I'm beginning to think Adrian Adonis is a severely underrated worker who needs some revisionist love. He was a unique and charismatic worker who needs to be in the conversation when we discuss top workers from the 80s.

 

Adrian's main issue from a historical perspective is that the best captured run of his career is the Adorable Adrian run in the WWF, when he was going downhill from a physical standpoint. I'd still say, though, that his work in that time is excellent. He's bumping at a ridiculous level for a man his size, and he got over a character that pretty obviously reads like a punishment. Watch the tag team cage match with Savage v. Sammartino and Santana - the crowd is electric to see Adrian get a comeuppance. Same was true at Wrestlemania 3.

 

I'm spending this afternoon watching some of his early 80s AWA run with Jesse Ventura. They were a great team, although I'm not seeing a lot of full matches unfortunately. But they ooze charisma and have perfect heel characters to anger the midwestern AWA audience, talking about their time in Hollywood and New York. From a work perspective, Adrian carries the team - Ventura is mostly kicking and bearhugs, whereas Adrian is wrestling huge chunks of the match and has the best looking offense of anyone in the matches. I actually think their dynamic might have worked even better in the WWF, when Jesse was basically managing Adrian against Bob Backlund. Adonis gets maybe the best Backlund matches I've seen, for my taste.

 

And this ignores his excellent run with Dick Murdoch as well, which I'm looking forward to watching in the near future.

Make sure to see some of his Portland face work since that obviously wildly expands his versatility.

I've found him to be overrated on balance. No doubt he was a big bumper with charisma, and I like his Portland stuff and a few of his WWF matches. But his New Japan stuff, both singles and with Murdoch, really turned me off. I don't see how he has the body of work to be considered one of the best guys of the '80s.

My favorite quote about Adonis came from the Barry Windham shoot where he talks about how Adonis worked stiff : "Everything he did was right there, if you came out of an Adrian Adonis match with a bloody nose it was no big deal."

I thought him and Backlund had great matches in 82. I just did a quick write up in the Lawler thread of Adonis , and Tully vs. Lawler and and Sweetan that was quite good .