Assorted World of Sport

 

Steve Wright vs. Brian Maxine, 12/2/1972

Steve Wright was just a skinny young man here, but what an athlete. Maxine was like the British Jerry Lawler. He came to the ring wearing a crown and threw flyers into the audience. This was a match that drew nuclear heat. Maxine tuned down the flamboyance in the ring and was just a hard nosed, knuckle-grinding heel. His use of his knuckles and forearms to grind the hell out of Wright reminded me of a certain Tony Oliver. He grinded his knuckles into Wrights kidneys, his eyes, the forearm across the throat, and the crowd just hated him for it. It‘s a wonderful thing to see a crowd eat up a subtle heels antics like this. Also really dug the subtle hanging choke he did. It was very unique, violent looking stuff. The first round is mostly both guys attempting holds and cartwheeling and rolling out of them. When Maxine first takes a back bump the crowd just erupts. By the second round they were rabid to see Wright put an armhold on Maxine. It was true peak of the art of face/heel working stuff. Wright played the role of the hot headed young athlete extremely well. He had some great looking flying headbutts and took some really good looking bumps. The finish was great as Wright is leading 1-0 but twists his leg on a dropkick. He tries to keep going but Maxine takes him down into an almost PANCRASE leglock and Wright has to quick after going 1-1 with the champion. Some people find the injury finishes in WoS word but I thought it was a good way to have a young guy look strong in his defeat to the champion. Whole match was just tremendously well put together and the heat was magic.

Masambula vs. Tony Charles, 9/2/1972

I was expecting Masambula, the African Witchdoctor to be this really hammy character. I mean, British Wrestling had guys getting hypnotized in the ring and attacking their partners. But this was a fairly straight forward match. Not a ton of shtick from Masambule, just some mild verbal jokes and a lot of wrestling. It was almost a disappointment. The wrestling was very nice, though. Masambula had a cool way of doing things. Dug all the leg grapevines and headstands. Charles was rocking the sideburns and as usual looked like quite the grappler. The match remained a friendly contest and never really ramped up in intensity but Masambula was worth seeing.