[1980-10-11-Portland] Buddy Rose vs Jonathan Boyd (2/3 falls)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[SAMS]

1980-10-11
PNW
Buddy Rose vs Jonathan Boyd
Non Title Best Two Out Of Three Falls Match
Sports Arena, Portland, Oregon, USA
★★
Card

This had a lot of cool elements: Rose opening up an old cut on Boyd’s eyebrow and him gushing from the first fall onwards; Boyd beating the ever living daylights out of Rose in the second fall; the continued work by Boyd on Rose’s leg until he literally couldn’t, or wouldn’t meet Sandy Barr’s count. With Rose going into a hair vs loser leaves town match against Popovich, Boyd wanted to ensure that Rose would be the one entering at a disadvantage and his aim here was to soften Rose up. That definitely ended up being the outcome, as Rose had to be assisted out of the arena by the members of his army after the beating his knee had taken. In this sense the match was a success, and certainly built the anticipation for Rose’s match with Popovich and the actual chance that Rose might be defeated. In many ways this was merely a setup match, which we get a lot of in Portland on Saturday nights.
My main issue was with the length and the pace. Both men had periods where they locked on a static hold, something like an abdominal hold, and this just ate up the clock rather than adding anything to the match. Rose’s selling, especially the expressions of resignation late on, were excellent, but the ⅔ falls stipulation certainly hurt this, as the extended beatdown by Boyd would have had more impact had it come in a single sequence rather than spread out over several falls. Considering they had to stretch it out though, I would have liked to see Rose be a bit more direct and urgent when he did have his moments on offense. We saw a brief glimpse of it when pounced on Boyd to grab the second fall, but it wasn’t enough for me.