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The Name on the Marquee: WWF Championship Wrestling (3.9.1985)

April 8, 2014 | Posted by Adam Nedeff
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The Name on the Marquee: WWF Championship Wrestling (3.9.1985)  

-Originally aired March 9, 1985.

-Your hosts are Vince McMahon and Bruno Sammartino.

JUNKYARD DOG vs. A.J. PETRUZZI
-Referee wants the Dog to get rid of his chain, and JYD hilariously refuses to cooperate until the referee jukes.

-Dog hiptosses Petruzzi. Such strong. Very headbutt. Wow armbar. Thump win much. Figured I should milk this meme before it dies next week.

UPDATE, BROUGHT TO YOU BY CASTROL, THE MOTOR OIL FOR TODAY’S SMALLER HIGHER-REVVING ENGINES
-Andre the Giant wants vengeance against Big John Studd. We go to “WWF All-Star Wrestling,” where Andre disrupted another Big John Studd squash match and demanded a shot at the $15,000. Bobby Heenan again gets Danny Davis to hold Andre at bay. Lord Alfred says that Andre has vowed to slam Big John Studd during Wrestlemania. What the hell is a Wrestlemania?

MAGNIFICENT MURACO (with Mr. Fuji) vs. PETE POMPEII
-Muraco hiptosses Pompeii down and clamps on a nerve hold. And that’s about all there is to this match. Watching Muraco work up a sweat is actually pretty amazing. Muraco finally gets as bored with it as everybody else so he lets Pompeii get to his feet just for the sake of walloping him with an enziguiri, and the tombstone finishes. Vince says that Muraco is knocking on the door of the ladder in the WWF.

-Freddie Miller hypes WWF action at Boston Garden on March 23. Jim Neidhart will be wrestling, and so will some guy named King Kong Bundy. And in a No-DQ match, Windham & Rotundo defend the gold against Volkoff & Sheik. Hulk Hogan defends the WWF Title against Magnificent Muraco, and Greg Valentine puts the Intercontinental Title on the line against Tito Santana in a lumberjack match. Greg Valentine proclaims himself the greatest Intercontinental Champion of all time, and complains that Tito Santana got the WWF promoters to “cop a cindy on me” by booking a lumberjack match.

HILLBILLY JIM vs. CHARLIE FULTON
-Jim is fuckin’ OVER. Again, the original character—a wrestling fan who actually gets to live his dream—was such a tremendous idea and the fans adored him just for what he represented.

-Jim offers a handshake and because he doesn’t know his own strength, he hurts Fulton’s arm with it. Shoulderblock by Jim, and again the gag is Jim doesn’t know his own strength and isn’t even trying to hurt Fulton. Jim does Hogan-style poses as a shout-out to his personal trainer.

-Fulton tries a full nelson and Jim breaks it by spinning himself around and around until Fulton falls off. That actually looked pretty cool. Fulton tries a slam and Jim reverses it before putting Fulton out of his misery with the bearhug.

-We go back to Freddie Miller. I really like Freddie’s way of hyping the house shows. Not better than Mean Gene, just different, and I wish they had kept him. Nikolai Volkoff & the Iron Sheik are soaked in sweat and say they just got done with an extra-intense training session preparing for their title match on March 23.

NIKOLAI VOLKOFF & IRON SHEIK (with Classy Freddy Blassie) vs. THE GRADY BROTHERS
-The jobbers are two young, skinny guys from Ireland, Shaun and Brian. Crowd boos the anthem so loudly that Nikolai stops after only a few lines and complains about the fans’ lack of class.

-Sheik starts with—uh, we’ll say Brian, I guess, and attacks the throat. Crowd chants “USA” to get the point across that they weren’t listening to the introductions. Wedgie press by Volkoff, and in comes the Sheik with controversial boots. Camel clutch finishes.

PIPER’S PIT
-Another empty arena Pit, with Piper and Orndorff laughing off Hulk Hogan & Mr. T for trying to train for a match in only three weeks. Piper thinks they’re going to spend most of their training sessions “trying to figure out where their hair is supposed to grow.” Piper says that Hogan and T, the celebrities, are training with Dom Perignion, while Orndorff & Piper do the real training in the swamps. Orndorff calls T “boy” for good measure.

GREG “The Hammer” VALENTINE (Intercontinental Champion, with Jimmy Hart) vs. ALDO MARINO
-Valentine takes down Marino, but Marino is able to stay in motion and keep Valentine from actually applying a hold until he can get to his feet and just toss Valentine across the ring. Valentine doesn’t take too kindly to it and drops Marino throat-first across the top rope. Nerve hold. Yay.

-Valentine presses a knee down on Marino’s hand just to watch Marino try to stand back up. Dick! Inverted atomic drop puts Marino into proper position, and Valentine finishes with the figure four.

-We finally get a promo for this Wrestlemania business that Lord Alfred mentioned earlier. Live on closed circuit TV March 31, Hulk Hogan & Mr. T will face Rowdy Roddy Piper an Paul Orndorff. In addition, Andre the Giant will face Big John Studd with $15,000 on the line, Wendi Richter tries to reclaim the gold from Lelani Kai, and Mike Rotundo & Barry Windham will wrestle the foreign guys again. See the action live at 1 p.m. on a giant color screen in the Boston Garden, or Lowell Auditorium, or City Hall in Portland, ME!

HULK HOGAN & MR. T TRAIN
-Ridiculous start to it, with the two of them reading a newspaper article about their upcoming match, and it’s clearly a novelty newspaper that you buy at a carnival with custom headlines. T is ready to start training, saying he wants some tacos and beans before they go to the gym because they make him extra mean. They should call him BM Baracus, then.

-They jog and engage in some hanging and banging. Mean Gene Okerlund talks to them at a beachfront pizza parlor, wearing a tasteful tuxedo & swim trunks combo. T does squat thrusts with Hogan piggybacking him, and then Hogan does squats with T piggybacking him. The soundtrack for this scene: “In the Name of Love.” T declares that his stomach and thighs are ready for action.

-They head to the gym, where T practices boxing and has a bout of temporary insanity where he tries to kick the shit out of Hulk and Hulk has to calm him down. They head to the punching bag, and Hulk is the one to finally point out that punching isn’t okay in wrestling, so T practices forearms and kneelifts instead. And then Hulk takes his turn at the punching bag and does nothing but punch it! Hulk tapes an 8 x 10 of Piper on the punching bag for extra motivation, and T eats the photo, which sounds like a MAD Magazine joke when I see it typed out like that.

-Jack Reynolds is on Mean Gene duty this time, running down the card set for Wrestlemania to this point. See it live and in color on the giant screens in Brockton High School. Big John Studd walks in with his souvenir bag of hair and a wad of bills. Andre has a chance at revenge…but he won’t get it.

-Gene Okerlund talks to Cyndi Lauper and Wendi Richter. Cyndi Lauper can take a choking from “Shmoolah” if she has to, but that’s not going to stand in Wendi Richter’s way on March 31. Richter says she’s going to have fun all over Lelani Kai until Lelani begins dancing like an organ grinder’s monkey. Also, the Fabulous Moolah is old.

-WEIRD end segment with Vince saying that next week, we’ll see Piper and Bob Orton training for their big match on March 31, and the graphic even says “Piper and Orton.” Mistake, or taped before someone changed their mind about something?

The 411: Less eventful than last week, but the training session was fun at least.
 
Final Score:  5.9   [ Not So Good ]  legend

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Adam Nedeff

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