Jay Youngblood vs. Rip Oliver (Apache Strap Match) (2/14/81)

Disc 2

Now I'm starting from (almost) the other end.

 

We overuse the terms "squash" and "competitive squash" at times, but this was the very defintion of the latter. Oliver got in some brief spurts of offense, but never once did he try and take Jay around to any corners, which is odd booking even for a match which is set up for one wrestler to not only win, but dominate. Of course, that may have been part of the overriding story of the match: Buddy throwing Oliver to the wolves.

 

Remember how in the extras threads I kept saying what a generous manager Buddy was, especially for a dastardly heel? Well, you can erase that with a blowtorch. I loved how he was threatened with a lifetime suspension, then turned around and offered to take the match in Oliver's place. Once Jay agreed, though, he said the functional equivalent of "Haha, fooled you!" and took off never to return. Frank said repeatedly that Oliver didn't look ready to wrestle, and even intimated that Buddy may have promised him that he wouldn't have to wrestle at all, that Buddy would take the match himself. Even when he's barely there, the Playboy's the prime mover and shaker in Portland, and I'll bet that once the euphoria over Jay's victory died down, the fans were hoping that Rip found Buddy back in the locker room and beat the hell out of him.

 

The crowd here was as hot as they've been on the set so far. I've been watching mostly the matches that took place after Vince and Crockett became the Big Two, and the crowds were lukewarm at best except for Billy Jack. This was back when Portland was still a hotbed for wrestling, and crowds like this were the reason why.

 

Frank also did a masterful job explaining the damage that the strap could do, constantly pointing out that it was rawhide. Rip helped the cause by bleeding as much of a gusher as they could get away with on TV. Actually, now that I think of it, Rip bled off of a post shot rather than a strap shot, not that it mattered much.

 

The other strap match on this disc (Jay vs. Destroyer) isn't much longer, and I'm betting that it won't be much more competitive. I've seen guys lose their specialty match on occasion, but not until years after this. In 1981, a strap match involving a Native American is almost always an automatic win (unless you're Jay Strongbow, whose strap match with Greg Valentine at MSG in '79 inexplicably ended in a pull-apart).

 

I'm guessing that the angle where Buddy's Army beat up Jay's dad didn't make the set because the footage was lost or not in good shape. I have a hard time believing that something like that wouldn't be worthy of inclusion otherwise.