1. Salvatore Bellomo vs. “Dr. D” David Schultz
This is such basic, 80s opening match shit. Bellomo is an earnest weakling. Dr. D is a dick. They have a match. Mean Gene fires off a great line on a Dr. D shot – “That’ll jar your mother’s preserves!” Finish is interestingly screwed up, as Sal is a bit out of place for Dr. D’s top rope elbow and kicks out 2, which gets D all fired up and pissed off leading to a basic suplex for the finish. What happened!? I dunno. This is whatever, I like Dr. D though cause he’s such a sleazy piece of shit redneck asshole. *1/2
2. Samoan #1 Afa vs. Dick Murdoch
This is just a fascinating match. What you need to know right off the bat is this is a 20 minute draw. Some wrestlers would draw the time out… do some matwork, build to some near falls maybe. Afa and Dicky say fuck that – let’s do 20 minutes of Dick Murdoch selling headbutts. Seriously. This is the most impressive piece of shit match. There’s like 5 minutes of them locking up, Murdoch backing off, Murdoch evading Afa’s headbutts. The crowd is HYPED. Murdoch elbows Afa’s head, it HURTS! Murdoch blocks a headbutt by putting his forearms in an X, it HURTS! Murdoch headbutts the turnbuckle repeatedly to rev himself up, turns into a headbutt, and sells his fucking ass off. Aaaand repeat, and repeat, and repeat. There’s like a 150 ways to sell a headbutt in this match by Murdoch – checking his teeth are all there, spinning around on the mat like he’s Curly from the 3 Stooges. Towards the end he’s just swinging, has nothing left, and just… falls. It’s like a 20-minute comedy routine, with a long story being told to folks on the edge of their seats and a punchline every few minutes that they go nuts for. This is a 20 minute draw. This is fucking incredible. ****
3. Mad Dog Vachon vs. “Quickdraw” Rick McGraw
Gorilla Monsoon chooses this of all matches to hard sell the WWE: “The pinnacle of professional wrestling. Always has been, the World Wrestling Federation. And MSG of course, the mecca. We’re here, this is it.” This is a very crap match, with McGraw doing a few very rudimentary wrestling moves and Vachon just not really seeming into it, just kind of hobbling around. Early in the match McGraw tries a leglock and Vachon is just like nawww brah put me in a headlock and then I’ll get back to the choking and the biting and the back raking. But then this match brings up the greatness of going back and watching this stuff, as a Google Search of “Quickdraw” Rick McGraw (I mean the name alone was enough to make me interested) shows that in Bret Hart’s book he described McGraw as a total fuck-up. And THEN, on commentary, they discuss at length about McGraw being out of the ring after 8 months with a neck injury off of a suplex, and how he’s back in the ring against the advice of a number of doctors. Gorilla and Mean Gene wonder – why? For what? And THEN the Google Search shows you that he died a year after this match. I mean holy god damn. Skip the match but stay for the story. 3/4*
Hillbilly Jim is in the crowd during some of these matches – he’s shown throughout 1984 during enhancement matches sitting in the crowd as a fan, a big hillbilly referred to as “Big Jim.”
