World Championship Wrestling, Atlanta, GA
Rip Rogers is the “self-described marathon man,” Jim Ross tells me. I know him more as old man on internet. But that’s alright. Someone has to be old on the internet.
The ring announcer says before the match that pinfalls do not count in the first five minutes of this match but nobody told “the boys” apparently because they’re just going for pins and the referee is counting them and stuff, just like normal. Ross and Bob Caudle ignore that the referee is counting.
Pillman KEEPS going for pinfalls in the first two minutes. To the point that with Ross and Caudle not playing it up for story, I’m wondering if Pillman is fucking with everyone. Rogers does some work on the floor, including flying down from the top with a double axhandle that sends Pillman crashing into the guardrail in comically indifferent fashion.
What they’re trying to get across is the pins won’t count, even if you have the guy down and get a three count. Why you’d have the referee counting then is beyond me; if they don’t count, why is he bothering?
Anyway, we get past the five-minute mark. Pillman skins the cat on a missed charge, but Rogers runs him out to the floor on the other side and we’re back out there. Rogers does an airplane spin. Then a spin kick is called a savate kick. Everything is a savate kick if you’re Jim Ross.
Rogers gets his knees up on Pillman’s flying splash, but then Pillman wins with a flying sunset flip. The match isn’t that bad with the action and execution of maneuvers and what have you, but the pacing is a shitshow, zero flow to anything, it all feels disconnected somehow, and the five-minute stipulation thing was a mess because they couldn’t really figure out what that even meant, it seemed. And I’m not saying any of this because I think Rip Rogers is a big dork. I do, but that’s not why. It’s just a truly weird match, the nuts and bolts of it.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
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