WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING 4/6/85 THOUGHTS

PAS: Phil Schneider
LB: Lee Benaka


World Championship Wrestling 4/6/05

"Today is a free day"
Ole Anderson

PAS: I had a shit eating grin on my face this entire show

LB:  This show was a whole lot of fun, and it opened perfectly with an excerpt from Ole's confrontation with Thunderbolt Patterson.  The menace in Ole's voice was enough to fill the big freezer in the basement of Aunt Lena's house in Brainerd, Minnesota.

PAS:  Sam Houston v. Tully was pretty fun. Not super competitive but Houston always brings jobber fire. Perfect 10 Baby Doll has gigantic hands, I mean she looked like she could palm a pumpkin. The soft core porn video package of Tully turning down pussy in a search for Baby Doll was amazing. Tully was rocking some spectacular stunner shades, and knows how to show a lady a good time. I am only bummed the dicks in the WWE production department, put generic music over what was assuredly an amazing Hall and Oates tune.

LB:  Sam Houston was really tall.  I always liked him since I saw him in person wrestling the Warlord in the Municipal Auditorium in Topeka, Kansas, during the dying days of the Central States promotion in the mid-1980s.  What if Sam Huston would have seriously abused steroids?  Would he have been bulky and huge, or would his lankiness just have been exaggerated severely?  Tully's slingshot suplex didn't look really smooth due to Houston's height, but it was a nice enough match.  The Tully video was bizarre indeed.  Tully was sitting in a mansion at a opulent table eating alone, and a woman at the top of the stairs kept calling her to him.  Except that it was a music video, and it was all done in pantomime.  Tully evoked emotions of disinterest, exhaustion, and ennui balanced with a healthy dose of randiness.

PAS: Flair v. Gene Ligon was not one of your classic Flair v. Enhancement Guy matches, Ligon doesn't bring as much to the table as George South or Mike Jackson, and there were some points where they looked like they were on different pages.

LB:  I don't really remember much about this one, so I think Phil was right on here.

LB:  A Superstar Billy Graham squash was predictably sad.  Graham looked like today's Scott Steiner on a bad day, and his touted "Kung Fu" moves were hard to discern.  And Number One Paul Jones had his arm in a sling.  A rather sorry sight all around.

PAS: Lee is crazy, watching Kung Fun Billy Graham was just like watching Jet Li. The speed, the grace, the KUNG FU!!!

PAS: Goodhelmet really needs to put together a "homoerotic promo videos of the 80's" comp DVD. Magnum T.A. shirtless posing on his Harley like a Blue Boy centerfold would surely make the cut.

LB:  Magnum T.A. was just over the top and almost made me question my sexuality.  Almost.  This video should have turned him heel.  The shots of him making out with plain-looking bar chicks was not impressive, and the repeated close-ups of some woman licking her lips was disconcerting.

LB:  Yet another music video featured Jimmy Valiant prancing around to yet another generic soundtrack, certainly not "Boy from New York City".  It seemed to be stock footage of women walking around on a beach and Jimmy posing in front of old cars and small airplanes in a museum.  Not sure what it was trying to convey, but maybe the original soundtrack would have provided more of a clue.  And it was fun to see Tony Schiavone wilt when the Boogie Woogie Man planted a kiss on him at the beginning of his post-squash-match interview.

PAS: Three separate Dusty Rhodes promos, boy that producer must really like Dusty. They were pretty good promos though. If you have to hear from someone three times, it might as well be Stardust.

LB:  I especially liked the final promo, where a beat-up-looking Dusty was standing outside his limo with a drink in his hand, celebrating his win of the TV title.  He really did look like he was getting lit up after a bruising triumph, and it was a lot more real than any of the "backstage" celebrations you see on wresting shows these days.

PAS: Ivan Koloff really had a ridiculous Boris Badanoff Russian accent. Dusty Rhodes and Tommy Rich are the worlds greatest Moose and Squirrel.

LB:  Yeah, Ivan's accent was pretty thick.  At least they didn't let Nikita say too much back then.

PAS: Buddy Landell had probably the best squash just for the elbow drop, and man did pre-Horseman J.J. Dillion wear some dandyfied suits. He was resplendent in a maroon velvet tux with ruffled collar. I like exasperated executive J.J. way better then fake Don Carson, he didn't even clean his glasses once.

LB:  Buddy Landell was a lot of fun, with the Flair strut and taunts to the audience about being the real Nature Boy.  I love J.J. as an "exasperated executive" (perfect!) and wonder whether J.J. was wearing these dandy suits prior to this in the Central States when he was heading up the Rat Pack and trying to stuff Rufus R. Jones into a rat suit.  I think he was somewhere between executive and dandy back then.

PAS: Black Bart kills Ron Rossi by tossing him hard into the bottom rope, which snaps and Rossi lands very wrong on the floor. Only "Holy Fuck" moment of the show, but it was a big one.

LB:  Of course I was up getting another beer when this horrifying bump occurred.  J.J. thoughtfully kicked the limp snapped cable out of the way so that Bart could carefully put Ron Rossi back in the ring.  That's a tough way to earn $25.00.

PAS: Arn v. Raging Bull was pretty beautiful, nothing fancy, just solid blue collar wrestling. Everything looked hard and solid. It was mostly a set up for the Ole turn on Thunderbolt Patterson. The promo before hand was great, as Ole warns Patterson "I'm not going to touch you...not today"  and the Anderson's beat down on Manny and T-Bolt makes you want badly to see the Omni blow off. The post beat down Anderson promo was kind of strange, as Arn wasn't really giving an Arn promo, as he was much for Bobby Jaggersish, lots of "Daddys" and "Jacks", while Ole did the serious killer stuff great.

LB:  I was going to say the exact same thing about Arn's post-beatdown interview.  It was hard to accept the idea that these two were related, except for the last name and the early male-pattern baldness, as the pinched Minnesota accent clashed harshly with Arn's Georgia twang.  I think Ole tried to assert that their fathers were brothers, but that seemed to be made up on the spot and did not make much sense.  But you did want to see Thunderbolt try to gain revenge and prove that Ole wasn't "carrying" him for all that time.

LB:  Prior to the end of the show, the announcers teased an Avalance Buzz Tyler match and failed to deliver.  Damn!  That was the only fault of this great old show.