Posted March 28, 201114 yr comment_5468491 1. Ricky Rice v Mike Richards Ricky Rice is so darn bland. If this is the same Richards that I saw fought Hansen in the '86 AWA stuff, then his body is way more solid 2 years later. Just like the Hansen match, he got way more offense in then I figured he would. Who was this guy? 2. Badd Company v Ricki Ataki/Jim Evans Badd Co.'s tights were so awesome. The sides all the way to the waist were mesh, like some of the more perfectly ridiculous Brutus Beefcake tights. Match was short. 3. Rocky Mountain Thunder v Bill Anderson Thunder has really great hair and great size/build. You can tell he really took care of his hair, too. Like, didn't use cheap shampoo or anything. His hair looked like the lead of one of my fave bands, Endless Boogie. Awesome hair. But he wasn't a very good wrestler. Any idea who this guy was? They were obviously pushing him. 4. Verne Gagne v Jerry Blackwell – AWA title St. Paul, MN 1982 Wish this wasn't JIP. Only 3 minutes were shown. 5. The Rock & Roll Express v Tom Stone/Samoan Joe I'm pretty positive this was a totally different Samoan Joe than the one who fought Lawler. This guy looked way older. "Rocky" Stone seems to be a known personality, but he always jobs. Did he use to be a more "name" worker somewhere? Did he do job work for WWF at one point, too? He looks like a guy I saw a bunch as a kid, and I didn't get AWA. This goes like 2 minutes. 6. Soldat Ustinov/Teijho Khan v Ray Stevens/Baron Von Raschke I LOVED this!! It's 9 minutes but my favorite all-time story in pro wrestling is young punks vs. old men. The old men always step it up as it's a chance to regain some past glory, and it's always so much fun. This is the best I have seen 80s Baron look, as he's eye raking and throwing great punches and just being awesome. Khan stooges all over the place and Stevens throws some great punches in here, too. Everybody seemed super motivated in this and Baron put on a real good show. This was too much fun. NOMINATE!!
March 28, 201114 yr comment_5468513 1. Ricky Rice v Mike Richards Ricky Rice is so darn bland. If this is the same Richards that I saw fought Hansen in the '86 AWA stuff, then his body is way more solid 2 years later. Just like the Hansen match, he got way more offense in then I figured he would. Who was this guy? Just a long-time AWA job guy as far as I know. Rice was all dropkick, and it's fun when he hits it because he was terrible at controlling it, and as such used to nail guys hard. He almost killed Tony Leone with one, which you'll see eventually. 3. Rocky Mountain Thunder v Bill Anderson But he wasn't a very good wrestler. Any idea who this guy was? They were obviously pushing him. He was going to get pushed huge except he was so bad he nearly killed a couple of guys with botched moves, I think powerbombs. Ended up just doing some TV's and then disappearing again. Was a California Indy worker I think. 4. Verne Gagne v Jerry Blackwell – AWA title St. Paul, MN 1982 Wish this wasn't JIP. Only 3 minutes were shown. That's all that's ever been shown of that bout. 5. The Rock & Roll Express v Tom Stone/Samoan Joe This guy looked way older. "Rocky" Stone seems to be a known personality, but he always jobs. Did he use to be a more "name" worker somewhere? Did he do job work for WWF at one point, too? He looks like a guy I saw a bunch as a kid, and I didn't get AWA. This goes like 2 minutes. Rocky Stone was a long-time AWA jobber, a steady hand that lost pretty much all the time. He did do some job work for the WWF on a few of their midwestern tv tapings in the later part of the 80's, along with guys like Frankie DeFalco and probably Mike Richards too, among others. He was never a name guy anywhere that I know of. Had maybe the best look of "Righteous Indignation" after his ring intros where he would inevitably get booed. *** You'll find that AWA squashes are a different formula than the WWF and NWA for the most part. Jobbers almost always get a little bit of offense in especially against the faces, and the matches see the 'favourite" most often seem to have to work a little harder than they should to get the win, or hit their big move.
March 28, 201114 yr Author comment_5468534 The jobber comebacks are really neat. I especially liked them in the Hansen/Richards match and the Lawler/Samoan Joe match. It was such a small part, but it added a whole new dimension to both matches. Only face I've seen not give comebacks to jobbers is Greg Gagne, whose matches have all been 2 minutes of armdrags and end with a dropkick. And you're right about Stone having great facials during the ring intros. He always acts like he expects to get cheered and pumps his fist and then looks stunned when he gets booed. Really hilarious.
March 29, 201114 yr comment_5468548 He gave a lot back, like most if not allof them did, in the earlier part of his career.
