AWA WRESTLING REPORT FROM ESPN CLASSIC 2/29
- 02/29/2008 (5:12:38 pm)
- Georgiann Makropoulos
came on late due to basketball game……
February 29th 1:40am
If you turned to ESPN Classic channel, you found a recent basketball game on during most of the 1 o clock hour. This was like a few weeks ago, when instead of UWF, an old basketball game as a tribute to Bobby Knight aired. I was expecting them to handle this in similar fashion, where no wrestling would air. Fortunately, once the game wrapped up by 1:40 am, AWA come on in it’s entirely.
July 15th, 1986 at the Showboat hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada is this epidode of AWA Championship Wrestling. Madonna’s Dress You Up plays as Sherri Martel leads her men, the AWA tag team champions "Pretty Boy" Doug Sommers and "Playboy" Buddy Rose, to the ring. Only they and the referee Scott LeDux are announced. Their opponents are Jake "Milk Man" Milliman, a popular AWA jobber, and Chad Bardoux (both wrestlers are mentioned during the match commentary). Rod Trongard and AWA World Champion Nick Bockwinkel provide the match commentary. Disputing announcer Larry Miller’s stating of Rose’s weight being at 271 lbs., "The Playboy" (or "Dough Boy" as commonly called by fans) proclaims his weight as 217 lbs. (Blow Away Diet anyone?) Rose’s attempts at underhanded tactics are foiled when a punch on ropes bound Milliman is blocked by LeDux, then when Rose applies and arm twist on Milliman and pulls the hair to bring him down, LeDux brings Rose to the mat with a hair pull. Rose and Sommers use a variations of the Road Warrior’s Doomsday Device, and a Rose DDT (which Bockwinkel regrettably called a short piledriver) on Bardoux scores the pinfall victory. The match was just under 5 minutes.
Next up is a one fall bout, with a 10 minute time limit. Jesse Hernandez, whose role is often that of referee (Herb Abram’s UWF, to mention one), faces the scourge from South Africa, Col. DeBeers. Special referee for the match is wrestler Earthquake Ferris (not John Tenta). Rod Trongard and wrestling legend Lord Janes Blears provide match commentary. Even though this is a build up match for DeBeers (whom at the time was feuding with Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka) Hernandez has a bit of a good showing. Since DeBeers was so hated, to keep interest, he often would do a Ric Flair. This is where he would make it seem like his opponent (even a jobber) may have a chance. This match ended in 5 minutes with a pin after DeBeers performed a front face piledriver (not DDT) on Hernandez.
Now time for the main event, which saw in a one fall bout with a 60 minute time limit for the AWA World Championship. Entering first is the challenger Boris Zhukov, accompanied by Sheik Adnan Alkaissie (as was spelled on screen). Then arrives the champion, Nick Bockwinkel. The referee is Gary DeRousha. During the match, which heard chants of "Sheik’s a freak", Bockwinkel dominated with a headlock on the massive cranium of Zhukov. Eventually Zhukov would break from it and work on Bockwinkel’s arm. At one point, Zhukov thought he had the pin, but the referee noticed Boris’ foot on the rope for unfair leverage. A premature celebration by the Soviet and Adnan, lead to a dropkick to the back of Zhukov, into the rope and back into a cradle roll up by Bockwinkel for the 1.2.3 win. This match made it to the 15 minute mark.
After the commercial, Adnan and Zhukov were in the ring with Larry Miller. They issued a rematch challenge, with a Russian chain match stipulation. Whether that will air, is not certain, since these episodes so far are not in order.
David
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