Portland Wrestling
1980
VOLUME 8

The current Portland wrestling champions are as follows as of 7/19/1980:
NWA World Champion: Harley Race (11/7/1979)
PNW Heavyweight Champion: Rick Martel (3/22/1980)
PNW Tag Team Champions: The Sheepherders (5/10/1980)

Your host is Frank Bonnema.

• Roddy Piper vs. Jesse Barr – (Portland Wrestling, 7/19/80)
  

We have rookie Jesse Barr here – the son of Sandy Barr and brother of Art Barr. He would go onto success in the Florida territory and spent some time in the WWF as Jimmy Jack Funk where he got into an altercation with Shawn Michaels over a girl that got the Rockers fired during their first run up north. ANYWHO, here he is against Piper. This match is obviously intended to get Jesse over. Bonnema does a great job putting over the fact that Piper is experienced and Barr is not. He shows surprise when Barr is able to do anything to Piper which is great. Of course this isn’t all Barr either. Piper manages to make this kid look strong without making himself look any weaker – a REAL lost art these days. By the way, Dutch Savage is refereeing possibly to destroy the illusion that Sandy Barr might be a little bit bias. A well placed backslide on Piper gets two. A slam and an inside cradle gets two as well. An old school headscissors takedown brings both of them to the floor. When Piper goes to help the kid, Barr nails Piper and bashes his head on the apron! Back in, Barr smashes Piper’s face on the buckle a few times and slams him down for two. Bonnema informs us that Barr is bleeding a little bit. He applies a neck vice and Piper slowly slams his way out of it. However, Barr gets an inside cradle for a nearfall and then goes right back to the neck vice. When Piper starts to rise, Barr switches to a sleeperhold. Piper elbows out and fires back on Barr. HERE COMES PIPER. He delivers a Wahoo chop and calls for a suplex. Barr falls on top of Piper, but Piper rolls him back over and gets the three-count. (9:13) Excellent psychology on display. Afterwards, they shake hands and Barr looks like he’s saying to Piper that he was just doing what he had to do to beat such a tough opponent. I liked this and unfortunately this is all we will see out of Jesse Barr in 1980. **½

• 2/3 Falls: Buddy Rose, Ed Wiskowski & Fidel Cortez vs. The Sheepherders & Jonathan Boyd – (Portland Wrestling, 7/19/80)
  

FIRST FALL: Before the match, Buddy Rose talks Ed Wiskowski into a hair match against the Sheepherders on Tuesday night. Wiskowski is VERY reluctant to do this at first, but he’s convinced when Buddy tells him he’s got a plan and will pay him his part of the purse. This is Jonathan Boyd’s big return to Portland. He had been MIA from Portland for the past year wrestling in Georgia and Texas. This is all Sheepherders and Boyd for over seven minutes. There’s punching, kicking, and an armbar or two. Cortez gets most of the abuse. Crowd goes nuts when Boyd comes around the ring and pulls Rose to the floor for a beating. When Boyd gets backed into the Rose Army corner and triple-teamed, Rose decides to finally tag into the match and drops a series of knees on him for two. Tag to Wiskowski, Boyd starts to NO-SELL his punches and fires back. Good grief Boyd is over. He hits Wiskowski with a BOMBS AWAY and that’s all she wrote for the first fall at 8:37.

SECOND FALL: Boyd picks up where he left off pounding on Wiskowski. When Butch tags in, he telegraphs a backdrop on Cortez and gets kicked out to the floor by that evil commie. While Luke checks on his partner, Rose stomps him on the head and continues to antagonize. Back inside, Butch continues to get stomped like crazy by Cortez. The Rose Army cuts the ring in half on Butch for a while. There’s a couple close attempts at a tag, but Butch eventually reaches Boyd for the hot tag. HERE COMES BOYD! The crowd goes nuts for every move this guy makes. He throws Rose in and out of the ring – punching him around. Back to Cortez, Boyd bites him on the nose and it’s total pandemonium. Luke tags in, but he loses it when Cortez applies the COBRA CLUTCH for the submission at 17:20 total.

THIRD FALL: Luke gets his throat snapped on the top rope by Cortez to begin the match for a callback to the end of the second fall. The Rose Army make a concentrated effort to further harm the neck of Luke and keeps him on their side of town. They all take turns using the same hold, but it works so they stick with it. At one point, Wiskowski knocks Butch off the apron. Unfortunately for the Rose Army, he doesn’t take down Boyd as well. Hot tag to Boyd, he gets cooled off quickly when he tries an avalanche and Rose brings up the knees to block. The Rose Army starts over from square one and puts the claw hold on Boyd’s guts. So old school. When Boyd breaks loose, he tags in Luke. He misses a splash or something coming off the ropes and tags out to Butch. Kitchen sink knee and an elbow drop on Rose gets two. The match really gets out of hand here as Boyd chases Cortez to the dressing room. So here’s the finish. Rose gets knocked out to the floor by Butch and puts his head under the apron and hands his wig mask off to Wiskowski. From there, Wiskowski puts on the wig and crawls to the other side of the ring. He comes up behind Butch and O’Connor rolls him up. Ref Sandy Barr thinks that Wiskowski is Buddy Rose for some reason regardless of the fact that Wiskowski and Rose aren’t wearing the same colored tights. Nevertheless, this gets Wiskowski the three-count and the win. (24:30 total) Even Bonnema it seems goes along with the finish at first. Afterwards, Wiskowski rolls out to the floor and gives Rose the mask back so that Sandy Barr is none the wiser. All that did was piss off the Sheepherders. Apparently Rose has been using the mask against other people and the Sheepherders are done dealing with it. In order to get him to stop, they accept the hair match for Tuesday night. Don Owen comes over and makes it a “hair versus hair” cage match to keep out any interference. I want to see more of Jonathan Boyd. ***¼

