talked about his upcoming stint on All My Children, ​who could have guessed that Rod would become such an accomplished B-movie actor?

 

The story Rod told about the girl he and Kitty saw with the makeup job that made her look like she'd been hit may be baloney or it may not, but it was an excellent real-sounding explanation of why Rod was against Cyndi Lauper and the rock 'n' roll culture. If only Vince had allowed stuff like that during their feud in the WWF, the whole rock 'n' wrestling connection may not have felt as simple and childish as it did at times.

 

I found it interesting that Rod brought up the fact that people in the music industry were getting on Cyndi's case for being involved with wrestling, which may be why she'd made her final appearance eleven days earlier at the first-ever ​SNME ​taping.

 

Great final line from Rod when the guy asked how he could be a better interviewer: "Get a job at a car wash!"