This is a feud I've really been enjoying, but I've been holding off on nominating any matches from it, because no one seemed to be just right. I'm getting kinda tired of waiting, so maybe I'm jumping the gun with this, but fuck it, this was way too much fun to watch. I think it's an easy nomination.

 

This, of course, is the feud that debuted the Freebird Hair Cream, which ended up on the head of Roberts at the end of a Star Wars card. Now, Roberts is wearing a cheap rug held on with amateur boxing headgear that he insists is is real hair, and that he's wearing the gear because of a head injury he sustained recently. Naturally, it is now the sworn duty of every babyface in the company to rip the wig off during their matches with Roberts and expose his bald dome - and that goes double for Parsons. Going into this match, he had already accomplished this at a show the week before in Dallas, but now they're in Fort Worth, and Parsons says the Fort Worth crowd deserves a chance to see Roberts bald head live and in person, too.

 

So this is a pretty straightforward, silly, crowd-pleasing midcard feud pitting a shuckin'-and-jivin' black babyface against a bleached-blond stooge heel. It's not something you would go into expecting to be one of the stiffest feuds you'd ever see on this side of the Pacific, but that's exactly what it's been. Iceman King Parsons isn't the best guy ever at the shuckin'-and-jivin' aspects of the shuckin'-and-jivin' black babyface role. Only seems to have one dance move, isn't the best jive-talker, etc. But Parsons will pepper his shuckin'-and-jivin' spots into a match where he mostly just lights up Buddy Roberts with brutal strikes. He throws the stiffest knife-edge chops I've seen on these discs so far, and I've already seen several high-profile Ric Flair matches. Lots of blacks of this era were booked to have hard heads, but Parsons threw headbutts that actually looked painful instead of just looking like comedy spots. Even the Butt-Butt was sudden and violent in this match. And Roberts is able to match Parsons' sudden and violent offense with equally sudden and violent bumping, plus he dishes out some mean-looking offense of his own. Roberts has this feel of a sort of "calculated sloppiness" to his work. Like, everything he does looks weird, but it still ends with his moves looking like they hurt, so it's all good. Unsurprisingly, Roberts has found his headgear useful as something he can load with imaginary foreign objects and KO enemies with. He wins the second fall that way after Parsons took the first. When we come back from the commercial break, we find Parsons has left ringside. Roberts naturally assumes he ran him off, but Parsons soon comes back with headgear of his own, which leads to Roberts freaking out, and then Michael comes down to ringside to protest, but he gets headbutted off of the apron, and Roberts decides he's not going to chance it and takes the count-out loss. Finish will probably bug some people, but everything leading up to that is too good to ignore.

Buddy Roberts vs. Iceman King Parsons

 

We get another good bout in this feud. I wasn't awed with the bout, but feel it is a low-end nom. So I'll give it a thumbs up.

2 out of 3 falls: Iceman King Parsons vs. Buddy Roberts (8/8/83)

 

Roberts stooges around early on in the first fall before it turns into a headbutt in the back competition before Roberts would get the advantage by working over Iceman’s left leg that Iceman would use a great counter for by locking on a bodyscissors and pulling the rug under Buddy’s headgear sending him to the floor. The action would then go back and forth with both men pounding each other before Buddy got some nearfalls which would end up with Iceman hitting a pretty violent Butt Butt to take the fall. Buddy begs off to start the second fall as Iceman tries to rip off the headgear before peppering him with punches until Buddy would take back control using his unorthodox offense. David Manning would try to pull Iceman off of Buddy after he recovered which would allow Buddy to load up his headgear and he hit a headbutt off the middle rope to take the second fall. Iceman would go to the back before the third fall when he would return with his own headgear which would anger Roberts forcing Hayes to come down where he would eat a headbutt by Iceman that sent him to the floor. Buddy goes to check on Hayes forcing David Manning to count him out giving Iceman the win. This was lots of fun and the Iceman going to get headgear angle was great ending a pretty solid match and this moves forward as a nomination.