Black History Month DAY 12

Hacksaw Jim Duggan v. Craig "Pitbull" Pittman
by Tomk

Sgt. Craig Pittman vs Hacksaw Jim Duggan
Uploaded by TSteck160

Craig Pittbull Pittman was a product of the WCW Powerplant. An ex-Marine with legit amateur background who threw lots of nasty suplexes and had really aggressive looking take downs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtfQhaB1WoQ ). He also did a bunch of “Black guy with a hard head” spots, and depending on who was announcing they would explain these as Marine “Jarhead” spots. But call it what you will, we know what’s really going on. Pittman also would take some really big bumps.

Great American Bash 95 and he has his PPV debut opposite Hacksaw Duggan. Hacksaw Duggan hasn’t had a match of note for almost a decade. He’s not Barry Houston and can’t really be thrown around that way. He’s old, washed up but over brawler. Still match is really smartly put together and Hacksaw has a pretty nice performance built around selling and his veteran brawler character. Hacksaw really puts Pittman over strong. Pittman just destroys Hacksaw’s leg and looses by DQ when he refuses to let go of arm submission. For guy with amateur credentials v washed up brawler, I wouldn’t want to say that this compares favorably to HBK v Angle or HBK v Benjamin…largely because Pittman is way greener than either Benjamin or Angle were at the time. But this is surprisingly better than one would expect.

By the end of the nineties Pittman was able to put all the elements (bumping, suplexes, amteur rides, battering ram spots, etc) together into a nice little package. But this is 1995. Pittman is just out of wrestling school and pretty green. He has the kind of sloppy stiffness at this point that we’d associate with a shooter working a New Japan match. He also does really WWF style “wrestler controls his own bumps” type bumping. And there is a real disconnect between his offense (strong hard non-cooperative looking take downs and suplexes where he’s controlling opponents bumps) and his own bumping (self propelled).

That’s the matches real big flaw. As both Hacksaw’s offense and Pittman’s offense makes sense and looks nice but the bumps Pittman takes never look like they are results of Hacksaw’s offense. Well that and your 1995 WCW audience wasn’t really ready for submission move as instant death. Wasn’t really ready for match where wrestler takes out opponent’s leg (works the leg) in order to sink in arm submission. Its 2008 and the crowd is indifferent to Viscera bleeding out of his mouth when Undertaker put him in a oomaplata . If it doesn’t work in 2008 with a blood capsule and an American audience that has seen some MMA, it’s not getting over in 95.

I should also point out that this match was set up by Pittman “breaking” Scott D’amore’s arm in the undercard and then demanding better competition. This is the best match I’ve ever seen that D’amore was involved in setting up.