WWF 305 Live: Earthquake! Adonis! Tugboat! Atlas!

Adrian Adonis vs. Tony Atlas WWF 1/11/86 - VERY GOOD

ER: You might be shocked to know that fans in Philadelphia didn't react warmly to Adonis as The Adorable One. But Dick Graham and Lord Alfred really could not get over what this was supposed to be, and the commentary over half this match is them literally chuckling over the phrase "out of the closet" and then referring more to Adonis being out of the closet. They couldn't get enough of it. They were fascinated by it. They didn't know what to make of it, but they knew that they explicitly wanted to laugh about it. Except Adonis leans into every part of it and relishes the heat, and it's great. And he uses that heat and runs with it and doesn't lock up with Atlas for the first several minutes. He walks out, he gets slurs yelled at him from every side of the ring, and he looks like he's loving every bit of it. This man knew how to lean on the ropes and get a reaction from the littlest gestures. When the blows start coming, Adonis sells for Atlas's big headbutts, always spinning into the mat or bumping it like a brutal clothesline, once even flying into and getting tangled in the ropes. When he wasn't selling for big Atlas headbutts, he was hitting Tony with avalanches and the nastiest diving elbows. Both guys took hard bumps into the turnbuckles, with the Adonis bump especially memorable. Adonis gets crotched on the top rope and it gets treated as a huge crowd reaction moment, and I think I'm just going to have a soft spot for these matches that include a couple big bumps with some good crowd heat. High floor. 

Earthquake vs. Tugboat WWF Superstars 2/8/91 - EPIC

ER: This was short - just over 3 minutes long - but it was a fantastic big man sprint that felt, ahem, bigger than its length. There was belly bouncing, big collisions, and the most incredibly brave trust in ring ropes you've ever seen. Nobody runs the ropes like John Tenta. He's the greatest rope runner in wrestling history, throwing his full ass and hip down into the middle rope with 100% pure faith, the faith of a man being wheelbarrowed on a tightrope across Niagara Falls. Whenever I see a wrestler of a certain size hit the ropes at full speed, the ONLY thing that I thing about is one of those ropes snapping and sending a beautiful giant to an even shorter life. It's the only thing that crosses my mind when Andre throws his whole body backward at the ropes, and John Tenta hits those ropes every single time like a man who has never once considered the possibility of those ropes snapping like power lines in a storm. 

It's a beautiful thing to witness another human as they're showing 100% trust, in anything. Trust is a funny thing. We aren't always consistent in who or how we trust. We all consciously choose what things in life we trust. I don't 100% know what kind of meat was in any of the hundreds of fast food cheeseburgers I've eaten over my lifetime, but it's a risk I've taken with no second thought those hundreds of times. It's not heroic, we just all get to draw our own Trust Map whether we want to or not, and John Tenta has no time to let one single ring rope live rent-free in his head. There is nothing that will keep Tenta from hitting the ropes so hard that his perfect frame goes completely over the ring apron, bicep draped over the top rope as if he's leaning out the passenger window of his friend's pick-up, the happiest eyes you've seen telling you just how much he loves running those ropes. 

He hits two incredibly satisfying clotheslines that send Tugboat flying down in two great ring shaking back splashes. Earthquake runs through Tugboat with full confidence, clubs at his back, and hits a fun jumping kick to the stomach. Tugboat gets to hit a big avalanche and gets to show off his underrated talent as a babyface who can fire up a crowd. The match breaks down when Jimmy Hart interferes, in his resplendent airbrushed Earthquake blazer, gets lifted to the top rope by Tugboat and held there by the lapels, standing in the middle of the top rope. Earthquake nails Tugboat with the megaphone in full uncaring view of the ref. Earthquake is DQ'd and refuses to let that DQ get in the way of his good time, hitting a full thigh legdrop and Earthquake splash. Earthquake is a man who gets value out of his DQ. This is the kind of quick starburst spectacle you want to see from two clashing Kodiaks, a type of wrestling we won't ever see again. 

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