4. David Sammartino vs. Moondog Spot
The thing you need to know about 1980s WWF house shows is that some of the matches are very long. The crowd at the time wasn’t necessarily spoiled enough to be restless, but just kind of generally bored and unsure of going to the wrestling matches again. David is announced as David Bruno Sammartino, and Gorilla comments: “The fans are going to be thrilled to see David Sammartino for the first time in MSG as he tries to….. be himself in professional wrestling.” Yeah good luck with that. David basically just looks like Bruno from afar, throwing armdrags and armbars and doing fired up comebacks… just zero of it connects. Moondog is one of those guys that doesn’t do anything super impressive but has solid timing and is a big fat bearded guy in jeans who carries around a bone so he’s automatically a great pro wrestler. He goes flying off a kickout and lands on the ref to the delight of the crowd. Formula formula formula. *1/2
5. WWF Intercontinental Title: Greg “The Hammer” Valentine [c] w/ Captain Lou Albano vs. Tito Santana
This is a real quick match but a fun brawl with Tito all fired up and Valentine being awesome selling all of it. A real slugfest with a hot crowd, and at one point Tito throws a chair at Valentine leading to him doing a Flair flop. Tito punches at Greg until he bleeds and the ref calls it, which is really how like 51% of wrestling matches should always end. **3/4
6. Rocky Johnson vs. Ken Patera
This is a WWF 80s holds match coming back from what I assume is intermission. No problem with holds, but it is when the crowd is dead and the babyface is kind of crap. Sorry Rocky. Good charisma, but kind of awkward and doesn’t touch many of the guys better at this sort of thing. LOOONG headscissors, LOOOONG headlock. Patera has some good reactions here but eh. *1/4
7. Samoan #2 Sika vs. Adrian Adonis
A couple of good solid worker having themselves a match. Adonis has a lot of little touches, doing a 180 before getting hit with a shoulder tackle, that makes even a pretty standard 80s undercard match a pleasure to watch. Adonis gets crotched on the top, pulls out a brass knuckle glove, and hits the ref by mistake. And that’s a wrap. *1/2
Couple Mean Gene interviews on this show. Brutus Beefcake had debuted around this time and his manager Johnny Valiant cuts an awesome weird-ass promo on this show wearing big glasses and a sweater-vest, bragging about all the PLACES HE’S BEEN. Then Brutus comes into frame like he’s the largest man in the world. Sgt. Slaughter calmly rants about Iran, Patera says a black man stabbed him and thinks it might have been Rocky Johnson as Mean Gene looks uncomfortable. Wrestling man.
8. Sgt. Slaughter vs. Nikolai Volkoff w/ “Classy” Freddie Blassie
This is a little sloppy but completely works, with the crowd HOT for USA vs. Russia. The crowd does not give a single fuck that Slaughter does a bad leapfrog and clothesline because Nikolai is begging off and they are FIRED UP. Just some INSANE corner bumps by Sarge here, go and watch this just for those. Long bearhug by Nikolai somewhere in the middle of this, with Nikolai bending Sarge’s back over his knees and Sarge using his core to fight up and hit him, just one of those wonderful homoerotic masculine wrestling spots that did the trick back then. Towards the end I think Slaughter blades and doesn’t actually get blood… Gene and Gorilla seem concerned that he’s not juicing. ***
9. Tony Garea vs. Brutus Beefcake w/ “Luscious” Johnny Valiant
Not the most interesting thing but solid for a few minutes – some decent rope-running and Beefcake as bloated muscle guy trying to keep up is interesting but not very good. Jumping knee ends it. *1/2
10. WWF World Heavyweight Title: Hulk Hogan [c] vs. Big John Studd w/ Bobby “The Brain” Heenan
At the end of the day the Hulk Hogan formula works and while a lot of the criticisms are valid you can’t argue with a match like this. One of the more underrated things about Hogan’s shtick, at least in ’84, how he was always moving – always giving the crowd something to look at, to react to. This is 10 minutes – Hogan punches away at big Studd and knocks him outside, Studd rakes the eyes and posts him, Studd works over Hogan and does a chinlock, Hogan powers out but Studd knees him down, they do it again, Hogan gets slammed on the floor. Aaaaaand HULK UP! Hogan’s insane face as Studd tries to bodyslam him is worth the price of admission. An Axe Bomber not a leg drop finishes Studd. Super basic stuff but everything worked, very hard to argue with. ***
Afa vs. Murdoch and Hogan vs. Studd are good. But this is a FULL card, man. And it is not very good. WWF knew how to promote. They know how to run big angles and matches. But they did not give a fuck if they gave you a top-to-bottom good wrestling show – they had the characters, they had Hogan – eat it. 3/10
