Chris Adams & Hack Sawyer vs. The Assassin & Rip Oliver (2/3 Falls) (2/19/83)

[goodhelmet]

Chris Adams & Hack Sawyer vs. The Assassin & Rip Oliver (2/3 Falls) (2/19/83)

Disc 5

[garretta]

​First fall: ​This was a tremendous back-and-forth fall, with Adams and Hack working on the arms of both Oliver and the Assassin and in turn each taking a turn as face-in-peril for them. Adams is busted open slightly, and Hack takes a nasty spill over the top rope courtesy of Oliver, who's in the ring for the heels for most of the fall. Eventually, Hack pins Assassin with a sunset flip to take a 1-0 lead for his team with about eighteen minutes of disc time remaining.

 

Dutch and Coss really put over Adams' superkick as a killer move, especially when he hits it on Oliver late in the fall. Dutch: "I thought I saw (Rip's) ear fly off!"

 

What was the deal with Hack being as injured as he was? The way Dutch talked about it, he almost had to be in a car wreck, because no wrestler could cause that much damage in one match, legitimate or otherwise.

 

Adams looks strange with that half beard. How long had he been over here at this point?

 

Speaking of whom, he deserves an award for wrestling back-to-back matches on the same TV card: a singles squash, then this match. I wonder who Hack's partner was supposed to be originally, because there's no way Chris would have been booked to wrestle twice in a row.

 

They're already pimping Buddy's return by calling him "the star of Madison Square Garden". Well, for one card I guess he was.

 

Dutch and Coss have a good time throughout the fall without taking away from the action in the ring. Their exchange about the "English crab" tickled me in particular. It's a shame that Dutch had such a relatively short broadcasting career, because he definitely had a talent for it.

 

​Second fall: ​Hack's in the ring for the entre fall, as Oliver and Assassin successfully cut him off from Adams. Finally Chris can't take it anymore and charges into the ring, allowing the heels to hit a sloppy version of the Demolition Decapitation (Assassin almost slips off the turnbuckle at one point) to tie the bout at a fall apiece with about nine minutes of disc time remaining.

 

There's not much that stands out here either with the action itself or the commentary. They're still trying to push Oliver as a muscleman, and as long as he's showing his strength against junior heavyweights like Hack and Adams they'll get away with it.

 

Dutch and Coss spend a lot of time during this fall hyping the dark main event: Billy Jack vs. Matt Borne. That seems like an excellent matchup, and I'm sorry that we don't appear to have it on the set.

 

Third fall: ​Adams finally gets in the ring, and he and Hack have Oliver and Assassin going. Knowing that their belts are about to fly the coop, the heels deliberately stall out the time limit, and the bout ends up a no-contest.

 

The finish didn't bother me so much as Adams and Sawyer's reaction to it. It was easy to tell that they weren't meant to be serious challengers for the tag belts, because after being screwed about as blatantly as a team can be screwed, they don't demand, or even mention the possibility of, a rematch, instead choosing to focus on their individual pursuits, such as Chris's upcoming match with Buddy and Hack's participation in an upcoming battle royal. If it was me, I'd be screaming and swearing up and down until I got some sort of rematch.

 

I think they may have been leading up to an unmasking of Assassin, which would account for Dutch's remarks about his appearance and the implication that there may be more than one of them.

 

The cameramen must have really been asleep at the switch, because we never saw either Oliver or Adams bleed. Either that or Dutch has X-ray vision and hasn't bothered to inform the audience.

 

Chris's match with Buddy comes up later on this very disc, and from what we saw here Chris looks like he can hang with the Playboy. Whether that's enough to translate into victory remains to be seen.

 

I liked Dutch reminding the audience that, as distasteful as Oliver and Assassin's stalling may have been, it was legal and in fact a smart strategy. You don't get that kind of insight very often, even from former wrestlers. Usually, everyone's busy calling the stalling champion a coward and a pantywaist.