RIP Bobby Eaton Pt. 1

It has been a rough couple of weeks for wrestling deaths, and the great Bobby Eaton had a great career and great life. There is so much tremendous footage available, so we are going to be doing several posts over the next week.

Bobby Eaton vs. Koko Ware CWA 12/6/80

MD: I think this was actually December 1980, deep into the year without Lawler, which is a time in Memphis I always have a lot of fondness for, just due to the outlandishness of having guys like Ellering and Eaton king. This is pure Memphis, as Valiant's out to destroy poor Koko's TV (again; he's de facto lead heel having just insulted Tommy Rich's mother) and Koko can't do anything about it since he has to fight for his life against King Eaton. He would have been an underdog in any situation, but he's got extra fire and extra anger as the TV gets destroyed by the announce position almost immediately, and it's up to Eaton to bully him and lean on him and really keep the offense going in order to keep Koko down. The containment works exactly as intended and when Koko ducks a shot and starts to fire back the studio goes nuts building to a bigger prize when Koko actually gets his hands on Hart. If I have my timing right on this, they were in the midst of Tojo/Valiant vs Rich/Koko main events with Eaton vs Tony Charles in the mid card and this was a great example of entertaining TV that served a lot of purposes and gave the fans a legitimate thrill and pop despite being entirely inconclusive and setting up the live shows to come. Exactly what studio wrestling should be and Eaton played his part perfectly. 

PAS: These two formed a legendary but under footaged tag team a couple of years after this match, and it was cool to watch them work a studio fight. One thing that really struck me about this match was Eaton's athletic explosiveness. Bobby Eaton didn't look like an elite athlete, but man was his motor high and his attacks kinetic. Just the speed and force he hit a simple elbow drop, just great. Fun business with Handsome Jimmy smashing the big ass 1980's vacuum tube TV too.

ER: 21 year old Bobby Eaton is a treat. He's like an athletic brother of Francis in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, making chubby faced sneers while working a long mid-match headlock. But the 21 year old also hit really hard shoulderblocks and threw his headlock punches with a confident sass. Koko plays this like kind of a cooler black Bob Backlund, sticking his butt out to sell Eaton's already hot punches. Drop downs and leap frogs are quick and honest, and Eaton hits one of the most gorgeous highlight reel elbowdrops. He runs off the ropes and leaps from the three point line, landing perfectly horizontal with his elbow across Koko's collarbones. Jimmy Hart is an incredible manager and not only was his voice great from ringside, but his physical involvement at the finish was really tough stuff. Hart had a feel of a guy getting into a public fight and immediately getting in over his head, like a too tough talking small town pharmacist. 10 minutes of Memphis stacks up consistently with the best wrestling ever. 

Bobby Eaton vs. Abdullah The Butcher WCW 9/28/91

PAS: This was an incredible four minutes. Abby jumps Eaton before the bell while he is hugging some kids and smashes him with a kendo stick, posts him, throws him into chairs and lights him up with chair shots. They brawl to the back, and right when you think this is 90 seconds, they pop back out from the curtain with Eaton pasting Abby with those right hands, he tees off with a chair on Abby, and looks like he is going to finish him off with an Alabama Jam until Catcus runs out and jumps him. Eaton gets thrown off the ring apron into the guard rail, and gets double teamed until Rick Steiner runs out for the save. Totally wild stuff, with Eaton almost working as a Steve Austin babyface. Loved it. 

ER: Here's a great match to show someone who would be interested in seeing in how much can be accomplished in pro wrestling in just 4 minutes. This hardly ever gets to be a real match, the bells rings before 4 minutes have even passed, and yet I guarantee every fan in attendance went home talking about this match. Abdullah jumps Eaton during his entrance and really beats him, including throwing him like a comic book villain through some chairs, then beating him down on the floor with a chair. He completely overwhelms Eaton, kicking his ass back through the curtains. Magic happens once they cross that curtain threshold, as Eaton comes out firing, punching Abby back to ringside and runs halfway around the ring to find his own damn chair. You get a real joyous bloodlust crowd reaction when Eaton charges back with his chair, and he absolutely pastes Abby with 4 or 5 chairshots that looked as violent as any Attitude era shots. Cactus runs in when Abby gets in too much trouble, and he rocket launches Eaton off the apron ribs first into the guardrail. This was incredibly entertaining, Abby looked humongous and dangerous, Eaton looked like the kind of babyface everyone would want to root for, Rick Steiner looked like a fearless top babyface. It was the best of everything. 

