Quester Vs WWWF MSG 3-17-75

1977 is the earliest WWF show I've ever sat through, so this should be a treat depending on match quality. Even if it blows, I'm confident that as an oddity, it should hold up. I seem to recall alot of these old MSG shows on the WWE 24/7 On Demand channel they ran with before The Network, but can't recall seeing this one. Anyhoos, without any further bull-caca, let's jam into a squared circle themed Tardis and head back to the year 1975!

Just to give the lay of the land of the World Wide Wrestling Federation in 1975, Vince McMahon Sr. was still running the show, Bruno Sammartino was over a year into his second WWWF Championship reign, The Valiant Brothers held the WWWF Tag Team Championship, and the Intercontinental title was still years away from existing. Isn't it amazing to think of a time when the "New York crew" ran with less belts than NXT?

"Indian" Jay Strongbow vs Paul "Butcher" Vachon
I wonder when Strongbow had his ceremony to become Chief. Stories have been passed over the years about legit Native Americans like The Briscoes hating Strongbow's guts due to his actually being Italian. As a card carrying Cherokee, my stance is that it's a fuckin' work, so I'm cool with it. Was Nikita Koloff really a Russian? Was any masked Japanese wrestler in the 80s ever Japanese? Was Gangrel really a vampire? I digress. The referees dressed sure dressed like UPS delivery men back in the day. Butcher looked like a cross between King Kong Bundy and Amish Roadkill, yet still somehow appeared to be in better shape than Strongbow. They shock me a bit by immediately going into a criss cross fast start, but that gets slowed down in a hurry. Strongbow continued to use the tactic of doing his "indian dance" towards Butcher to make him bail. By dancing, I mean raising his leg like a dog pissing and short hopping towards Vachon. Butcher started to cheat to win, pulling out the old fashioned greco-roman back rakes and bites. After following Strongbow in a circle and making a short meal out of him every few steps, Strongbow danced his way into his comeback, only to be met by a weak big boot. Guys this short should never do the big boot. Butcher goes to the well once again, but Strongbow counters the medium boot into a Thesz Press to get the pin with a super quick three count at 6:25. Seriously, did that ref's coke kick in right before he made the count?

WWWF Heavyweight Championship Texas Death Match
Bruno Sammartino(c) vs Spiros Arion
Spiros was the former partner of Strongbow's that went heel and was a mainstay of the WWWF for over a decade. Freddie Blassie is managing Arion in all his glory and while the crowd disliked Spiros, they HATED Blassie. Bruno comes out with Arnold Skaaland as his second, making me continue to wonder who the hell this guy was. Was he like Lou Albano and just sort of attached himself to the champion of the time? At least Lou had charisma. Spiros threw a cheap shot before the bell that just pissed Bruno off. For one of the more vocal supporters of the "good ol' days" of wrestling-style wrestling, Sammartino is punchy-kicky as all hell here. Arion is more than game and they have a manly punch-fest until Bruno starts laying in knees to the head. Spiros said, "fuck this" and after regrouping to the floor, lures Bruno into a ballshot that made the crowd near nuclear. The champ recovered and put Spiros down with some stiff knees to the back, leading into a Boston Crab right by the ropes. The referee breaks it up, making me yell at the television because he began a ten count when Spiros was on the outside as well, but it's a Death Match! Vince is solo on commentary and mentions how no holds are barred right before the rope break too. Sammartino was one stiff fellow here, in particular a double kick to Arion's chest on a corner charge that will make anyone wince. The challenger was man enough to cash in his receipt by sending a boot to Bruno's eye, which visibly had an instant effect on his selling. Both men traded blows awhile more until Bruno caught him with a few hip tosses that look like judo throws and a high body slam for the pin at 11:49? The question mark is due to Arion clearly having his foot on the rope after the pin. I keep waiting for someone to come with a "this match must continue!", but it never goes down. Well shit, that made Spiros look like the baby and Bruno the heel almost. Crowd didn't give a damn, their dude won, all is well. Not a bad match at all with believable offense out of both guys for the most part. I'm curious as to where I can find the rematch, so they did their job.

Victor Rivera vs Killer Kowalski
These two eyeballs of mine have sat through thousands of wrestling matches and they can safely confirm that this one here is in the bottom twenty. Kowalski's tights reveal who Bobby Blaze purchased his from in the 1990s. Most the match was either Kowalski working the knee by literally sitting in front of him and holding it or Rivera punching Killer's arm repeatedly with some of the weakest offense I've seen since ever. Both guys were veterans, yet looked really lost most of the match. Mercifully, the end came after they wouldn't stop biting each other, yet the referee gave the match to Rivera by DQ at 13:03. That felt like half an hour and it's sad when I only have two notes written down for a 10+ minute contest. This is really the guy that trained Triple H?