In between the first and second falls, Butch Miller says Rose is out of his mind if he thinks they will face him and Wiskowski in a hair match. A title match, a street fight – but no hair match. KIWI POWER IS JUST GETTING STARTED, ROSE.

In between the second and third falls, Rick Martel talks with Frank Bonnema. The ladies sure love this Martel guy! Standard babyface promo. He thanks the fans, he lets us know he’s training hard, and he’s looking to put a stop to the local bad guys – in this case the Rose Army.

• Roddy Piper vs. Jonathan Boyd – (Portland Wrestling, 7/26/80)
  

Looks like another “friendly” wrestling match here for Piper that has the potential to go badly for the poor guy. He’s got his ribs taped like DDP will twenty years later. Bonnema tells us that Piper was attacked by Buddy Rose inside a cage using a coal miner’s glove earlier in the week in Salem. This is actually an entertaining exchange of holds to start here because neither guy wants to throw the first punch and there’s so much anticipation for when the tide will turn one way or another. It’s realism as opposed to surrealism that we see all the time in wrestling today. Piper actually hits Boyd first to get out of a body scissors and ref Dutch Savage tries to calm them down. Boyd catches Piper with a shot and Piper backs up into the corner. I see a lot of Matt Borne in Jonathan Boyd. He even resembles him Big Josh a little bit without the flannel. Boyd headbutts Piper around, but won’t hit him when he’s down. He waits for Piper to get back up. Piper fires back with elbows and punches Boyd to the floor. Back in, Boyd goes right back to punching on Piper. Crowd gets behind Piper now. He clamps on a bearhug punishing the back. As the time-limit draws close, Piper earclaps out and tries a comeback. Boyd drills Piper with a back elbow to shut him down, but can’t get the three-count. Piper punches him down for a nearfall. Boyd just won’t stay down and tries to knock out Piper, but Piper gets a burst of energy and runs Boyd into the corner. Piper decides to headbutt Boyd and knocks them both silly. More shots are sent Boyd’s way until the 10-minute time-limit expires. (10:00) I mean it was more than ten minutes, but we’ll go with it. You know how these wrestling companies can’t use a stopwatch. A fun back and forth psychological brawl from these two. And they didn’t even use a chair! Who knew that was possible to brawl without weapons? ***

From 7/26/80. The Sheepherders have lost another hair match. Butch announces that he and Luke are leaving Portland. It’s time they went back to their homeland. He thanks the people of the northwest and says they will come back for Buddy Rose and Ed Wiskowski. He finishes up saying that even though the Sheepherders have faced many losses, he hopes to leave this territory proud with a win tonight. The Sheepherders will vacate the PNW tag titles and head clear on the other side of the country to wrestle in Mid-Atlantic for the rest of the year from Matt Borne and Buzz Sawyer of all people.

From 7/26/80. Boyd is awesome. I’m already a fan. If he had to pick a partner around here, he’d want Roddy Piper. He makes fun of Buddy Rose for wearing a wig and calls him a fruit booty. Boyd really wants to get his hands on that guy. THE ROYAL KANGAROO IS BACK HERE TO HOP ALL OVER EVERYONE.

From 7/26/80. Somebody gave Rose a shirt that has a picture of JR Ewing ironed on because Rose reminded this person of JR Ewing. For those who don’t know, JR Ewing was the lead heel on the TV primetime soap “Dallas”. Ewing is a manipulator just like Rose here in Portland wrestling. Rose has a little mustache going. Nobody will stop the Playboy when it comes to big matches. Not Boyd, not Piper, or Martel. Rose calls the Sheepherders “quitters” after all the beatings he and Wiskowski gave them.

From 7/26/80. On their way out of the territory, the Sheepherders give their PNW tag belts to Roddy Piper and Rick Martel. Well, Buddy Rose has an issue with that. He thinks he and Wiskowski should naturally be the tag champs since they just beat them in the hair match. Piper and Martel get the tag belts anyways because Rose is here alone without Ed Wiskowski tonight. Piper says he and Martel don’t want anything they didn’t earn so he challenges Wiskowski and Rose to a match next week where the winners become the new tag champs. Rose asks Piper about his ribs and then whacks him in the ribs with one of the belts. Oh boy. Rose flees the scene leaving Martel and Piper to swear revenge on the Rose Army.

Final Thoughts: This is memorable for showcasing the end of the Sheepherders run in Portland. Check out Jonathan Boyd though, too. If you like rough and tough wrestlers, you’ll like this guy. The matches are fine this time around, but there’s not really any must-see promos.

NEXT TIME: We enter August 1980 for more of Buddy Rose and Ed Wiskowski battling Roddy Piper and Rick Martel.