April 1979

This is 2 out of 3 falls and it's pretty good. I'm a sucker for limb work that tells a story and we got it here in spades. Valentine in all 3 falls is just going after the leg. Nothing ground breaking but it makes sense. Tiger is actually a pretty good baby face. He sells the leg like a champ. He shows great fire. At one point he does a Steamboat Starcade 84, and instead of protecting his ribs, he's protecting his leg by using a side stance. Conway was also pretty good at using some nice revenge spots on Greg's leg. I also enjoyed how they refer to Greg as Johnny's brother. I wonder what year they started doing the real story. I hated the screw job finish of the 3rd fall…

I love late 70s/early 80s Portland. It feels like I've still only really scratched the surface with it (I think I'll start the 80s Portland set this weekend), but they were running awesome, lengthy main events on TV - usually with the 2/3 falls format - and most of them were built around Buddy Rose. So like, giving one of the ten best wrestlers ever half an hour on free TV every week is quite the treat for us, the gentle viewer. And this pretty much ruled all ends up, with a first fall that would've been great as a standalone match. Piper was incredible here. All four heels were good during the opening babyface shine, but Piper (who was in there the longest) was the stand…

This is my first time seeing Buddy Rose. One thing that immediately stood out is how well he hit the ropes. I've seen a million matches where a babyface/lower ranked guy takes the beginning of the match with armdrag/armhold combos, here it was pretty much the entire match. Rose's selling was good enough to keep me invested, and there was some nice work over the keylock with him pulling the tights and repeteadly getting countered back into the keylock by Hector. But for a promotion and worker I've never seen before it felt incredibly mundane and familiar, and I wasn't big on how it was paced and how insignificant Hector taking the entire match looked at the end of the matc…

This is an amazing battle. Spoiler's offense is so credible looking. Everything he does looks painful. We see him take the advantage and he's working over Wahoo's back and neck. Spoiler uses the ropes for springing off to cause more damage. In a nice touch Hart yells Spoiler claw and Spoiler uses the claw. Wahoo bleeds big time to get over the claw. This moves outside where a stiff as hell brawl erupts. Their is slamming on tables, using of chairs. Wahoo sells throughout. When he makes a comeback it's big. Both guys tear into each other with a fury. Spoiler keeps on going back to the cut caused by the claw throughout. 4 1/2*

We get a feeling out process to start. Hart is active at ringside early. Lewin tosses Funk to the outside to a waiting Hart who attacks. This sets up the heat. Funk is back in, but it looks like his arm has been hurt. Lewin follows up by posting the arm. Lewin chops the arm, puts a nerve hold on it, more chops, wristlock with the arm extended, then into a hammerlock. Funk is tremendous in selling this big. Lewin with judo thrusts to the arm, and posts the arm again. Lewin has just destroyed Funk's arm. Funk fires off some jabs to get some seperation to no avail.More arm work, then Funk tries standing headbutts to get seperation, again no luck. Funk with an ankle pick and …