Bad Attitude (Bobby Eaton/Steve Keirn) vs. Ricky Steamboat/Arn Anderson WCW 5/1/94

MD: There's a moment midway through this match, just after the heels took over with a blind switch, where Eaton hits an elbow drop off the top rope on Anderson. It lands well and looks impactful, because of course it does, but afterwards, Eaton does something odd. He stumbles off to the side and bounces off the second rope before he recovers to keep the beating going. You're left wondering why he made that specific decision. Was it to sell the beating he had taken so far? Was it to get over the damage that he was willing to do to himself and how dangerous and powerful the elbow drop was? Was it to justify with a move so back, even so early in the beatdown, didn't immediately put Anderson away. I don't know. It could have meant any of that or all of it, but fifty other wrestlers doing an elbow off the top in that moment wouldn't have done it. Eaton did and it added to the match because it felt totally natural and it felt meaningful. It made everything that was going on somehow more tangible and real; it wasn't rote and you didn't expect it and it made you wonder, but in a way that drew you more into the match instead of taking you out of it. That's what Bobby Eaton did. 

If it was to sell the early beating he took, that would have certainly been warranted, because he fit a lot of pain and stooging into a three minute period, bumping up and over the rail, including a press from Anderson off the apron into it. None of the bumps were particularly huge but he sold them in such a skittish, almost tragic way that they meant far more than far bigger ones than most others would take. We're eulogizing Bobby here, for good reason, but a quick note on Arn: he always says he wasn't a great babyface because he didn't have "tools," and here I think tools are shorthand for dropkicks and the sort. He always had the makings for a standing tall Bill Watts/Dusty Rhodes style babyface though and that's fully at play here. He had amazing timing on hope spots (which makes sense as he was always so good at his cutoffs) and could garner sympathy as he dragged himself around the ring during a beating, and when you had great strikes and a lightning fast KO move like the spinebuster, you didn't need to be throwing about flying back elbows. Though, of course, it helps when you're across the ring from someone like Bobby Eaton.

PAS: 1994 WCW is a bit of a blind spot for me, I don't really remember seeing very many Bad Attitude matches before, but this "pals of Stan Lane" version of the Fabs is really great. Keirn had turned into a real creepy looking guy at this point, and had really good heel facial expressions. He hit this awesome looking flying forearm for his high spot and was great at the nuts and bolts parts of being a heel. I enjoyed babyface Arn, loved the Spinebuster as a babyface move here, and he and Steamboat make a really effective pair. Of course Bobby was electric, with big bumps and great looking small bumps, cool twists on formulas, and a real speedy energy for a guy who was also great at going slow. 

ER: Bad Attitude were a really great proto Southern Comfort, with a wild eyed Keirn sporting a craziest era Billy Bob Thornton shaved head mullet as Eaton plays the more strait-laced southern pro. And you get to see these complementary souther pros take apart a FIP Arn for 8 minutes, and it's great. Eaton takes some big leaps, getting rocket launched by Arn from the apron to the guardrail, and later landing a perfect top rope elbowdrop on Arn. He and Keirn cut Arn off from Steamboat really effectively, with Keirn coming off like a cool closed fist punching tough guy and Eaton knowing exactly how to play all the timing spots, when to distract Steamboat, when to direct Arn back into the wrong corner. Steamboat's hot tag is really the only down part of the match, with Steamboat coming in with lesser Kofi Kingston offense, karate chops that are the weakest looking strikes in the match, and a standing splash that's pulled so much it's like a dad fake wrestling with his toddler. We only got half a year of Bad Attitude, but it was a real great combination of two legendary tag wrestlers who gelled immediately.