WWF: All Star Wrestling
August 30, 1980
Allentown, PA
Allentown Agricultural Hall

Your current WWF champions are as follows:
WWF Heavyweight Champion: Bob Backlund (2/20/1978)
WWF Intercontinental Champion: Ken Patera (4/21/1980)
WWF World Tag Team Champions: Vacant (8/10/1980)

Pop Culture #1s of the Time:
#1 Movie of the Week: Smokey and the Bandit II starring Burt Reynolds and Sally Field
#1 Song of the Week: Sailing by Christopher Cross
#1 TV Show of the 79-80 Season: 60 Minutes hosted by Mike Wallace

Follow along if you have the WWE Network!

Your hosts are Vince McMahon and Bruno Sammartino. We’re in Allentown this week for some reason, so the crowd should be a bit livelier than the quiet folks of Hamburg, which always makes a show more fun. Oh yeah, and we have Jooooe McHugh instead of your boy Gary Michael Capetta.

• Rick Martel vs. Billy Coleman

The wrestler Martel has to deal with Coleman’s dirty tactics and winds up getting his traps grabbed. He elbows out and goes back to a headlock. Coleman fights out and chokes Martel into the corner, but Martel fires back and hiptosses Coleman across the ring. Martel applies a wristlock, but Coleman would rather punch Martel right in the face. Back to the headlock. Coleman fights back and reverses a whip into a corner, but Martel catches him with a bodypress out of the corner for the win in 5:21.

• Sgt. Slaughter (w/the Grand Wizard) vs. Paul Figueroa

Slaughter wears the signature low cut singlet look we’re used to seeing instead of just going shirtless. This certainly looks better on him. It appears Slaughter wants to concuss this guy as he clamps on a headlock and then repeatedly runs Figueroa’s head into the buckle. He delivers a shoulderbreaker that basically looks like a Tombstone Piledriver before setting up the COBRA CLUTCH for the submission victory in 4:01.

Bruno Sammartino meets with the Grand Wizard and Sgt. Slaughter after the bell for an interview. Wizard describes Slaughter as a drill sergeant. He’s not part of active duty as his entire career is now focused on the WWF. Bruno wants to know why Slaughter still wears the whistle and the hat. Slaughter tells Bruno to stand at attention. There are people from the Marine corps who are watching who remember how brutal he was. For those who don’t know, his name is drill Sgt. Slaughter – IS THAT CLEAR? He’s here for one mission – to become a champion. He refers to Wizard as the General as the crowd is really giving Slaughter and Wizard hell for daring to tell them anything.

After the break, Pat Patterson and Rene Goulet speak with Bruno Sammartino about their tag team work together. They essentially use their ability to speak French to confuse their opponents. Dicks! Bruno considers their challengers around here quite tough. Goulet repeats what Pat said about using the French language as an advantage. Patterson says he expects Scicluna to use a foreign object and that Estrada is a clever dude, but they are ready for them. Bruno thinks Scicluna does a great job of hiding the object. Patterson says there’s no way to avoid it, but he’ll depend on Goulet and Goulet will depend on him as well. Bruno hopes they will get a shot at the WWF tag team titles to close this interview out.

• Tony Garea vs. Mike Mihalko

This is our first look at Tony Garea since losing he and Larry Zbyszko lost the WWF tag team titles to the Valiant brothers in the spring of 1979. They trade holds throughout the match as Mihalko doesn’t seem to want to brawl with Garea. Vince and Bruno think Mihalko resembles Crusher Blackwell – and he does have a similar look. Garea gets him up for a backbreaker for two. Eventually, Mihalko does resort to eye rakes, but Garea fights back with a series of dropkicks to stun Mihalko for the ABDOMINAL STRETCH for the submission in 6:14.

• Pat Patterson & Rene Goulet vs. Baron Mikel Scicluna & Johnny Rodz

Scicluna and Patterson start us off as Scicluna uses the tights to take Patterson to the mat. Looks like a choke hold and not a chinlock. Patterson gets cornered on the wrong side of town, but escapes only to miss Goulet. In comes Rodz, he telegraphs a backdrop. Rodz still manages to block Patterson from tagging out. Scicluna and Rodz are double-teaming Patterson. Out comes the foreign object and the ref can’t find it. We get a false tag spot which does more double-teaming damage to Patterson. Eventually, Patterson scoots underneath Rodz and makes the tag to Goulet. The match breaks down with all four men as Patterson takes Rodz to the floor while Goulet works over Scicluna. Randomly, Goulet grabs a chinlock so that Scicluna can jab the foreign object into his throat. Scicluna continues to use the object. Goulet fights back, but Rodz is there to lower the boom on him. Tag to Patterson, he blocks a buckle smash and sends Rodz to the buckle instead. Here comes the O’Connor roll and Patterson gets the three-count on Rodz for the win. (7:56) Oddly enough, Pat Patterson abandons his hopes of becoming the WWF tag team champions and starts putting over guys like Hulk Hogan, Larry Zbyszko, and most famously Sgt. Slaughter. He does have that one match where he teams with Dusty Rhodes against the Wild Samoans at the October MSG show, but it’s strange how ever since he lost the IC title he’s been talking about winning the WWF tag team titles and doesn’t even compete in the upcoming tournament. Instead, Tony Garea will become Rene Goulet’s partner and they actually go all the way to the finals to lose to the Wild Samoans. *½

They air the famous “empty arena” interview of Andre the Giant with Vince McMahon. Andre towers over Vince as he’s standing on a box to make himself look taller than he actually is. Vince looks like Gene Okerlund standing next to him. I mean, Vince is 6 foot 2 and this makes Andre appear to be about almost eight feet tall. The talk is all about “WHO CAN POSSIBLY DEFEAT ANDRE?”

That’s all for this week. Until next time, so long for now.