Roddy Piper & Rick Martel vs. Luke Williams & Butch Miller (2/3 Falls) (5/31/80)

[goodhelmet]

Roddy Piper & Rick Martel vs. Luke Williams & Butch Miller (2/3 Falls) (5/31/80)

Disc 1

[JKWebb]

From my earlier post:

 

By this point, the Sheepherders have the belts. Buddy Rose is told to leave ringside, and things pick up with a call back to the 05/03/80 match as Piper and Martel work over the left arm of Williams. Things quickly change as Roddy Piper's right knee becomes the focus. Piper does a great job throughout all three falls of this match selling the knee. To me, this is one of those segment vs. match type moments. Kind of like Flair/Dibiase and Lawler/Flair, this is just a great 40 minutes or so of television. This is a much longer match than those other two, but I just mean I feel like the entire segment is what makes it so classic. Butch and Luke take the first fall, and Buddy Rose takes the microphone and talks about how he brought them here (Portland) and is basically responsible for their success. Piper has to start the second fall because he lost the first fall, so he limps out to the ring. There is great suspense built here as Piper tries to desperately find a way to tag in Martel. Martel is fantastic after the tag, and you see the excitement level of the crowd. They eventually have Williams tap due to the damage of his left arm. The next interview is in the back with Piper and he discusses an upcoming title shot he has with Martel, but it's all respect, pure babyface. The third fall, Rose tries to attack with a stick of some kind (watched it last night, so I can't remember exactly what type of weapon/stick he has here), and he nails Williams on the head. This busts Williams open and allows for Piper and Martel to get the pinfall. There is some great back and forth between Rose and Butch here, as Butch turns to the crowd to see if Rose did it on purpose, and Rose decides to throw in some more licks on Williams when Butch isn't looking. He finally gets busted, which leads to Butch probably cutting the best promo of his career on Buddy Rose. He wants revenge and the match is set for the following Saturday. This was a really good match, and very heated and awesome moment all around. Great stuff here.

[garretta]

First fall: ​A lot of this fall is a reprise of the first fall in the first match between these teams, as Piper and Martel work over Luke's left arm. We also get the false tag spots that drove the Sheeps wild. amd after a while it seems like Luke will have to submit again so he has enough left for the next two falls. But he gets a lucky shot in on Piper's bad left knee, and from then on it's the Sheeps' turn to go to work. Butch eventually locks Piper in a half-crab, and Rod gives up to save his knee. The champions take a one fall to none lead approximately seventeen minutes (disc time) into the match.

 

Nice to see Don back and recovered from his surgery. He impacts this match right away by telling Buddy in no uncertain terms to go back to the locker room, which he does with little complaint. I'm torn about the whole managers at ringside thing; I understand why most territiories sent them back, but having guys like Bobby Heenan and Jim Cornette at ringside during the eighties added a fresh dimension to the matches, as interference or the threat of it kept the faces on their toes and the fans on the edge of their seats.

 

I'm not a fan of the constant false tags with Piper and Martel; they do it too often to be cute, and it makes Sandy come off like an incompetent boob. especially when he lets one of the tags go because he thinks that they were close enough to tag. You think​, Sandy? I've said this at least once before, but if that's the way it's going to be in tag matches, the heels should get the same benefit of the doubt. Of course, that will never even come close to happening.

 

A curious spot: Luke tries at least twice to tag out while Rod and Rick are working on his arm, only for Butch to be further down the apron yelling at the crowd. They never used this as an excuse to turn the Sheeps on each other, so I'm wondering why they used this spot. It was probably to show the fans that even champions can be off their game at times.

 

The promo between falls gives a hint of the dissension to come when Buddy says that he's the one who made the Sheeps the champions that they are and Butch corrects him rather forcefully, but the rest is straight ahead heel stuff. I loved the Sheeps taking credit for the car accident that injured Piper's knee (with a little help from the ash of Mt. St. Helens), and the stuff where Butch is bragging about bank presidents putting them on the same level as millionaires and other VIPs is fantastic. They end the interview by threatening to break Piper' s leg, and we'll see if they can do it over the next two falls.

 

Second fall: ​Needing to even the match, Martel and Piper remember that they hurt Luke's arm earlier in the bout, so after Piper fights his way out of trouble, they go back to work on it. Highlights include Piper ramming the arm into the steel post, and there's a hint of glee in Frank's voice when he says that the Sheeps are now taking the kind of punishment that they've dished out so often over the years. Eventually Martel slaps on a rather vicious-looking hammerlock, and Luke has no choice but to submit. We're even at a fall apiece with a little over thirteen minutes of disc time remaining.

