DVDVR Puerto Rico 80s Set: Chicky Starr vs. Invader III (Scaffold Match) (May 1986)

Disc 2: Match 12: Chicky Starr vs. Invader III (Scaffold Match) (May 1986)

Past Flair vs Colon, I think this is the first match on the set that I'd actually seen before. At the time it was my first exposure to an Invader as an Invader and Chicky Starr being Chicky Starr. It's a special match, a unique match. The sense of danger and dread made it the first thing I thought of when watching Sasha and Charlotte almost kill each other multiple times a month ago in the cell.

Look, like a lot of people, my first scaffold match was the Great American Bash 91 monstrosity. I've written before how, during my years as a teenager not watching wrestling, a taped version of that show was the only wrestling I owned, and the scaffold match was the first thing on there, so I've seen it as many times as any other human being, I imagine. This is as far from that as possible. I'm not sure if I like it quite as much as some of the big ones out of Memphis, but that's more of a preference issue than a quality one.

They're high up. They're daring. They're absolutely Invader III and Chicky. There's an absolute joy in Chicky being up there and in danger. It's everything wonderful about sticking the manager in a cage about the ring and having him sell it as the worst thing imaginable, just made all the better by there being a scaffold instead of the cage, and having the poor bastard have to fight for his life.

There are a few definitive transitions, a few big moments, including the biggest of Chicky thinking he's won (with the crowd throwing things at him for his swagger), only for Invader to still be hanging on for his life. There are great, perilous punches, a very unlikely dropkick, and plenty of blood. There's a sense of desperate exhaustion as the match goes on, with as believable selling as you can imagine to match. It's that constant sense of danger that really puts it over the top though. They aren't just laying down. It's not a fifteen minute front facelock. There are slams and a suplex. There are stomps and kicks and bumps. At any point either of them could have put a foot the wrong place and more than the match could have been over. That they are able to utilize that as a tool and combine it with hateful biting and pounding and everything else is what makes this work as a one-of-a-kind spectacle. Everyone should see it at least once. It's pretty much the only scaffold match you ever need to see.