Special Referee – Earnie Shavers: Tully Blanchard vs. Gino Hernandez (5/21/83)

 

This is the big singles match between the former partners at the big Southwest show at The Summit in Houston which they ran because they wanted to compete against Paul Boesch. Gino was strong on offense early but Tully was stooging in the ring and stalling outside the ring kinda like Zbyszko. Gino is really fired up as a babyface and just punishes Tully who is doing all the chickenshit heel schtick. Gino would miss a running dive into the corner and hit the ringpost which caused juice and Tully started to work on the cut. Tully would tie Gino in the ropes and started kicking him until Shavers released him. Tully would get a nearfall off a diving elbow from the middle rope before throwing Gino back into the corner where he would do the Flair bump straight to the floor really hard. Tully would attack him on the floor between going in and out of the ring smashing his head on the ringside table. Tully would go for a piledriver but Gino would reverse with a backdrop and hit a dropkick sending Tully to the floor. Gino would then grab the ring bell and bashed Tully with the bell causing him to juice as Gino is getting his fire back. Gino would pound Tully on the top turnbuckle in every corner before Tully just fell on the ringside table. Gino then used some great punches and his teeth to work on Tully’s cut before hitting him with an elbow smash for a 2.9 nearfall. Gino hit the suplex then went for his patented revesre elbow off the top rope but Tully moved out of the way. Tully then tried to tie Gino up again but Shavers pulled him off which prompted Tully to push him and he got decked. Gino then climbed up top and hit a diving splash on Tully for the victory. You know Shavers was going to get involved for the finish because that was the boxer as referee finish but still this was a damn good bloody match with lots of heat and both men working hard. Easy nomination.

I'll second this, I thought it was great. Weird how Hernandez is a guy I usually think of as a moderately gifted worker who had great heel schtick, but he controls the first part of the match as babyface on offense, and it works pretty well. It helps that Tully is flying around the ring like crazy for him, of course. Also, for a match with two guys who aren't Dusty Rhodes, there were a lot of bionic elbows in this match, and they managed to do a lot of cool variations on them. Liked Gino elbowing Tully, causing him to spin around, and then elbowing him again on the back of the head, plus Tully's two apron dive bionic elbows in the middle of the match. Also loved Tully reaching through the ropes as Gino tried to get back in and slamming his head into the ringside table. Loved the way Gino's head just barely caught the ringbell when it happened, made it feel like Tully was being really reckless and violent, and really, that's the feeling you get from this match in general. People have talked about how some dudes who grow up watching Mid-South and World Class can get into lucha brawls easily because of the stylistic similarities. This almost felt like it was the other way around. Outside of the Shavers stuff, I felt like I could see this match headlining Arena Mexico.