Nightmare Matches – Volume Seven! New Nightmares!

The Worm returns, a little more Animal magic, and a nightmare from Elm Street await today!

Dustin Rhodes, Ricky Morton and Nightmare Freddie vs. Rough and Ready and Keith Robertson

With the continuation of and declining quality of Nightmare on Elm Street, Memphis gets their own version of Freddy Krueger in Nightmare Freddie. The Do the Freddy music video is awful both as far as watching and listening, but they do a nice bit of editing to match his motions to the words in the song. There seems to be dispute on whether the person beneath the cheap Halloween store mask is Doug Gilbert or his dad Tommy, but Doug certainly did it for longer. The match here is from the Saturday morning show and Dave Brown has to feign enthusiasm over a horror movie character being a member of the roster. Rough and Ready look like cheap shop versions of Doom and Keith Robertson resembles Bobby Duncum Jr. Dave, ever the pro, wants to make sure that he calls Rough as Rough and Ready as Ready. Whichever one it is does a few big bumps then just starts collapsing from glancing blows. Freddy comes in as we get a cut in interview from Master of Pain (the Undertaker), who has a mask vs. tar and feather match which I believe he actually ended up losing and getting the treacle and pillow treatment. Dustin leans over to Ricky (consistently called Rick by Dave) as if to ask “WTF?” as Freddie lurches around the ring. The other masked heel comes in and bumps worse. Dustin, puppy fat and mullet in tact, comes in with his sweet flying clothesline and a nice suplex and kneedrop. Ricky in with a reverse atomic drop and fistdrop. Nice moves, but this match has zero flow. Freddie is back in to slow it down again. The heels trip Ricky to bring everyone in for a brawl and Master of Pain in Zubaz resembling his infamous leopardskin trousers as the American Bad Ass tries to rip Freddie’s mask on the outside before having a fireball thrown in his face. Somewhere amongst this Dustin pins Rough.

How bad was it? I guess when you’re given the chance of a decent tag team match with Dustin Rhodes and Ricky Morton against two jobbers you should always take the opportunity to drop it down by adding a gimmick performer and putting the focus on him. Typical bad Memphis bullshit.

Kamala vs. George “The Animal” Steele (Toronto)

A pair of matches involving this pair on request, one I like more than the other. This is the longer one, with entrances. Gorilla is already on at the announcer by claiming he weighs closer to 500 lbs than the billed 408. Johnny V does his own bit of fat shaming too on the Wizard, who Gorilla explains the back story behind (he is in contact from beyond the grave with the Grand Wizard). Johnny posits it as like King Kong against Godzilla. Stalling to start, with George taking a minute to get in the ring and Kimchee taking forever to get off the apron. Some belly patting from Steele, with Kamala responding with the flapping gesture. Another minute before they even thinking of getting close to one another. A cool twist with Kamala being more put off by George than George is by him. George does his bit of putting his finger on all the patches of paint, then sniffing it like he’s taking a bump of coke and acting all wild. First full contact is a stomp on Kamala’s bare left foot. George eyes the right one, which he indeed gets (Johnny: “This guy got a foot fetish or something?!” – no, that’s Mel Phillips, John). Kimchee gets on the apron and is manhandled by George, but gets the riding crop to Kamala for a shot to the throat, leading to a splash off the top for the pinfall. Literally three bodily contact moves, two of which belonged to the loser. More thoughts after the next review.

Kamala vs. George “The Animal” Steele (MSG)

Entrances cut, with George psyching out Kamala and doing the paint/coke gag first and faster. Kimchee distracts him, leading to a Kamala cheap shot that sends George out. George looks for something but returns empty handed. Foot stomps, sold wonderfully by Kamala. Kimchee comes back up again and gets mauled, as does the Wizard, who this time gets the horn to Kamala. Shot to the back of the neck, which George sells strangely, leading to him getting chopped down. Running splash sets up the flying splash off the top for the win. Another jumping splash to put George out with a stretcher ride back to the locker room.

How bad was it? I’m a little more forgiving of action-less eighties WWF as long as there was some funny gaga around it, so it amused me, but I can understand the complaints of the people who lose their patience and say they could count all the moves on one hand and still have a thumb spare.

WWA 1984 Interviews

Some interviews from Dick the Bruiser’s company, led by madman Bob Luce, who says “Wild!” a million times in the first thirty seconds with no point.

