Buddy Rose vs. Brett Sawyer - 2/13/82

- Rose and Sawyer start off in the ring while Borne abuses Regal outside. Once again, Rose makes every little move seem important. Even missing a forearm smash, he slaps his forearm to let the ref know it was legal and let himself know he needs to connect. Then his bumping rules. One spot sees him trying to throw Sawyer out only to get reversed and see him go ass first on the floor. Rose gets caught in a backslide and he demonstrates on the ref how Sawyer pulled his hair to get him in the slide. I love this type of shit. Sawyer works the headlock and they work out of the headlock. It just seems much faster paced than the Regal match. Rose takes control with a back suplex out of the headlock. I sound like a broken record but Rose rules on offense and after working on the back, hits the back breaker for the 1st fall.

 

2nd fall, Rose works on the back but Sawyer fights back and gets Rose tangled in the ropes. He takes a rowdy bump outside as he charges rose but Rose escapes and Sawyer heads to the floor. Rose works on the back and hits the backbreaker again but Sawyer flips him over for the upset pin.

 

3rd fall, Rose continues on the back and he is a master at dishing out the pain. Sawyer fights back with some nice offense and they battle back and forth. Initially, through the 1st two falls, it looked like this was Rose’s match but this 3rd fall was a reald battle. IT just felt epic at the end with the crowd going wild. Borne interferes allowing Rose to get the pin. Silly ending aside, the match gets the nomination. The ref talks to the crowd and takes the win away from Rose. The fight continues with the two teams battling it out.

 

(Lynch 6)

This is another great Rose performance. I dug his schtick in the early going of the bout. Then we built to his big time bumps for Sawyer. Sawyer was good in his underdog role. Rose eventually got the momentum and just killed Sawyer with high impact suplexes and slams. It even looked like Rose was thinking of walking up the turnbuckle while he had Sawyer up for a suplex. That would have been crazy.

 

The 2nd fall was more of Rose destroying Sawyer's back. I really loved the flash pin by Sawyer here in the fall.

 

The 3rd fall was good as well and brought back Borne and Regal for the finish. The heat from the crowd looked scary for the wrestlers and for Sandy Barr. The post match was great too and makes this an easy nomination. Rose is the man.

Good performance by Rose all the way through with a hot, back-and-forth third fall to bring it home. Will mentioned some good examples of Buddy's attention to detail. I don't have much to add. Solid nomination.

The opening of this was tremendous as Borne shows up and ambushes Regal who was seconding Sawyer, destroying his eye in the process. Buddy is in his track suit in the ring and had just gotten his ass kicked and is just sitting and pointing and laughing while applauding Borne. Sawyer comes back pissed and Rose ends up taking a fucking huge bump off of a back body drop before wiping out on the floor. Then Rose whiffed on his own dropkick and took another big floor bump. Man this whole fucking fall is Rose bumping wildly. Just a shit ton of spots, well put together and bridged with headlock work that felt focused and not randomly tossed out there. Rose cuts off Borne's momentum with a back suplex and then did an insane delayed suplex spot where he almost elevatored up the ropes while executing the spot. Buddy is a fucking offensive dynamo here as he busts out a Gorilla Press of all things and the Robinson backbreaker for the fall. Extremely hot offensive run at the end which ruled.

 

Buddy has cigar wielding cop escort for the second fall which is good stuff. Sawyer goes for a slam early but his back gives out and Buddy hits another massive press slam. Huge delayed vertical from Rose, but Hacksaw fires up and dropkicks Buddy into the ropes only for Buddy to move on a charge with Sawyer taking a splat bump to the floor. Sawyer takes a back body drop on his ass and sells it like a prison rape, so naturally Buddy follows this up with a sick atomic drop. Awesome finish as Rose hits his backbreaker but sort of sits and gloats on it and Sawyer reverses into a roll up. Awesome stuff.

 

Rose starts out the third fall trying to take control, but Hacksaw cuts him off and hits a nice monkey flip followed by a piledriver/legdrop combo. Rose goes to suplex Sawyer over the top, but Sawyer blocked it and hit one of his own. Awesome fisticuffs spot with both guys on their knees trading shots. Both guys collide mid ring for another knock out spot and Borne hits the ring. Regal shows up to chase him off and Borne puts Rose on top of Sawyer for the fall. The finish took too long to execute but this was an otherwise great match.