LP Steve

Abby breaking kayfabe by eating cooked chicken.

No doubt the segregation wasn't enforced by anything other than custom by that point. I was just not used to it, at least not at the rasslin matches. I'm still in Tallahassee, by the way, and have friends in Monticello. I know the area well.

The actual show I was talking about was at the Civic Center, where FSU plays basketball. It was Dusty's last gasp in Florida, around 1989. I think the place your Dad went was the Tallahassee Sports Stadium, an old Butler building with bleachers on two sides and folding chairs around the ring. I went there once when I first came to Tallahassee in 75-76. I'd just moved over from Jacksonville, where I went to the matches at the 10,000 seat Coliseum every week. Was not at all ready for the culture shock of the little Tallahassee place. My friends and I -- who may have been a little high, maybe-- walked in and plopped down on the near set of bleachers without much thought. We sat there shooting the shit while the crowd came in and we waited for the first match. At some point, one of us noticed that we were the only white people on our side of the building. Then we looked across to the other set of bleachers and saw nothing but white people. We were sort of stunned-- even redneck Jacksonville had integrated crowds at the wrestling matches. We stayed put on the black side of the arena that night. We also never went back there.

Geez, Dean, you just reminded me of one of the saddest cards I ever attended. Dusty Rhodes' PWF came to Tallahassee with pretty much no TV or promotion and drew about 500 people to a 12,000 seat arena. The place was deathly quiet. One of the early matches was Steve Keirn against Bobby Jaggers. This was Steve's second match of the night and he seemed a little pissed at having to sub for whoever no-showed. The place was so silent you could literally hear anything a fan yelled at the ring. At one point, Keirn had Jaggers in a toe hold of some sort. Some guy yelled out, "Put the figure four on him, Steve." And Keirn yelled back, "I can't. He's too fat!" I felt really bad for Jaggers, because he really was in woeful shape. Sigh.

Well, sort of an assumed name. His real name was Paul Frederik.

This. The gimmick seemed like a poorly conceived rip-off and the costumes and makeup were so cheesy that I had a hard time getting into Demolition, even knowing they were better in-ring than the Roadies.

Oh, wow.

Okay, I get Baba, sort of. Is the other one supposed to be... Bruno...?

It was intended to be tongue in cheek, but my God that mat was a mess. I'd really be interested in knowing who was involved in that bloodbath.

You guys may be familiar with this, but I'd never seen it before. Gordon is great, but we all knew that.

Honestly, I could do without GIFs of Misawa getting dropped on his head, but YMMV.

Had a murder taken place in the ring prior to the Gagne-Bockwinkel match?

Pretty typical Ernie Ladd squash, but supplemented by a great pre-match promo threatening to run Dirty Rhodes out of Florida and do something to Bubba Douglas that I as an old white man will not repeat.

Right. Just wanted confirmation that the nuthouse Jackie was signing him out of was the Greensboro Coliseum.

These are great. I only saw Mulligan in Florida in the '80s and he was the drizzling shits. Take ten years off and he's pretty damn fun, if repetitious. And how about Andre being spry enough to run in and break up a pin? Question: On the first one up top, is that Roughhouse Fargo reffing the Paul Jones-Paul Orndorff match?

Jesus Christ, what a size queen Jim Ross is!

I felt really sorry for Lenny Duge. He seemed like such a nice, sort of naive guy and obviously really loved Herb Abrams. It was funny and sad to hear him talk about walking into the Manatee Civic Center and how it was the biggest arena he'd ever seen and wondering how on earth they could ever fill a place that big. The Manatee Civic Center seats about 4,000 people.

He was posting on Twitter just a couple of days ago.

I'm from Florida and I'd completely forgotten Tenryu came through here.

Competitive squash from Florida, Gordon Solie on the mike. The one-armed backbreaker at the end is a thing to behold.

And the breakup of the stable would have been fucking epic.

And Jimmy Del Ray, too!

Cool, Dean. Somewhere in this time frame, Florida did an injury angle with Hodge and Tanaka in a TV match. Tanaka chopped and generally worked over his stomach until Hodge was bleeding from the mouth. I was impressed. Hodge was gone-- from Florida, at least-- for a while. and when he came back seeking revenge, he looked like he'd actually had surgery. I always figured they worked the injury to cover for some planned procedure.

Anjoh comes back strong.

The finish looked cool as hell, but it also reminded me a little of the spinning toe hold. I couldn't see the value added of the bridging bit as far as increasing the torque on the hold. But that's being really picky. I'm loving all this Zangiev.