Ivan Putski vs The Wolfman
The Wolfman is from the wilds of the Canadian Yukon, so we now know what Wolverine was up to during his blackout. He had a Bruiser Brody thing going on, but minus about a hundred pounds and a whole ton of badassery. This was "Polish Power" Ivan Putski's debut and the crowd was already solidly behind him. Putski is rocking a full beard too, which took me a second to nail down what was so different about him. few big punches to Wolfman and Putski started doing the Eddie Guerrero shoulder shake! Things that makes me smile. How Putski got over with Vince yammering about what a teddy bear he is is a mystery. Wolfman must have thought the shitfest that followed his match was superb, as he went directly into clamping on Ivan's back and repetitive biting. Putski bites back and at this point, I'm sold that the bite was used like today's armdrag. Yet the new school always somehow gets the heat, right? Bites and punches are traded until Putski realized the time for beer and polka was nigh and started hammering the living piss of our favorite Canadian cannibal. Putski slaps on a bearhug and Wolfman calls it a day at 5:27. This was a decent debut showcase and looked like Austin-Rock compared to the previous debacle. Speaking of Austin, Putski slams a beer in his post-match celebration that riles the crowd up! Further research reveals that sadly, The Wolfman passed less than a month ago, so thanks for the memories and it had to take titanium balls to wear the prototype Mantaur head to the ring. Or adamantium...

Like the Star Trek movies, only the even numbered matches are anyting of value unless you're a sadist and want to see one grown man with his hands resting on another man's knee while he pretends to be paralyzed. If that sounds like your type of action, make it a Saturday event to watch Kowalski-Rivera.

Quester Vs Mid-South Wrestling 10-30-82

As with every child that didn't grow up in the northeast in the '80s, we here in Houston had our own special gang of misfit wrestlers formed under Paul Boesch. Every Saturday evening at 9:00pm sharp on channel 39, I became hooked to the antics of Jim Duggan, One Man Gang, Terry Taylor, and other characters like I'd never been hooked before. Mr. Boesch got up there in age and the reins of the southern territories eventually landed on future WWE Hall of Famer "Cowboy" Bill Watts, who wasn't content with staying regional and wanted to present a product to compete with Vince McMahon and the empire that his WWF was creating. The Universal Wrestling Federation was born and with the episodic nature and tremendous booking did very well for itself. That is, until Mr. McMahon and Mr. Crockett down in Mid-Atlantic began signing away the UWF's biggest stars.

Around the time of this show, Watts and Mid-South had already purchased Leroy McGuirk's Tri-State promotion, so Cowboy was running shows in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana as well as splitting the Sam Houston Coliseum (think Sportatorium of Houston) with Boesch and his crew. The national scale was still free game at this point as Hulkamania was still over a year away from exploding. Personally, I've always found pre-Hogan wrestling shows to be fascinating due to the different edge it felt like the overall product had. Enough of memory lane, let's watch some good ol' Texas 'rasslin' like I'm six and in my pajamas again!

Boyd Pierce opens the show by running down today's card in about thirty seconds (masterfully might I add) and ships us ringside with both Bill Watts and Paul Boesch. Cowboy chats with some kids from the local Boy's Club in attendance and goes over the loser leaves town no DQ tag team title match happening later tonight between JYD's team and Ted DiBiase's team. Matt Bourne (O.G. Doink) is being brought in to stand aside Ted, making for an intriguing second-generation tag team. Paul Boesch is concerned as the losers leaving stipulation also affects his promotion, so he made it a point to appear for the first time on Mid-South in person. This was a television show and they just managed to make it feel like a modern day pay-per-view event within five minutes. All hail the old school.

Andre The Giant, The Junkyard Dog, & Mil Mascaras vs Tully Blanchard, Gino Hernandez, & Killer Khan
This match is brought to us from Houston and WHO HIT THE RANDOM BUTTON ON THE LEGENDS OF WRESTLING GAME? Bizarre stuff, but par for the course at the time due to people working all over. Tully and Gino were still the main attractions for San Antonio's SCW at the time and Andre and Khan were on loan from New York. Simple short match that was mostly the heels laying into Andre's leg until he got the tag to Mascaras. That didn't last long until Blanchard tried to launch Mil outside, but Andre caught him on the floor and tossed him OVER the top rope right into Tully, scoring the win for one of the oddest three man teams I've ever seen at 2:51. One thing worth pointing out is that I never realized what a hell of a play-by-play man Watts was until now. He called the entire match by himself, non-stop, with facts and gimmicks flying a mile a minute making him the only guy other than Joey Styles that I can recall pulling it off. Perhaps that poor fellow Byron Saxton should be tied to the UWF learning tree soon.

Kamala vs Ted Allen
Kamala was the first and only wrestler to scare the living shit out of me as a youngling. No lie, I'd do the whole "cover my ears and close my eyes" thing when I saw The Ugandan Giant was fixing to wreck shop. I always thought Kim Chee was a WWF creation, but here he is in all his Kim Chee glory. "Nightmare" Ted Allen was a popular, well respected masked wrestler in Georgia later in his career and sadly passed away in 2010. Total squasharoo here as Kamala gets so amped up that he tried an RVD style vertical leap (it didn't work out) and hit two big splashes to earn his pay this week at :49. The slow-mo replay of that last splash looked badass, with the ring ropes shaking and Allen looking unconscious.

