Buddy Rose, Little Tokyo & Billy the Kid vs. Jonathan Boyd, Lone Eagle & Cowboy Lang (12/13/80)

[goodhelmet]

Buddy Rose, Little Tokyo & Billy the Kid vs. Jonathan Boyd, Lone Eagle & Cowboy Lang (12/13/80)

Disc 2

[garretta]

People who read these reviews are going to think I hate this set, but that's not true. I'm glad I ordered the set so I know what Portland was like; it's just that I don't like what it was like at times, if that makes any sense.

 

Here's yet another example. I don't like mixed matches like this where two different types of wrestlers are on the same team because in most of these, the different types aren't allowed to interact, in essence making two matches out of one. In this case, it would be the midgets against the midgets and the normal-sized guy against the normal-sized guy. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that all six men would be allowed to interact in this one......until I saw Buddy constantly being made a monkey of by Cowboy Lang.

 

I couldn't wait to dive into the matches on the set to see the masterful worker that Buddy supposedly was. Admittedly, it's still relatively early (about four and a half discs in for me), but I have yet to see it. Great workers don't allow themselves to made a fool out of by midgets and legends who are past their prime. I understand that the booking isn't really Buddy's fault, but he's been used terribly so far on this disc, what with getting his hat handed to him by Tony Borne and now being consistently outsmarted by a midget. Did Don really ​see him as top heel material, or was he just the best of a questionable lot?

 

I'm used to top heels steamrolling everyone in their path until they meet the absolute top babyface, then​ getting theirs. What's it going to matter if Piper or Matt opens a can on Buddy? Everyone ​gets to do it, both the tall and the small. He's even been slapped around by a woman (Princess Victoria) on at least one interview. At some point, great interviews and promos simply aren't enough if you can't deliver in the ring, and Buddy really hasn't yet. (I'm not talking about bumps, either; I'm talking about giving out almost as good of a beating as he takes.)

 

In other news, I was surprised to see the midgets work an actual match with holds instead of comedy spot after comedy spot. I was similarly surprised when a midget match made it on to the Texas set and they wrestled an almost-normal match too. The only other promotion I'd really seen the midgets work in before that was the WWF, and the matches there were almost pure comedy, with the referee (usually the shortest one they had working a particular card) almost serving as a fifth participant. Of course, lucha takes its minis matches a lot more seriously than even the most serious American midget matches could ever hope to be, but it's still a revelation to see them as workers, much like it was when I saw joshi for the first time.

 

Frank has some odd names for holds; he calls a backdrop a shoulder throw, a bearhug a body lock, and an atomic drop a backbreaker. You can hardly call him ignorant or misinformed, so I tend to believe that these were old-fashioned names for the holds/moves in question that he still uses out of habit. I'm sure I'll get used to them in time.

 

I'm shocked we didn't get a mass midget uprising when Buddy used the backbreaker on Lang the way we did at Mania III when Bundy squashed Little Beaver. It was probably because they'd interacted through the match and Lang had gotten the best of Buddy consistently, as I stated above. (By the way, what a feat of strength it was for Lang to pick Boyd up on his shoulders. It reminds me of the story Gorilla Monsoon supposedly told about being picked up in a fireman's carry by Frenchy Lamont and carried across a room. Of course, Little Tokyo couldn't hold Buddy for more than a step when he tried the same thing!)

 

I loved the promo with the dogs before the match. I have no doubt that they were Buddy's own dogs, but I wonder how he really got them. Something tells me that they weren't really a present from Wiskowski!