Not sure if I have seen this or not to be honest but it was a cool dynamic on paper and I found it enjoyable. Robinson/Bock make for a good team as Billy brings the nasty and Bock brings the bumping and cheating. Typical AWA tag in that you have two distinct FIP segments, the first of which is worked by Lanza who eats some nice punches from Robinson, a sick billy backbreaker and makes the tag off of a really awesome neckbreaker reversal. Bock bumps some for Dino's power moves, but Dino misses a corner charge and it's his turn to work peril. Really love the spot with Robinson dead lifting Bravo at the knees, dragging him over and slingshotting him in the nastiest way. Then Bock runs over and fucking stiffs him with a couple of really nasty punches to the temple. Lanza gets the hot tag and gives a noogy to Robinson at one point and hits a big piledriver on Bock which Heenan sells the impact of from ringside. It's weird but the match turns into a sort of even steven match at this point. Lots of back and fourth and plenty of neat stuff, but I wish they had stayed with a tighter format. Really awesome near fall as Bravo goes for an airplane spin on Bock and Heenan runs in and trips him with his body. Heenan gets bumped into the ring and the heels get smashed into him, with the faces taking the fall after ward. Kind of scatterbrained, but a good enough match to look at.

Blackjack Lanza & Dino Bravo vs. Nick Bockwinkel & Billy Robinson (2/2/84)

 

Bravo was fun to start as he was fiery and throwing some nice punches and the heels were great at pinballing for the faces even making Lanza look good. We get the traditional AWA tag psychology where each face gets an FIP section and these are done well as the faces eat some nice power moves by Robinson and some good offense by Bock. Robinson is really nasty here and it's so great as he just creams these guys. Lanza was really fun on the hot tag and the fans went wild as he was spunky especially when he gave Robinson a noogie. Lanza had a really nice piledriver on Bock for a nearfall and the action was getting hot and heavy at this point with Heenan even getting brought in to get beat on which he would end up costing his charges the match after being run into them. This was a blast and should move on fairly easily.

For my enjoyment, the VQ actually hurt the match itself. We have had worse VQ problems but since the footage is probably so rare, it looks maybe 3rd-4th gen transfer. So when the announcer says Bravo is red from the punishment, you can't really see it. Since we are mark for good punches, when Bravo nails Bock, it is like a flurry of punches but you don't feel the impact even though Bock is excellent in selling them. The end was fine but I don't know if I buy a single dropkick as a finisher. If it was a double RNR dropkick, it would be better played. Anyway, I can't go above low-level for this but if we had a better VQ version, I would reconsider.

I'm pretty sure this was the best VQ I could come up with, unfortunately.