Tully Collects Quarters at a Fanfest

Tully Blanchard vs. Dustin Rhodes NWA Legends Fanfest 8/10/07

ER: This was literally a day or two before Dustin's return to TNA, this time as Black Reign. The Black Reign era had to have been the worst physical conditioning of his career, and was no question the worst look of his career. His look here was bad in a different way, looking like a man who has been living through a several year divorce. He's not yet 40, has saggy old man arms, bad bod, bad goatee, sleeveless TNA shirt, clearly in worse shape than mid-50s Tully. But Dustin could still go in old man shape, and Tully was in good damn shape, and this was good! JJ Dillon and Baby Doll were at ringside, Tully takes big back bumps from Dustin's great punches, works some nice go behinds, and eventually nails Dustin with a nasty diving chop block to the knee. Dustin is obviously going to be fantastic at selling a knee, and Tully goes after it with a grapevine, with Dustin kicking him off and not once forgetting about that knee. 

Dustin's selling was so good that you would buy a knee injury if you didn't know he worked a TNA PPV later this same weekend. There's a great moment where Tully gets knocked into the corner and Dustin goes to stomp a muddle in him, but can't put any weight on the knee to do any stomping. So he does everything he can to stomp, desperately clinging to the ropes to hold his weight just so he could get a couple boots in on Tully. JJ Dillon passes off a roll of quarters that of course Dustin eventually gets, and the way they used them literally couldn't have been better. Tully doesn't know Dustin has them, runs straight into a punch, lights go out, quarters fly everywhere, beautiful. What's hilarious though is that even though Dustin was selling this incredible knee injury (and continued to all the way to the back), the fans BOO the man because they wanted Tully Blanchard to win! And so Tully is finding all of these quarters in the ring and has no idea what happened, Baby Doll is upset because she was late getting his boot on the ropes, Dillon swings on Dustin and eats and atomic drop that sends him crashing into Tully, it's a ton of bullshit and it rules.