I'll be the first to admit I know next to nothing about any NWA wrestling. All I know is that The Four Horsemen were always there, and Ronnie Garvin should be in the WWE Hall of Fame (there's an OSW Review reference for you). So, it should come to no surprise that I'm unfamiliar with both Nikita Koloff and Bobby Eaton. I know Eaton was part of the Midnight Express, but that's it. However, I was concerned when I saw this match come up. This show, Bunkhouse Stampede, features a Road Warrior Hawk singles match that is rated better than this. When you have a worse match than Hawk, that's not good.
In all honesty, I have no idea why people think this match is so horrible. Granted, it's not very good, but it's considered one of the worst matches ever. Dave Meltzer gave this match minus two stars. That's a little harsh. I'm not saying it's a three star match, or two, hell, even one, but it's not bad enough to be in the negatives.
The match is a lot of punching and headlocks, with occasional brawling to the outside. There really isn't much to talk about. Koloff looks like an absolute killer and looks perfect for wrestling, and Eaton's manager, Jim Cornette, is awesome as usual. But there are some definite flaws in the match. For one thing, Koloff's selling is just wacky. Watch him fall out of the ring when he takes a regular punch from Eaton. Watch him shake his head around frantically when he gets punched outside the ring. It's not the way Dolph Ziggler or The Rock would over sell a move, it's kinda like the way JTG sold the Cobra. Along with this, as good as he is, Cornette really distracts from the match. There are parts of the match where the crowd will start chanting "Cornette Sucks!, which just shows how uninterested the crowd is. Up until this point, the match is at about a star.
The second half of this match drops it down to a dud. I'm not kidding when I say this, but almost the entire second half of this match is a hammerlock by Eaton on Koloff. It goes on forever. I swear, Koloff stays in this hammerlock until the last minute of the match, and then the match ends in a time limit draw. All that for nothing. Stan Lane runs down to beat up Koloff, and that's it.
If the endless hammerlock hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't have even put this match on the list. It's not poorly wrestled or too boring. It's not very exciting either, but it's watchable. That hammerlock changed that. It completely kills any kind of heat the match had and makes for an unwatchable few minutes. If you're curious, I'd still check it out and make an opinion for yourself, but the last half of this match is just brutal
The Verdict
It's bad, but it's far better than anything I've watched so far.
Rankings (Best to Worst)
- Nikita Koloff vs Bobby Eaton-Bunkhouse Stampede
- The Oddities vs Kaientai-SummerSlam 1998
- Hulk Hogan vs Sid Justice-WrestleMania VIII
Up next on the list is...
This might be the one that breaks me.
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