[1977-08-15-Big Time Wrestling] Harley Race vs David Von Erich

[shoe]

This is 2 out of 3 falls. This is non title. The opening Thesz press was really nice. David controls with a headlock at 1st, and then uses the arm bar to keep Race at bay. Nice gut wrench by David. Race starts to work over the the midsection with a few well placed knees. David regains control. I like David standing on Race's face. David again using the arm to control Race. Race with some nasty looking knee drops, then David counters again. David has answers to all of Race's stuff. Big corner bump by Race to the outside. A nice small package gets 2 by David. A lot of control changes. A lot of repetetivness here. Race working a safe match with a young wrestler. Nothing too compelling. The whole match was telegraphed as a draw. In the era where wins and losses mattered. Going to a draw with the champ positions David as a star so the match served it's purpose.

[sek69]

Flair gets a lot of (deserved) credit for being able to make the local territory star look good, but the more I see of Harley it seems he was just as good doing it as well. Hopefully the more WWE digs in the archives the more stuff of his we'll find.

[CurtainJerker]

I guess this match was put on Texas TV on 12-24-77 because that's what my video filename says. 

Hype: 7

I don't have the TV buildup, but obviously this was a big match to test David who was dubbed as Rookie of the Year. "2/3 falls or TV time remaining, whichever comes first"...gee, I wonder. The post-match was awesome as Harley took the mic, begrudgingly complemented him, and had an interview putting David over. This is probably why people have said David was pegged to be champ one day. This was very out of the ordinary and special.

In-Ring: 6

This was mostly a scientific match. It was mat wrestling. It looked realistic. Workrate was slow. It's 1977. It's the NWA. Front facelock and armbar sequences were very boring. Commentator frustrated me when he said David was resting when Harley had him in the front facelock. He also said David was wearing Harley's arm for the whole match, but I didn't see Harley sell it when he was up. David was very basic. Harley just called this match for David to survive, so there's a lot of down time.

Highspots: 6

Harley hit the piledriver, knee drop, and elbow smash but David kicked out. Please remember this when people complain about kicking out of moves in "modern wrestling" Harley hit his varied set of knee drops and suplexes. Wanted to give this a higher rating, but the armbar work was too safe.

Storytelling: 8

This was about Harley making a star, and he accomplished that. Things heat up in the last 10 minutes when he allowed David to string in offense and Harley bumped. For the first 20 minutes unfortunately Harley kept telling David to get him in an armbar to plan out the next few moves, and then they went back to the armbar or facelocks. Ruined the match and IMHO didn't really put over David's offense or IQ. This was a match where Harley probably said, "I'll take care of you, kid"- and he did, and I can see Fritz not trusting David to have any input in this match, so Harley played it safe.

Fan Reaction: 6

Fans were happy toward the end, but kinda held their breath for the first 20 minutes and the action didn't ask for pops. TV setting. I don't think they were expecting David to survive. 

Match Rating: 6.6/10