WWF 305 Live: Boss Man vs. Barbarian!

Big Boss Man vs. The Barbarian WWF Royal Rumble 1/19/91 - EPIC

ER: These two had at least 20 house show matches over the three months preceding this match, and you can tell they used that time to hone something special. Two big guys going 15 minutes, knowing exactly how and when to peak the crowd, keeping up an always-impressive pace the whole time. There's no way they could have been going this hard on house shows, hitting each other this hard, taking bumps this hard; but whatever they were doing in those 20 or so matches over 3 or so months, totally paid off. 

This fucking match was following the excellent Rockers/Orient Express opener! That tag is always talked about as one of the great PPV openers and it really does hold up as one of the best WWF tag matches of the 90s. That, and it was 20 minutes long. It was 20 minutes long, with a ton of action! Boss Man was leaner in 1991 than he'd ever been in wrestling, but it would have been crazy to have expected him and Barbarian to go out there right after and work another match with high action and fast pace. 

Speaking of fast pace, Barbarian stalls on the floor for well over a minute after the bell, a huge man in a He-Man fur loincloth and fur boots. His legs literally have the same shape as a He-Man figurine. His beard is grown as full as it has ever been grown. Son of Crom versus a Best Shape of His Life Corrections Officer is an episode of Deadliest Warrior that we never got to see, and it's worth the wait. Two behemoths stalling is always good, but two behemoths stalling and then beating the hell out of each other is among the greatest possible match types. Soon Barbarian is holding Boss Man by the collar and uppercutting him, before running into a the sole of his boot, and all is right.  

Boss Man is lean and his speed is incredible. When he clotheslines Barbarian to the floor, his impact is so fast and full that both fly to the floor too fast. Boss Man always carried a lot of "head of steam" speed at his heaviest -  a fat guy skiing down a mountain with his poles tucked to his sides - but whenever he leaned out he did every single movement with real speed. There's a spot I don't think I've ever seen him do, where he gets his leg stuck in the bottom and middle ropes so naturally that I had to rewind a few times to see just how he did it. It's either a lucky fluke or a tremendous magic trick, but there's a lot of evidence on his side that it was something he thought of and executed flawlessly. Fewer workers have been better at integrating the ropes into their matches. Here he got knocked to the apron with a strike and looked like he was just going to slow his descent by grabbing the ropes, settling on the apron to stop a bump to the floor. Instead, he managed to fall through to the apron while hooking his leg on the ropes in a way I haven't seen him do, perhaps feeling out a signature bump that would be a a new version of Andre getting his arms caught. Boss Man is truly one of the most rewarding wrestlers to reassess. I wonder why he doesn't get talked about to the same level as John Tenta by stock rising warm revisionists. Boss Man's work ages even better in every era, beyond just the incredible 1993 AJPW run. One of the true greatest wrestlers of the 90s. 

Barbarian's toolset was deepening by 1991, and he hung in with everything Boss Man wanted to do. When he repeatedly fell onto Boss Man with elbowdrops it always looked like a lot of weight hitting a lot of weight. They successfully gradually transition the match from fast paced big man war into big nearfall tiring fight: Boss Man throwing fatigued punches to come back, missing a hard chest-first charge into the corner, Barbarian's high bridge school boy an excellent close kickout nearfall. All of the nearfalls felt like plausible finishes. When Boss Man catches Barbarian in a delayed landing hot shot, the crowd clearly thinks it is the finish. Their shocked screams when Barbarian's foot barely finds the ropes is the reaction you hope to be in the middle of whenever you buy tickets to any wrestling show. The ending stretch is underwhelming when compared to the match as a whole, but it still managed to effectively convey a fight between weakening mammoths. When a primitive man in fur piledrives a humongous southern jailer, we forgive the sloppiness of the piledriver, and celebrate the danger involved in a 300 lb man dumping a 330 lb man upside down. The 1-2 punch of Orients/Rockers and this match stands high among any opening 1-2 punch of any WWF PPV. 

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