July 1984

North American Heavyweight Champion Magnum TA vs Ted DiBiase - Mid-South OKC 5/27/84 Nice, fist throwing bloody sprint as I get my first look at Ted in Mid-South. Watching prime Ted DiBiase for the first time in Mid South is something that really intrigues me. Bockwinkel, Lawler and Von Erichs are known commodities to me, I know what to expect because I have watched a decent amount of footage going in for those wrestlers. DiBiase is someone who is well-known for excellent character work as the Million Dollar Man, but leaves me cold in the ring. In Mid-South, he has a blank slate to really impress me. This match was an excellent start. I thought he was vicious, focused…

North American Heavyweight Champion Magnum TA vs Ted DiBiase - Mid-South Tulsa 5/27/84 I have to say I was a bit skeptical that on the exact same day albeit different arena they would be able to even match the awesomeness of the earlier OKC match, but boy was I wrong. Not only did they match it, they topped it with an even better blood-soaked brawl. The first match was a great bloody sprint, but this was a dramatic spectacle. They played to Magnum's greatest strength, his selling and it just ensnared you and never let you go. I got to say, I loved the beginning of this, where DiBiase went to pearl harbor Mags, but Magnum was wise to his games and beat him to the pun…

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This is for the AWA title. It's 2 out of 3 falls. They do a good job with the promos and pomp and circumstance to make this seem special. I loved the early head lock work. Martel had no answers to it. We skip ahead and Burke posts himself. Martel goes after the arm and works it real good. Eventually Burke catches Martel in the sleeper to get the 1st fall. After that we get some back and forth both guys selling big. The end Burke catches Martel in another sleeper as the bell rings. Pretty great match. 3 3/4*

World Six-Man Tag Team Champions Von Erichs (Kerry, Kevin, Mike) vs Fabulous Freebirds - WCCW 7/4/84 Badstreet Match Absolute raucous mayhem! I love a chaotic brawl. Tornado style tag with boots and belts being thrown around willy nilly. This is Kevin's element as he is a real firecracker. I thought Hayes was also real good. They were really slugging each other with those boots. I thought the triple dropkick on Gordy was a real highlight. Gordy needing to hit a low blow on Mike was hilarious. Lance Von Erich was not a horrible idea in principle. Maybe not selecting a standout local high school star. I guess Steve Simpson didnt work either. Maybe just sticking Chris Ada…

This was ok. Pretty much it was all about Budro's antics. He wiped Madril's grease off him. He'd pull on Madril's hair. Just an entertaining Budro performance. 2 1/4*

Holy Moly they did it again the 7/6/84 show had another killer match on it. We still haven't gotten the top 2 matches from it. The semi main is actually in circulation and it's a great match. Man, Houston wrestling is tremendous, and really is a special town in wrestling. The crowd is molten for this. They want to kill Butch Reed and that turncoat Ernie Ladd . Sonny King is Hacksaw Duggan over here. We start with a wild brawl to start, It settles down and Sonny King is throwing hands. Just beating the heel's asses. Reed and Ladd are great at feeding King. They also stooge big time for him. Taylor in and Ladd is cheapshotting him like a pro. Taylor has had enough an…

This is awesome and another chapter of the Lothario vs Guerrero's feud. This time Lothario chooses Duggan as his partner. Paul Boesch fears this match is going to get out of hand and wants nothing to do with it. We open with a wild brawl. Chavo and Hector are bumping around and eating all of the faces punches, and they are great punches. It settles down into a regular tag. We start out and the Guerreros are just feeding themselves for some super sock punches. We get some nice arm drag exchanges. Lothario is tremendous in the shine with the brothers working their asses off. Chavo with a knee into Lothario's back on a double team. Chavo begins with these nasty jackhamm…

North American Heavyweight Champion Magnum TA vs Ted DiBiase - Mid-South 7/6/84 You know you are over when the crowd is doing the sound effects for your punches. Magnum TA, you are over, brutha. Magnum had 80s babyface down pat. He had all the mannerisms with him shaking his fists, hands over head, raring to go. He is a way better seller than I was expecting. You hear he was going to Hulk Hogan of the NWA and I see where that comes from in terms of look and cool factor. While Hogan sold a lot especially in the late 80s, it was the over the top, comic book style selling as opposed to Magnum's gritty, bloody screams and his anguished countenance. This is much tamer v…

This is a really fun underneath tag. The PYT's are babyfaces here. They are really good in the role. Pat Rose is an underrated worker while Schroeder brings the size to have a fun Southern Tag. Rose is good at stooging for the PYT's. Norvell shows some cool baby face persona. Schroder's size allows him to get heat on the PYT's. While it's Rose though is the glue for the heel team. Just a well, set up to get heat. structured match

WWF World Tag Team Champions North-South Connection vs Bob Backlund & B. Brian Blair - WWF, Philly 7/7/84 It is B. Brian Blair's career performance in a very fun WWF Tag Team Title defense. He got the entire shine, his own FIP segment and the finish run hot tag! Was Vince actually going to push this jabroni? Since unlike my co-host, Kelly Nelson, I am not a huge fan of B. Brian Blair it disappointed me to see Backlund relegated as an afterthought especially when the juicy Backlund/Murdoch match was right there. Regardless, this is undoubtedly a great match as Murdoch & Adonis went out of their way to bump their asses off for Blair. They were getting armdragge…

