Mid-South Tag Titles: Ted DiBiase & “Dr. Death” Steve Williams © vs. The Barbarian & Jake “The Snake” Roberts (7/14/85)

 

The Fantastics come to ringside before the match and Tommy Rogers fucks up his intro asking the Oklahoma City crowd “What’s up” with the problem being that they were in Tulsa. The crowd forgave him and they challenged the champs to a title match on the next show. This may have been the first time I’ve seen in this series that DiBiase & Barbarian worked against each other in the match because it’s normally been Teddy & Jake to start then a double tag but not this time DiBiase worked Barbarian for a couple of minutes and then tagged Doc. Doc did more bumping for Barbarian here than normal taking high backdrops and armdrags. Once again the crowd is nuts for Jake and the DDT chanting it every time he is in the ring and popping big for the faint spots. Great spot here as Doc complains about his hair being pulled by Jake taking him down, Teddy comes in the ring which brings in Barbarian and as the referee takes Barbarian back to his corner, Teddy loads up the glove and pops Jake who bladed on impact. Both men go to work on Jake’s cut and DiBiase even bites it, which knowing Jake who knows what he had at the time. Barbarian eventually gets the hot tag and the brawl is on like usual before Jake accidentally throws DiBiase into the referee knocking him to the floor. Jake hits the DDT on DiBiase but there is no ref and as this happens, Doc loads up his armbrace and KO’s Jake in the back of the head. Barbarian has Doc in the full-nelson but DiBiase breaks that up before Doc nails Barbarian in the back of the head. They then pound the shit out of Barbarian until Jake gets back in the ring with his boot and starts whipping ass until the referee sees it and calls for the DQ finish. The match ends in a wild brawl with the heels tucking their tail and running away and Jake telling DiBiase that he hates his ass. This was a different match than the others I’ve seen and I enjoyed just as much if not a little more so yeah this is a DVD pick for me as it was such a heated brawl and you could feel the hatred.

This was pretty entertaining. These teams worked a lot with each other. I just love the visual of Jake standing behind the Barbarian and taunting their opponents. That Barbarian sure is green. I liked how when the crowd was chanting DDT and Doc was covering his ears and going shush. The Jake's mid bump blade job off Teddy's loaded glove was awesome. Jake's FIP work was perfect. He sold the beating, and milked that hot tag for all it's worth.The slow crawl was so perfectly executed. It reminded me a lot of how Barry Windham would work that hot tag. It was really good stuff. Like KrisZ said the hatred really came across.

Yeah this was full of angry and disgust, Jake bleeds like a pig, and I even enjoyed the Barbarian way more then I normally do. Way better then the earlier match on the disc and should definitly make it.