Larry gets pissed off about eating a body slam and slides to the floor where he rips up a sign a local fan is holding. From there they exchange headlock work which is actually really well done and Bock is great on commentary putting over the details of what they are trying to get over. Larry finally breaks the hold with this infamous spin kick to the guts on the rope break. Nikita is actually really great selling the impact of this and Larry follows up with a nice gutbuster for a near fall. Larry follows this up with a front chancre/choke spot that he floats into a neckbreaker for a near fall. Larry ends up tying Nikita in an ab stretch and he is really great at blatantly pulling the tights on camera but in a way where you can absolutely believe the ref is missing it. Of course Nikita reverses out with a hip toss, but Nikita is back to selling and Larry is right back to work. They are really good about teasing Nikita comebacks in this and he gets a very good near fall on a small package. Nikita makes a brief flurry comeback and gets a near fall on a nice suplex but crashes into the turnbuckles on a corner charge. Really great near fall as Nikita hits the Russian Sickle out of the corner but is slow getting to the cover and Larry just barely lifts his shoulder. Larry is reeling now and after an atomic drop slides to the floor and smacks Nikita with the belt to save the title. Very simple, but very good match even with the bad finish.

AWA World Heavyweight Title: "Living Legend" Larry Zbyszko © vs. "Russian Nightmare" Nikita Koloff (11/18/89)

 

Interesting matchup and you know Nikita was loving being able to come back home to wrestle. Larry is in full on stalling mode to start here getting the fans agitated at him before Nikita gets very little offense in mixed in with some headlock exchanges before Larry hit his savate kick in the ribs. Zbyszko gets a lot of offense in here with Koloff doing a lot of selling which was interesting because he never really had any offensive momentum before and Zbyszko was just working him over. Nikita does a good job in his hope spots and once he goes on offense he has Larry ready to go after a Russian Sickle but he can't get to Larry quick enough to get the 3 count. They would eventually go to the floor where Zbyszko would use the belt shot for the DQ which sucked. This was good at best and I would've liked more Nikita offense but I'll push this forward as it was unique.