June 1979

This is for the Americas tag title. This was a lot of fun laced with some strong psychology. Lothario has the spirit of 76 bandage on from an encouner with Gran Marcus. The 1st fall is mostly all heat. They rip Lothario's bandage off. Both heels are working the cut. Spoiler wins it with the claw. The 2nd fall is more chaos. Again Lothario is selling , Lewin is awesome with the chops to the cut. Spoiler using the ropes in spots was great. Halcon used these nasty thrusts chops to the throat. Lothario catches Spoiler with a punch coming off the top rope with a punch for 3. The 3rd fall was all chaos. The ring was falling apart. Wrestlers were using the ring as weapons. Man S…

The opening is fascinating-Fujinami's leg is injured and Inoki goed to check on him. You could interpret is as Inoki being worried about his dear student, kicking him to test the strength of his leg, seeing he cannot fight Andre as he is and bravely stepping up and challenging Andre. You could also interpret it as him further injuring Fujinami, stealing his apotlight and conning everyone into cheering him by successfully BSing them. Talk about art imitating life. This was worked differently than their 1976 match and played to Andre's strengths more (and I have to say matches like this one are making me appreciate him a lot more). The match starts with Andre just mauling I…

There are moments of this that are great, but what felt like a blowoff culminated in a lackluster finishing stretch and payoff. When your commentator imagines a better and more logical finish than what you deliver you know you're in trouble. I'm not normally someone who when watching 1979 wrestling is so concerned with how it wraps up but with a match like this, which is lots of face raking, bleeding, and punching, the whole point is more or less how it concludes. The dueling low blows felt very fitting for the way the match was worked, liked something out of an issue of Southern Alcohol Comix, which especially makes sense when they keep referring to this is how Brooks se…

Fuji and Tanaka defend the AWA Southern Tag Team Titles at the Mid-South Coliseum

WWF Heavyweight Champion Bob Backlund vs Great Hussein Arab - WWF MSG 6/4/79 I have finally seen it all. A Bob Backlund spotfest! Who knew he invented the spotfest! On the surface, Sheiky Baby is an evil foreign twin of Backlund, tons of raw power and an impressive amateur background. That's what we get at the beginning. The classic tit for tat Backlund babyface shine where Backlund proves anything you can do he can do better and frustrates Sheik at every turn. As a mark for incorporating amateur wrestling into pro wrestling I loved this shine. Backlund really shows his power. Sheiky actually is able to grab an arm leading to a nice Backlund bridge. Sheik is able to g…

Fun showcase match for Lawler and Dundee with the dominating with basic spots. Liked the one sequence where Dundee took to the mat as well as the gags him and Lawler pulled like Lawler outsmarting the heel on the fake heel handshake and Dundee telling the ref to look up before nailing, urgh, one of the heels . **3/4

Fun beatdown after some solid chain wrestling, Oliver really laid in his shots. What more to say of a minute long match?

Really liked this. Charles was great here, just super smooth takedown and submissions, he was almost WOS-esque. I liked Gilbert's tenacious takedowns and how he wouldn't let go of the leg. The face in peril segment was a little monotonous at times, I liked how they kept cutting Gilbert off with nice punches but the submission they used to work over him got pretty repetitive, though it did make the eventual tease of a comeback more satisfying. Non-finish was perfect as a set up as they managed to get even more heat on the heels (one of them pulling the rope so Charles would fall out of the ring during the attempted comeback the perfect spot for it too) and shoegorn Gilbert…

What a fucking war this was, just four guys nuking each other with punches and every weapon near them while retaining the feel of a genuinely chaotic brawl you want. The camera work and Lance Russell's commentary perfectly contemplate the anarchy going on, and watching these guys throw tables at each other in the concession stand and think about how well received the Rush-LA Park brawls were reminds you that standards don't ever change THAT much.....just different symbols used along with the blood and violence. I give four stars to what is shown.

Matsuda & Saito defend the NWA North American Tag Team Titles. Talk about it here.

This wasn’t anything too special. Fujinami is much slicker on the mat than Rocco but the opening touch-and-go was perfectly fine and Fujinami has some beautiful arm drags. They were evenly matched throughout, although Rocco took the advantage with his toe kicks and by applying the Romero Special. He hit a crossbody from the corner for a two count but Fujinami was able to score the win with the Japanese roll leg clutch to retain the title. A decent contest but not as good as their rematch from 1980.

I don't know how much stomping in a match you can tolerate, apparently I can a lot and therefore kinda enjoyed this, particularly the stomps the german team did when they were on the apron. Average-ish.

Meh. Match was used as a vehicle for Austin's manager to build an angle. Austin controlled the match with headlock which he didn't really work, just grab and let go after a while. His overhead punches didn't look very good and his legdrops obviously missed.

This was ok but the post-match beatdown and angle was much more interesting than the match itself. Something about a Buddy throwing good looking punches and their dads fighting.

Shine was pretty long and they kept teasing the heel cut-off which was amusing. Then the heels did take over and just as you're wondering what's gonna happen the video cuts off! Oh well.

Pretty standard squash, Bass slams the smaller's guy head in the corner, punches him and slams him for the win. Nothing really stood out good or bad.

Tommy Gilbert Jr. is now Eddie Gilbert. He was good at carrying the workload and cleaning house but I was more impressed with his dad, great FIP work, he packed a really great punch, and the sequence with Tommy Gilbert taunting Buddy Wayne and his kid repeteadly punching Tommy Gilbert until he took him seriously was super cool. Post-match angle has Waynes taking Gilberts out for revenge. **3/4

This was went pretty fast. It was a 2 ring battle royal with the winners of each ring facing off. I liked that the final winners in each ring would face one another. I kind of enjoyed the Valentine/Brody exchange at the end. Valentine's stuff looks so credible.

A standard beatdown. The heels holding the door so the faces couldn't come to Dundee's aid was a nice touch, also love that a very similar spot was done in NOAH in like........2003.

Fargo tells us how he got back in shape by jogging and lifting and is taking booking again, and is willing to help Lawler and Dundee to fight against Latham, Ferris and, uhm......there's a third guy. Pete Austin? Someone's gonna be in those six man tags. It certainly sounds like a kick-ass trios team, let's see where it goes....

This was ok, pretty much every match here is gonna be worked shine-heat-comeback but how they go about it is always interesting to see. Shine was fun, with faces repeteadly countering the heel's holds and armdraggim them. Heat section was meh, Latham looked clumsy. I liked how they set up the finish with Koko trying to save his partner only to cost him the match by allowing the heels to double team on his partner because the ref was busy monitoring him. **1/4-**1/2

Well. This was a match. I wonder if Wayne's silly mannerisms grow endearing or just become more annoying. He dominated most of the match with solid punches and then got flash pinned. Post-match angle has Star take out both of the Waynes, wonder if he'll be a regular from now on. **1/2

First fall was all shine and Rogers seems like a guy who got how to shine up a babyface early on. Rose tries to act like he was the guy in the ring at the end of fall 1 but nobody is buying the act. Second fall was mostly Adonis working FIP (and doing a really good job of building sympathy) with a hot tag to Starr. Heels keep up the cheating and double teaming to get the fall. Third fall breaks down after a bit and Rogers tosses a chair into the ring that Starr ends up using. Sandy Barr becomes the center of attention with the resulting DQ and argument. I have always liked the announcer for Portland wrestling, he may not know the move names, but the guy gets over…