DVDVR Puerto Rico 80s Set: Disc 1: Los Pastores vs. Jay & Mark Youngblood (Spring 1985)

Disc 1, Match 10: Los Pastores vs. Jay & Mark Youngblood (Spring 1985)

Well, this was a huge, disjointed mess. Let's break it into its composite parts. First, there was stalling, so much stalling, even too much stalling for me, namely based around the Sheepherders showing off their flag and the Youngbloods showing off a Puerto Rican flag. There was effort put in, with the Sheepherders stomping about, and it was fairly effective, as the fans were stomping and ready for the action to start, but it just went on way too long.

Then there was a shine, arm-based, on Luke. One thing that really surprised me when watching the Sheepherders in Portland was how different Luke and Butch were. That's something that I never had an impression of as a kid watching them in the WWF. Luke was maybe a bit quicker, a bit more of a bumper, but Butch was constant motion and reaction. In the early parts here, he sold for his own punches, marching about after everything he did, sold on the apron for Luke, just reacted to everything. Meanwhile, Luke, when the Youngbloods had his arm in the corner, didn't even pretend to get away. He didn't make them earn a single thing in the shine. Maybe that wouldn't have been so bad if Mark wasn't more or less the same. At one point, during a pin attempt in the shine, Butch walked over on the outside and pulled Mark's hair to break things up. Mark didn't even look at Butch. He just sleepwalked his way into the next move.

The transition was rough. The Youngbloods decided to stop tagging for no reason and set up a full nelson/punch combo. The ref stopped it because they didn't tag (again for no reason; nothing story driven led to this. They just went from tagging on the armwork to stopping for this because it was the transition), and as the ref was breaking things up, Butch came in to attack from behind. Not good.

The rest of the match was formless chaos and violence, engrossing at times, but ultimately meaningless. I liked Jay quite a bit as the emotional, overprotective brother, fighting back with a chair as the Sheepherders picked away at Mark however they could. It just went around in circles a few too many times until the finishing stretch (if you can call it that), which involved the ref leaving the ring in pointless distraction when the Youngbloods should have had the match won. This wasn't good but it was, at times, fun. I think we all deeply underrate Butch.