 

The action in this fall is good, but the promo between falls stands out to me. First, Martel brings out a cake, which becomes one of the few cakes in wrestling history not to be smashed in a manager's face, as an example of how the fans of Portland care about their favorites. Then, Piper comes out to discuss an upcoming Northwest title shot against Martel that he's earned in Salem after winning the city's annual tournament. As JK said above, this is about as pure a babyface interview as Piper will ever give, and I wish we had the match on tape to see how it turned out. (We have some of the '84 tournament on the set, most notably the final between Curt Hennig and The Assassin.)

 

Interestingly enough, I'd rate Piper and Martel as just about equal verbally; Piper still hasn't fully developed the smart-alecky style that would make him a legend; there are traces of it, but they're not consistent, and his Canadian accent is as thick as it would ever be. Rick's an underrated talker as a face, nowhere near as bad as his detractors would have people believe. His biggest problem as AWA champion was that he was expected to deliver on the same level as guys like Flair and Hogan, each of whom was blessed with a gift of gab that fit their respective characters like a glove. Martel the humble soft-spoken babyface with an accent was doomed from the get-go.

 

​Third fall: Martel plays FIP for the first part of this, but eventually tags Piper, and things start getting wild. At one point, all four men are outside the ring and almost counted out. Piper hurriedly throws Luke into the ring and slaps on the sleeper while Martel has Butch occupied outside. Suddenly Buddy comes flying out of the locker room with the pole which holds the Sheeps' New Zealand flag, goes up top, and means to hit Piper to break up the sleeper. But Rod moves, and Buddy cracks Luke in the head, which saves the belts for the Sheeps, but gives the match to Piper and Martel on a DQ.

 

What follows is one of the greatest turns I've ever seen. Luke is still laid out in one corner, and when Butch demands to know what happened, Piper helpfully points the finger at Buddy. An enraged Butch puts the Playboy on his wallet, and Buddy retaliates by absolutely murdering Luke with the pole. By the time Butch can put a stop to this, Luke's a gory mess. Butch then attacks Buddy and throws him out of the ring, and the two brawl into the crowd. Once that's broken up, Buddy tries a sneak attack with a chair, only for Butch to catch him at it and hammer him. Eventually Buddy bails, and a bloody, semiconscious Luke is hauled up to the Crow's Nest for an interview.

 

What makes this such a great turn is that although there were hints of dissension between Buddy and the Sheeps, no one ever dreamed that things were as bad as they turned out to be. Buddy puts his all into the pole shots, and even Frank's stunned by what he's seeing, which takes some doing for a cool customer like him. We don't see many brawls into the crowd in Portland, and although this one really doesn't last long, it's still bloody and violent enough to be memorable. Finally, Luke takes the beating of his life here, and it's hard to no-sell the type of shots Buddy was laying in, even if you're already supposed to be unconscious. This may be the most vicious beating I've ever seen the Sheeps take, bar none.

 

Butch's promo is tremendous, one of the best I've heard on this whole set. He not only swears vengeance, but he details how Buddy was instrumental in both him and Luke losing their hair in hair matches, which most people probable wrote off as accidents at the time it happened. At one point, Butch touches Luke's cut. then smears his blood all over his (Butch's) body in a show of family solidarity.

 

While Butch is pouring his bile out, Luke's selling blood loss as well as anyone in wrestling ever has. At one point, he's unable to stand anymore and collapses to the floor of the Crow's Nest, only to fight his way unsteadily back to his feet (the camera misses this, but you can sense movement to Butch's left if you pay attention). By the end of the promo. Luke's down again and we fade to black as Frank requests medical attention for him.

 

To wrap this all up, Buddy's out for a closing interview, bragging about how he taught the Sheeps everything they know, not everything he ​knows. He then says that he won't wrestle Butch, which predictably brings Butch out to attack him again. He's held back before he can do too much damage, but demands a match with Buddy for the following week. Don grants him the match, saying that he doesn't care who wins as long as the turmoil Portland's been in since Buddy and the Sheeps got together is stopped. We get another short prom from Butch while he's being held back, and once Butch is finally taken out of the arena Buddy's left with no one to complain to but Sandy. He says again that he won't wrestle Butch, and wonders what Butch did to make the people cheer him all of a sudden.

 

I've tried in these last few paragraphs to boil down the essence of this whole deal, but much like Flair-DiBiase in Mid-South and Bill Dundee's 1985 turn on Jerry Lawler in Memphis over their match with the Fabulous Ones, this has to be seen to be truly appreciated. This is probably the best single segment or angle that I've seen so far in this set (I'm almost ten discs in), and the match that precedes it is outstanding as well. If you want one segment to show someone who's never seen Portland wrestling before just how special it is, you can't do much better than this one.

[AJS]

This is an excellent tag bout with a great post-match angle. Piper and Martel are like a well oiled machine working over Williams' arm, and Piper does a great job selling the leg damage in the second fall. This is super heated from the word go and only gets more crazy as the match goes on. The Miller/Rose confrontation after the match is expertly done, as is Miller's promo setting up the match for the following week. Superb stuff all round. ****1/2