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This is listed at January 15th, 1983 on the WWEGreatestMatches.com downloadable PDF showing what’s on the service this month, even though it is from January 22nd.
Michael Hayes is here by himself again and he is here to talk about Freebird domination. The camera pans out to show Kevin Von Erich who is bothered by what Hayes said last week (in kayfabe, I’m sure). Hayes talks about Kerry’s interview here, where he says Kerry blew the shot that Hayes gave him way back in 1982 and Kevin is a little miffed about that statement. This is funny stuff.
We begin with Bill Mercer running down tonight’s card.
-Kevin Von Erich(c) vs. King Kong Bundy for the American Heavyweight Champion-
This is from Star Wars at Reunion Arena. They start with a lock-up and Von Erich actually powers Bundy into the corner. Kevin follows with a side headlock take-over though Bundy counters with one of his own. Kevin breaks and dropkicks Bundy. Bundy comes right back with a hammerlock on the mat. Kevin rolls through it and gets another dropkick. Bundy simply boots him in the gut and dumps him to the outside. Kevin comes back in with a sunset flip for two. Kevin tries for the Claw but Bundy blocks while on the mat. Bundy recovers and sends Kevin into the turnbuckles. A back elbow knocks Kevin down but Kevin manages to lock the Claw on Bundy. Bundy makes the ropes and breaks. Kevin heads upstairs and tries an axe-handle which hits the referee instead of Bundy. Bundy tosses Kevin over the top rope, which should’ve been a DQ, but the ref was down. Bundy sends Kevin to the corner and tries an Avalanche but referee David Manning pulls Kevin out! Kevin knocks Bundy to the outside as Manning disqualifies Bundy at 8:42 for pulling Manning in front of Kevin’s axe-handle. That’s some heads up refereeing that kept Bundy strong. This was a good match, with a lot of back and forth. **1/2.
Mercer sits down for an interview with Kerry Von Erich. Kerry says he’s lucky he’s not dead thanks to the steel cage door shot. Kerry does play by play as Hayes pulls Kerry off Flair. Kerry still gets pissed when seeing Gordy slam the door into his head. Terry calls Gordy the instigator and he’s the one who made Hayes, who was fair at first, turn. Kerry promises he’s going to cripple either Hayes or Gordy in the ring when they meet.
-Brian Adias (w/Kerry Von Erich) vs. Terry Gordy-
Terry is without his “brothers,” here, while Brian has back-up in Kerry. Kerry mumbles something that I assume is supposed to be threatening to Gordy. Gordy stalls early and I hope this isn’t an indication that this goes Broadway. First contact comes about 3-minutes in and it’s a headlock. Adias breaks and hiptosses Gordy coming off the ropes. We continue with the restholdss and I wonder if they could make it any more obvious that they want to make this into a draw. Gordy takes control by doing something while I was looking for the pen I dropped on the ground. I looked up to see Terry holding Brian in a side headlock and Kerry looking on with his concerned face. Michael Hayes makes his way down to ringside and referee David Manning tries to tell Kerry to behave himself. He doesn’t and he starts chasing Hayes around the ring. Hayes eventually leaves the arena. This distraction causes Adias to break the sleeper allowing Gordy to fight back and get the piledriver for the pinfall at 12:17, even though it looked like Adias kicked out. Gordy preps for a second piledriver but this time Kerry makes the save, sending Gordy out with a discus punch. So did they intend to make Kerry look like a dick for costing his buddy the match? The match was awful, with way too much resting before Hayes showed up. ½*.
The special interviews continue! Mercer interviews David Manning about the World Title match where Hayes turned on Von Erich. David and Michael met backstage before the match. Michael was very aggressive in the match and Manning says that when he told Michael to stop being like that, Hayes was belligerent in response. Manning does a nice job in describing the match and making Hayes into a big jerk. Manning is a very good interview here and I think he had the best interview skills in the promotion! There was a return match clause for a rematch, though I don’t know when it ever took place.
-King Kong Bundy vs. The Samoan-
Can you imagine an hour-long episode of wrestling with TWO Bundy matches? Well, dream no longer – it is here! Bundy tells us that he’s no longer King Kong Bundy but Devastation Inc. and he won’t allow any of his matches to be shown unless there was a written statement from Devastation Inc. Okay, so he’s just Bundy of Devastation Inc. Or something like that. This was confusing. The Samoan is shoved aside from the beginning because Bundy is big and the Samoan is not. Bundy destroys The Samoan and avalanches him in the corner. A backbreaker follows and the big splash ends this at 3:51. This was a total squash.
Bundy says this is what Devastation Inc. is all about and references some other man who he’s in cahoots with.
After the match Bundy tells us that the Great Kabuki is the other man in Devastation Inc.
Hayes and Kevin are with us after the show and Hayes laughs about his distraction of Kerry costing Adias the match.
-The Bottom Line-
The opening match was really good and there was a lot of effort put into the Freebirds/Kerry Von Erich feud, but the Gordy/Adias match sucked the life out of this show. I’d recommend the show for the first match and the build alone, but do yourself a favor and skip the first ten-minutes of the Gordy/Adias match.
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