May 1987

AWA World Heavyweight Champion Nick Bockwinkel vs Curt Hennig - AWA Superclash II 5/2/86 I did not see any build up other than the matches. I know Larry Z had been feuding with Bockwinkel by basically being the new devious heel on the roster. I don't know if Larry Z was trying to subvert Hennig before the match because otherwise the finish seems out of nowhere. It does make sense from Hennig's growing disillusionment with the system and having been screwed out of the title. Hennig turning heel just seems so fucking stupid. The promotion needed a babyface and the crowd was behind Hennig. Plus the need for Hennig to win by cheating affirms that system is broken and that…

AWA World Heavyweight Champion Nick Bockwinkel vs Jeff Jarrett - Mid-South Coliseum 5/4/87 One of my favorite genre of matches is the veteran champion up against the overmatched, but zealous young lion. It is a match when done correctly that everyone wins. The young lion will look strong in a competitive loss and the champion reminds us why he is indeed the champion. I can't think two better people to really excel in this match type. Due to footage limitations, Bockwinkel is the veteran champion. That's the lens we see Bockwinkel through. Yes, we have 70s footage with him & Ray Stevens as the tag champions, but the majority comes from his excellent 80s run…

NWA World TV Champion Tully Blanchard vs Barry Windham - WCW Sunday Edition 5/10/87 NWA was so hot that they had to go to another night! They have rekindled that Tully/Dusty feud now for the fourth time. It is officially getting old. The crux of the feud is money. Tully is bragging how he came from money and he is money. He dont care for the plight of the common man or any common man success stories. Dusty Rhodes is putting up Fifty Thousand Dollars of Common Man Money against Tully. Even if the feuds are recycled, Tully is in his prime. Windham spent the first third of the year as Flair's primary challenger. Flair is moving onto the Garvins, his promos have been gre…

NWA World TV Champion Tully Blanchard vs Robert Gibson - NWA Pro 5/16/87 This match was hyped up on Chad's excellent Carolina Dreamin' podcast so lets check it out, in order to save time, stream of consciousness style, jack: Bob Caudle on the call always warms my heart. The crowd loves them some Rock N Roll of course. TV Championship and Tully's $10,000 challenge. Tully wants Gibson to shake his hand. Gibson has seen this movie before and ducks the cheapshot. Atomic Drop and hiptoss. Blanchard powders. We are off to a red hot start. Knucklelock? Collar elbow tie up. Gibson evades the punch in the corner. Blanchard wrist control nope Gibson reverses takes h…

Midnight Express vs Barry Windham & Ronnie Garvin - World Championship Wrestling 5/16/87 US Tag Team Titles Tournament Finals Watching all this Crockett, I am fiending for sorme Midnight Express. At this point, we are in the Eaton & Lane version of the Midnight Express. That version did not seem to explode into the great workrate team until the following year against Fantastics. Who were they working the rest of '87? The RNRs? Road Warriors? I really enjoyed this as a great Southern tag team match with a double face in peril. Nothing too fancy just a great meat & potatoes match. The beginning was very intense some great lock-ups. I liked how Garvin'…

Terry Taylor vs Chris Adams - UWF TV 5/3/87 Vero's Hero puts in one of the best performances of his career as the entire match is one long, simmering heel turn. I noticed something was up almost immediately when did not shake the Gentleman's hand. Also, Taylor did a great job early on showing how insecure he felt. He would try something and nothing would stick. While Adams was always one step ahead of Taylor, whether it was taking him over with a headlock or double wristlock or powering him down off a leapfrog sequence. We saw Taylor try to pick up the tempo, slow it down by going into ropes or the outside or counterwrestling, but at each step Adams was a head of Tay…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMmteW-cAaw Roja was a veteran rudo who according to OJ at Great Lucha had the awesome nicknames "The Lord and Master of Scandal" and "The Scourge of the Technicians" no fair for one guys to have two great nicknames like that. Good first fall with some nice mat wrestling by both guys, until V3 hurts his knee with a pescada and gets tapped. FYI There is a weird clip after the first fall to the middle of the third skip to 20:00 for the end of the segunda. We get a classic gorefest third fall with Flama cutting open V3's bandaged arm with a chair shot, and wasting him with an awesome tope. By the end V3 and Roja are on their knees c…

I'm not sure how my taste in wrestling managed to change so quickly, maybe it's the insane GWE-related amounts of wrestling I've watched, but last time I watched this match wasn's so long ago, maybe a year or two ago. I thought it was good, this time I thought it was absolutely marvelous. Super Strong Machine trips Maeda as he's entering the ring and attacks him, that whole angle was so great and really puts into perspective how amateur a lot of angles even major promotions do cime off. Maeda does a disgusting blade job, so naturally you need a million people to hide it well, and the commotion a pre-match attack causes is the perfect opportunity for that. All you really s…

WWF World Heavyweight Champion Hulk Hogan vs King Harley Race - MSG 5/18/87 For some reason the WWF did not run the Garden in March or April of 1987. The last Hogan match at the Garden was his great man vs monster classic with Kamala. Now he takes on former NWA World Heavyweight Champion Harley Race. As a Harley Race bump-a-thon this is great! That first bump is a doozy. He goes over the top rope and cracks the back of his head on a chair. He was just a bumping maniac in this match. Just feeding Hogan and Hogan was just cracking him. I thought Harley's offense was lacking until the end. The headbutts looked good and the busted Hogan open. Just when it looked like Harl…

Heated exchanges, snug strikes, sweet suplexes -- this is my kind of tag. I mean, you’ve got Yamazaki in there with his sick lightning kicks, Takada and Maeda kicking and suplexing all day long, Fujiwara with his slaps and headbutts, at one point, re-injuring a bandaged Maeda, busting him open. There’s almost zero down time, which is kind of what you want from this type of match. Maeda can be a phone call away from a shitty performance but he was really fired up here, especially after seeing red. He had some slick suplexes, including a dragon, and I loved the hot finish between he and Yamazaki – it exemplifies the three rules of UWF perfectly. He first stuns Yamazaki with…

Tito Santana vs Butch Reed - Primetime Wrestling 5/12/87 After the Savage feud and before being drafted into Strike Force, Santana was in a weird limbo as someone who still had some starpower, but was not going to be pushed anymore. They stuck him in a lot of interested, fun midcard matches that went to a draw. This resulted in matches with Butch Reed and Ron Bass, who at this point in their careers were not having great matches, but with them being heralded as hidden gems. I have not yet seen the Ron Bass (never seen a Ron Bass match actually). The Reed match was actually pretty damn good for what looked like a broken down Butch Reed. Kids don't go to Central States. Yo…