Rip Oliver vs. Billy Jack Haynes (Stretcher Match) (2/8/86)

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Rip Oliver vs. Billy Jack Haynes (Stretcher Match) (2/8/86)

Disc 9

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The idea for this match was grand; the execution of the wrestlers was great; the production absolutely reeked.

 

First (and worst), we never saw Oliver's kill shot on Billy Jack with his taped thumb. Regardless of what Coss said later about brass knuckles, the thumb was what put Billy Jack away. What were we looking at instead? A random shot of one of the stretcher bearers. Why? Any idiot knows that when there's action in a wrestling ring and you only have one main camera, that's where the hell the camera goes. Don's production people weren't amateurs by now; they'd been producing wrestling for years and knew how to shoot it. This performance was, in a word, inexcusable. Coss tried to save their bacon by playing up the brass knucks shot, but the audience could clearly see that Billy Jack was already out for good and that Oliver threw it in just because he could.

 

Equally as inexcusable was Don feigning ignorance about the rules of the match. At least I hope ​he was feigning ignorance; if he wasn't, why did he let the match air on TV, Tom Peterson aside? It was like if Magnum had had to explain the I Quit match at Starrcade '85; yes, it would have been a novel idea, but what kind of idiot would Jimmy Crockett Jr. have looked like sanctioning a match he didn't understand? I know Don got away with it because he was Don Owen, but that doesn't mean it was right.

 

Third, I think I'm going to despise Sandy Barr by the time this set is over. Not only is he ​absolutely everywhere​, but he didn't understand this particular match any more than Don supposedly did, and in his case I doubt he was faking. He was seen counting whoever was on the stretcher out of the ring several times, and what the hell was up with him counting a pinfall on Oliver midway through? Billy Jack had the good sense to ignore him and keep right on pounding the hell out of Rip, but it was such a "Huh?" moment that it took me out of the match for a few seconds.

 

Then there was the business with the brass knucks, which like the taped thumb were legal​, since anything went. Or was Sandy out to lunch when Billy Jack explained that? Why else would he make a big show of taking them from Oliver afterward? I guess they were trying to give Billy Jack some sort of moral victory, but if they'd thought of that beforehand, they wouldn't have aired this match to begin with. Incidentally, it's only happened twice that I've seen so far, but the "I didn't wanna air this match, but Tom Peterson insisted" routine from Don is already old. I don't know whether Peterson actually wanted certain matches aired over Don's objections or not, but Don doesn't look too good complaining about it regardless, especially if it's not true. Then it becomes "We thought this might be a good enough match to get you to buy tickets, but we were wrong, so we're gonna blow it off on TV, but it's not gonna be half as good as it could have been since we can't show more than a little blood and we have to watch the violence. Are you jerks happy now?"

 

From the I Can't Beileve They Did That on TV Dept.: Billy Jack's piledriver on the floor to Oliver. For that particular time and place, it didn't get much more hardcore than that.

 

Oliver had no business in the postmatch interview after the beating he took, and he sure shouldn't have sounded half as lucid as he did. You want to know why people laughed at wrestling for so long prior to Vince ending kayfabe? This is one example. He's been piledriven in the ring and ​on the floor, he's bleeding like a stuck pig, he almost was carried out on a stretcher multiple times, and yet there's Oliver spieling away fresh as a spring rain afterward. How some people still believed in wrestling fully after seeing stuff like that is something I'll never come close to understanding.