Saturday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a visit to the the British Isle for a hidden asskicking gem from one of my favorites Terry Rudge





Terry Rudge v. Lenny Hurst,  WOS 10/31/85

PAS: Man do I love Terry Rudge, he is clearly in the genus of guys like Regal and Finlay who are some of my all time favorites, he brings the mastery of simple holds and sickening violence of those guys, and adds some 70's/80's grime. Hurst was listed from the Bahamas and was more of a flashy good guy, he had a nice headscissors take over and dropkick and a bunch of nifty ways to work in and out of a Santo headscissors. The first couple of rounds were simple but excellent, basically working in and out of top wristlocks. Rudge can make a wristlock look like a vicious submission, both by the nasty way he puts it on, and the pain and sense of urgency he shows when it is placed on him. Hurst surprisingly is the first guy to throw hands, but he regrets it as Rudge unloads his uppercuts and the amazing Rudge signature bit of nastiness where he traps his opponent arm with a front hammerlock and uses his other arm to pummel the guy with forearms. It looks like he is beating out an especially dusty rug. By the end of it I wouldn't be surprised if Hurst organs had the consistency of Ice Cream left in a hot car trunk. Don't love a draw finish, but loved everything else.

ER: Two-thirds of the match is worked in some kind of lock-up, which a lot of guys couldn't make very compelling but totally worked for these two. Rudge is such a smug badass, he's like a cool Roger Ward villain. Whenever he'd cockily turn his back on Hurst it felt like a mannerism that Minoru Suzuki stole and turned into his whole character. I loved his use of hand/thumb work as a dick heel move, and I loved the way the crowd identified the small joint manipulation as utterly classless. I'm a sucker for brawny jerks stomping on hands, and Rudge always brings that. I can't believe his brutal trapped-arm shoulder block/forearm spot hasn't been stolen and made to look worse by some indy goober. I dug Hurst here in all this, nice valiant babyface who refused to play dirty (but was tempted and had to resist the urge at one point to do a Three Stooges style eyepoke). Fun stuff.