Mike Miller & Karl Steiner vs. S&S Express (9/24/85)

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Mike Miller & Karl Steiner vs. S&S Express (9/24/85)

Disc 9

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I'll get to the match in a second, but first I have to say that Jeannie St. James, the woman who called the match, was excellent. I've never heard a woman do wrestling play-by-play before, and this was a revelation. She probably wasn't a regular wrestling announcer (we haven't seen her so far on the set), but she knew her stuff and sounded like she'd done wrestling before at some level. I'm guessing that the Tim who was her color man was Diamond Timothy Flowers, and even though he was clearly supposed to be a heel, he was very good too. He talked over Jeannie a bit at the finish, but that happens all the time, so it's not that big a deal. I'm looking forward to seeing what these two do with Flair-Magnum from the same card later in the set.

 

I'd like to know where Coss was, though. If my memory serves, this was a Tuesday, and he was a disc jockey for one of the rock stations in town. Could he have been working while the card was going on? He did the May card, since we saw him in a tux at ringside and heard him calling Piper-Rose, but that was Don's 60th anniversary show, so he may have asked for the time off beforehand. I'm wondering if Jeannie may have been a coworker of his who had the night off and was a wrestling fan, which would explain how she got the gig.

 

As for the match, it was basic and solid, but that's all that's needed out of some matches. Both teams looked good, and it's easy to see that Simpson and Savoldi were supposed to be Portland's answer to teams like the Rock 'n' Roll Express and the Fabulous Ones. They looked like they fit the bill here; they aren't the high flyers that the teams I just mentioned are, but they have spots that get the crowd going in their own way, particularly the side headlock grind, which I've seen used before but never quite that often or effectively.

 

Miller and Steiner handled their control segment well, although it never really felt like they would win. They were there to give Simpson a chance to play Ricky Morton for a time, and he was great at it. I'll never understand the need to have the FIP's partner come in to distract the ref every five seconds when once or twice would be sufficient to get the point across, but somehow the formula works.

 

Jeannie and Tim both got on Sandy for his slow counts and occasionally poor positioning, and I'm still wondering why he seemed to be the only referee Don seemed interested in using. I know he was office, but so were a lot of other refs in a lot of other promotions, and you still saw more than one per card, usually at least two. Maybe it was a holdover from the days when there were only three or four long bouts in one card as opposed to eight or ten shorter ones, but Don had plenty of time to adapt by 1985 if he'd chosen to do so. I'm wondering if we'll see him for Flair-Magnum, or if Crockett flew Tommy Young in because the match had two JCP guys in it.

 

Not really a Line of the Night, but I got a kick out of Jeannie's reaction to having garbage thrown in her lap during the match. Announcers really shouldn't react to things like that, but it's refreshing for that rule to be broken at times. I wonder if she ever caught who did it, and if she did, I hope it was a woman, considering her threat to make whoever did it sorry.