SUMMARY: APPROX. RUNNING TIME: 9:00 Min.
Taped in either January or early February 1987, this scaffold rematch from Starrcade ’86 (with all the same players) occurs at the Los Angeles Forum. The bout subsequently aired on February 7, 1987, for WTBS’ World Championship Wrestling TV series. Per the match’s stipulations, both tag team partners must fall from the scaffold devised above the ring for the other team to prevail.
From Jim Cornette’s purported description of the Starrcade ’86 bout, the NWA’s scaffold set-up was an estimated twenty-five feet off the arena floor, as compared to about twenty feet above the ring’s mat. Provided a six-foot wrestler is precariously hanging beneath the scaffold at his full outstretched height, one is still looking, at best, at a fourteen-foot drop.
REVIEW:
As Cornette had gruesomely blown out his knee in a botched scaffold stunt a few months earlier at Starrcade ’86, it’s no surprise that his contributions are restricted to taunting. Later rebranded as the WWF’s Big Boss Man, Big Bubba’s menacing presence amounts to nothing this time. The same applies to Hawk & Animal’s manager, Paul Ellering.
If anything, Condrey and Eaton’s initially on-screen leeriness is justifiable – as if anybody really wants to plunge the equivalent off the roof of a house, with little to no padding waiting below. Given such enormous risk, stunt work in scaffold matches conveys 250+-pound guys straddling a tightrope, and this ultra-predictable bout is no exception.
The good news is that the losers had prior experience taking such perilous falls and managed to evade injury – lucky them. Conversely, despite its star power, this “Night of the Skywalkers” rematch struggles to be watchable.
BRIAN’S ODD MOON RATING: 4 Stars
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