Puerto Rico Heavyweight Title: Ricky Santana © vs. "Hangman" Bobby Jaggers (10/22/88)

 

Santana is fiery to start sending Jaggers to the floor where he could stall and the fans are very hot for Ricky with Jaggers being fun at agitating them. Santana got tired of Jaggers walking around on the floor so he snuck up behind him and hit a big clothesline before celebrating back in the ring. Jaggers still though wanted to walk around so Santana would fly off the apron with a diving elbow on a downed Jaggers which was quite the jump. The match was all Santana until Jaggers went to his tights and used a foreign object to neutralize him. Jaggers worked a reverse chinlock before allowing Santana to send himself to the floor as he tried to run at him and then followed Santana to the floor to hit a couple of short clotheslines. Jaggers then steps up the aggression as he threw Santana into the railing then the ringpost which brought out the juice as Jaggers taunted the fans. Jaggers would try to clothesline him into the ringpost but Santana ducked and Jaggers hit all post giving Ricky the chance he needed to recover. Ricky is bloody and fired up trying to put away Jaggers but would eat a reverse atomic drop by Jaggers who decides that he wants to hang Santana with his bullwhip for the DQ. Jaggers attacks the hanging Santana until Invader III & The Battens run out. Crappy finish but a fun match and I'm throwing this up as a low-end pick.

Jaggers hair is shaved here, which makes me wonder how he lost it. This didn't complete grab me, but it was a pretty good match. Part of the problem is that Jaggers - while a good heel mannerism wise - does not have the most believable offense here. I did dig the fact that this built well and I thought Santana was really good in it as your fiery babyface, who bridges the gap between underdog and hometown hero well. In particular he did a pretty good Invader impression with the dramatic selling on the floor and the massive blood loss. Finish was annoying, though I didn't completely hate it. This was good enough to consider, and I wouldn't argue against it on a long form set, but this really depends on the number of matches we are looking at. As it stands I think it is clearly the least of the three matches I've seen from their feud.

The stalling got a little tiresome towards the end however I think the match did get better as it went along. Jaggers has great heel mannerisms but he kind of sucks elsewhere. He has really light offense and bumps like a frightened kid in backyard wrestling. Santana was great here though selling the blood loss and taking a wild missed cross body bump to the floor. The finish sucked but it was a nice visual with Santana getting hanged by the bullwhip. There was too much iffy work from Jaggers here for me to bat for it. It wasn't bad but I'm going NO.