• Bob speaks for civilian Tom Brown, in his big hat and standing as stiffly as possible with a ridiculous cast on his hand, getting a little racial with comments on Abdullah (not Abdullah the Butcher) attacking him at the gym. Abdullah comes into shot and puts the camel clutch on him. Bob thinks Abdullah’s inability to talk will keep him out of the courts.
• Young Spike Huber, so muscular that he flexes regardless of how he stands, has a mystery opponent revealed to him behind a screen. Bob tells some confusing story while Spike doesn’t really know what’s going on. Whenever he goes to speak Bob pretty much cuts him off to go on about something else, getting distracted with the screen moving. Unsurprisingly, it’s Abdullah, doing a bad Sheik impression while wearing jeans and a red t-shirt. Spike is seemingly dispatched without having even really been hit, so Bob’s the one to do the standing up to him.
• More of Abdullah, with his tag team partner/manager Gentleman Jerry Valiant talking for him, slating Bob Luce over a previous occasion where he smashed up his office. Bob brings in the Black Panther, who looks like he’s got one of the foil suits you wear to jog in and sweat out, who Abdullah hits with a frond to take him out.
• Bob talks for new WWA champion Stormy Granzig, who I’ve never heard of, and looks just like a more muscular Bobby Eaton. Manager Rooster Griffin interrupts, looking like Austin Idol with no muscles and sounding like Downtown Bruno. Even with comments about being happy that Granzig’s dad is dead, it’s Luce that does all the screaming in defence while Stormy, who’s more Mild, just stands there looking off camera. Stormy breaks Rooster’s shades to set him off more while Bob just screams “He’s out of control! He’s out of control!”.

How bad was it? Bob Luce I guess had to do all the talking for everyone seeing as nobody else did or could, but his sentence formation is as if someone put a stick of dynamite in ten dictionaries and just read out everything that landed on the floor. Sadly not good enough to be even entertainingly bad.

Dennis Rodman vs. “Macho Man” Randy Savage

The follow-up from the match booked by Arliss on Nitro. Even though a biker rally turned out to be one of the worst places you could ever hold a major wrestling event, at least the ambient setting was good with the hills and the night sky. No idea what they were going for with Rodman’s entrance music, but they play it for about three minutes before he comes out in the world’s longest kimono/boxing robe. Entrances and banter eat up about the first ten minutes overall (Rodman: “Where’s my bitch tonight?”/Savage: “Tonight YOU’RE going to be MY bitch!”). Rodman gets the first shot in with the mic and takes it outside to run Macho into stuff. Back in, and I notice that Rodman’s way of doing some of his moves match Savage, which to me says he was training with him for weeks to get this memorised. Russian legsweep of all things for two. Rodman, the sportsman, gets into a beef with Billy Silverman to the point of clotheslining him down and dropping the elbow on him. Savage has to sell everything up to this point like he’s been in there with Andre the Giant for an hour, but the crowd chants for him and he gouges the eyes as Mickey Jay comes out to replace Silverman. Savage chokes Rodman and then for some reason attacks the WCW Magazine editor and steals his camera of all things to use as a weapon. When that only gets two HE gets rid of Mickey Jay himself and clocks Scott Dickinson on the way in, then gets backdropped out. Tony and Bobby discuss the merits of ripping someone’s nose rings out to hurt them. On the outside, Rodman is thrown into the crowd and the crowd push him back as they don’t want him around them either. They go backstage and it’s all pretty rough. Randy pulls a guy out of a Portaloo, luckily with his jeans up and his dick not out, then throws Rodman in and locks it and tips it over, luckily with some boxes to protect it from hitting the ground fully. Tony retches as Bobby laughs about the “shit” spilling out of it. Back to the ring, with Rodman attempting to go to the top, then going down one step and missing a flying clothesline which instead takes out Johnny Boone. Rodman goes for a sleeper, which Savage jawbreakers out of. Gorgeous George, who tends to spend all of her time these days spilling the tea on what a creep Randy apparently was, runs out with a chain for Mach and then gets a nice running punch to Rodman’s nuts for Randy to get the anticlimactic loaded punch for the pinfall victory.

How bad was it? Not as bad as I expected, but more uninteresting at times than awful.

Melting it down: Any requests, post them down below, otherwise I’ll have to steal someone else’s ideas!