Randy Savage & Lanny Poffo vs Rock N Roll Express - Mid-South Coliseum 7/4/84 Savage vs Morton needed to happen! Just another one of those on paper classics that never happened. Plus instead of these shitty finishes, they could have put RnRs over in a tag setting, but with Savage going over clean one on one. Oh well, another great match from these two teams, but not quite on the level as the last match. The babyface shine featured what you expected with the RnRs getting the best of the Poffos, but there was not as many fun spots as the previous match and a lot of was just fun stalling. They gave more time for the heat segment in this go around and Randy Savage jus…

Originally aired on the MSG Network. Available in edited version on the Coliseum VHS "Best of the WWF, Volume 1". Currently not available elsewhere

"Rowdy" Roddy Piper vs Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka - Meadowlands 7/15/84 Holy shit what a friggin awesome brawl! You hear all about the Piper's Pit with the coconut-smashing, which is such a great angle from little details like Piper making sure to drop the coconuts on the table to prove they are legitimate to absolute obnoxious delivery. Piper is just so good at getting under your skin. We need a heat-seeking little fucker like him nowadays. However, I have never heard anyone talk about the consequent series that resulted from Coconut Pit. I was expecting a typically fun WWF match, but just did not hold enough water to be considered a classic. I would say this blood-filled…

Jerry Lawler vs King Kong Bundy - Memphis 7/16/84 The gimmick here is that for every minute Lawler lasts with Bundy he earns a cool $1000. This leads to have really fun work. Bundy bumrushes Lawler in the corner and stomps on his crown. Bundy has an incentive to finish off Lawler early so there is a great sense of urgency in his movements. Lawler is really great selling all this. Lots of great fat man offense. Bundy needs to work on those covers as Lawler keeps getting his far shoulder up without kicking out. Tighten that shit up, bro. I love Bundy's reaction to the first time call from Russell at the one minute mark and every subsequent time call he is fuming. Bundy…

NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair vs Harley Race - Central States 7/19/84 It is really cool to see Harley wrestle in front of his home territory in Kansas City. This has to be the best match from Central States we have. What else do we have? Some Sheikh has a bounty on Race's head and Missing Link is out to do a number on Race, who is bleeding before the match. The first about 9 minutes are clipped. We get the last eight minutes or so. It is clipped to Flair bleeding on the outside. Harley is kicking ass with uppercuts and grabs a sleeper just as Flair is about to go out his trick knee acts up and it is a ballshot. Nice little firefight breaks out. I like Harle…

This was pretty interesting. Like what they did was great, but it would have been better if they did things at differently. Still we got a good match. I loved the shine sequences. The Guerreros were great at stooging it up. What we were missing was an extended heat sequence instead of all the little heat sequences we got. 3*

This is for the TV medallion held by Doc. This was commentary free and really helped because the crowd was hot and I felt I was right at ringside. We start with Taylor getting the shine with some nifty arm work. Doc cuts him off eventually and he cranks the headlock. They get a lot of mileage out of the headlocks. The crowd is hot the whole time. Taylor makes a comeback. Eventually it morphs into a brawl on the outside. Taylor is busted open and declared the winner. A really strong match 3 1/2*

The battle of the Giants. WWF always tried to have these type of feuds with Andre. Studd's opening stalling is great, and just riles the crowd up. Andre dominates right when Studd enters. Love all the theatrics with the robe. Andre is just manhandling Studd. Studd does a good job putting it over. Studd is back on the bike, and the crowd is all over him, but also scared of him too. Both guys go toe to toe. Andre gets caught up in the ropes, and Studd gives us this look like he's got a full house while playing poker. I really enjoyed how Studd controled the crowd with his antics. Not a great match, but something worth seeing.

Great match. I liked a lot of things from this tag, with the highlights being: - Super Tiger's kicks were fantastic. He and Maeda trading them created quite the buzz - Super Tiger aborting a knee drop when Maeda moved and firing off a back spin kick, sending him into the corner - Super Tiger hits a tombstone on Fujiwara, followed by a diving head butt across the ring (complete with replay) - Later in the match when he's tagged back in, Fujiwara fires off a bunch of pissed-off headbutts on Super Tiger - Fujiwara and Takada trading bridges four consecutive times I thought Fujiwara really made Takada and Super Tiger look great. He took most of the damage here, al…

WWF World Tag Team Champions North-South Connection vs Sgt Slaughter & Terry Daniels - WWF, MSG 7/23/84 Terry Daniels certainly mastered the armdrag. Besides that and the dropkick, I dont know if he had much else. This was pretty fun mostly because Murdoch and Adonis were so selfless. They still used their size to bully Daniels but they created a ton of movement for him. I really liked the criss cross sequence where Adonis finally landed the big reverse elbow to get Daniels down. Slaughter pulled a Terry Funk and threw himself on the turnbuckle to save Daniels who then dropkicked Murdoch down. We get more Slaughter in this than we did Backlund, but again i…

Inoki doesn't seem anywhere near as over as he was in the Schultz match. Basic match with Fulton controlling the bout with heatholds and average strikes before Inoki's comeback. Inoki had a nice hammerlock escape and I liked the way he blocked one of Fulton's strikes thereby setting up his comeback. **1/2-**3/4

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WWF Intercontinental Champion Tito Santana vs Bob Orton - MSG 7/23/84 They pretty blatantly telegraph this is a draw with a pretty pedestrian opening ten minutes. They worked the holds well, but you could tell they just wasting time. Orton catches Tito with a punch on a criss cross. This combines elements of workrate (bomb-throwing), but with lots of selling of exhaustion so it feels like a 2010s self-conscious epic. Lots of time in between moves in order to sell exhaustion. Orton busts out a powerslam, backbreaker, Fishermans Suplex and tries a Vaderbomb, but eats knees. Each move is great just lots of time in between spots. Tito instead of having one big bur…