This was a good match. In Flair's book he compared Martel to Steamboat, and here he reminds you of Steamboat. In fact this match reminded a lot of the Race-Steamboat match from All-Japan. Early in the match Race takes some great bumps. Martel controls Race on the mat with an arm-bar. Martel would work spots around the arm. The men take the crowd up and down. This had a Mid-Atlantic feel to it. Race's facials were just tremendous here. The Kneelift that Race used on Martel was nasty. Eventually, Race makes his comeback with a hot-shot. Then Race goes to work on the neck. With neck breakers, knee drops, forearm smashes across the neck, headlocks, and a piledriver. Race catches the 1st fall with a vertical suplex. I would have preferred the piledriver as the finish. The 2nd fall has Martel doing some neat back and neck work on Race. Martel evens the match with the sleeper. That was old-school. Another neat thing was the ref asked Martel to revive Race for the 3rd fall. That was uber cool. The 3rd fall goes to the limit. Overall this went about 28 minutes, and deserves consideration for a nomination.

 

(Hoop Johnson's Portland Disk 7)

Martel controlled most of the first fall with some solid armwork. As we've covered elsewhere, he always made his basic stuff look really convincing. Race eventually turned the tide with a hot shot and finished Martel off with a brutal run of neck-focused offense. I really liked the fire Martel showed in fighting back to take the second fall. He threw punches with abandon and really had the crowd into it when he locked the sleeper on Harley. The 2-out-of-3 format certainly worked for these touring defenses, because the champ could always put over the challenger by giving him a fall. They both threw great punches in the final fall, and I liked the way Martel kept going back to the sleeper. The only thing I really disliked was the time-limit finish, which came so out of nowhere that the announcers missed it and the crowd just died. But the world needs to see more Martel, and the overall work was strong enough for a nomination