Mid-South Tag Team Championship No Disqualification Loser Leaves Town Match
The Junkyard Dog & Mr. Olympia(c) vs Ted DiBiase & Matt Bourne
This started slow, but finished with some wild shit that was ahead of the 1982 curve. All four came out guns blazing until DiBiase started heeling it up. How he got over simply wearing by a black glove he could load/unload with a foreign object is on the same level of awesome as Lawler's old phantom object he would pull out of his tights. Psychology 101. The crowd is turned up to eleven, popping and jumping like maniacs for things like arm drags. Speaking of, once I noticed how sweet Mr. Olympia's armdrags were, I also noticed that all he did was armdrags after his first two tags, so practice makes perfect I guess. Earlier in the show, there was a person in a gorilla suit horsing around with the Boy's Club kids and when they cut to a quick, completely random shot of it during the match, I said "that's the good stuff". The only two things that drug the match down a bit were that JYD was noticably off on a few moves and that they barely used the no DQ rule until the end. My jaw slapped the floor when Bourne hit his Whoopie Cushion move on Mr. Olympia as I didn't know he always did that one. JYD was in the ring struggling to remove whatever Ted had just slid in his glove when all hell broke loose. The gorilla slams Olympia on the concrete and unmasks as Jim Duggan, laying JYD out with a pretty nice flying shoulder tackle. DiBiase's black glove finds it's target and The Junkyard Dog is pinned at 11:37, costing him 90 days in Mid-South and the tag titles. Young Doink resembles a young Eugene if anyone remembers him.

Tony Atlas vs Len Denton
It's "The Foot Fetish King" Tony Atlas! I'm not going into the nickname, you're on your own. I must say, Atlas looks every bit the part of a superstar here, the dropkick into the flying head scissors in particular catching me by suprise. Tony whipped this poor bastard's ass from pillar to post, looking more agile than I ever remember him being, but to be fair, he was already gone by the time I got into watching WWF. Gorilla press into a body splash sends everyone involved home at 2:43 as somewhere, Warrior was taking notes.

Gino Hernandez vs Jesse Barr
Gino Hernandez is remembered for being one of the most tragic figures in wrestling history. Jesse Barr is remembered for having his goddamned eyeball ripped out of his skull by an angry Haku. The more you know. They openly mention that Barr is on loan from Don Owen's Portland territory right before Gino shrugs off his offense and finishes him off with his funky second rope backwards flying elbow at 3:01. Gino wasn't as heelish as usual and just kind of looked like Rick Martel out there.

We're joined by the new Mid-South Tag Team Champions DiBiase and Bourne as well as Duggan still in the gorilla suit at ringside. Paul Boesch himself is handling the interview and states that this is the wickedest shit he has seen in over 50 years in the business. Other than the uncomfortable line where DiBiase refers to JYD as a "monkey", this was one hell of an awesome deal. Ted was already doing the trademark laugh, Bourne was joking and clowning around a decade before Doink existed, and Duggan came hard with a killer heel promo. Social media would've already hit WWE with about 50 million comments by the time I finished typing this sentence if this was done today though, and rightly so. Different times.

Mr. Wrestling II vs Marty Lunde
For the unaware, Lunde would go on to a memorable career as Arn Anderson. This match confirms that poor guy must have been bald back in high school. Mr. Wrestling II is only around 38 here, but looks more aged than that and he is the only babyface so far in this show that the crowd hasn't reacted to. Knee lift, knee lift, body slam, knee lift and Mr. Wrestling took the match at 3:27. It isn't like I can blame a man for having a 1980's offense in a 1982 show or anything, so judgement reserved.

Hiro Matsuda & Yoshi Yatsu vs Vinnie Romero & Tim Horner
Hot damn! Vinnie used to work out here at Texas All-Star under the name Vinnie Valentino. Horner was mostly an enhancement guy throughout his career and I'm not as familiar with him as I should be. Hiro Matsuda is most famous for being the most out of place manager Ric Flair ever had as well as the man who broke the leg of a mouthy Hulk Hogan early in his training, or so Hulkster claims. Though I closely follow Japanese wrestling, the only thing about Yatsu that stands out was his being part of the tag match where Mitsuharu Misawa unmasked. Not much to this one as Horner gets nowhere, tags in Vinnie who gets a few moves in until Yatsu destroys him with a vicious belly-to-belly at 2:07. Gnarliest move so far this show, hands down.

With that, Paul Boesch and Boyd Pierce run down the card for next week's show (what a concept!) which isn't on The Network yet and we're out of time!

They packed so much into 45 minutes that it would send anyone who is tired of the three hour drag-ass pace of today's shows scrambling to find more. Great period for a great promotion that had even bigger things to come.