The True Story Behind The WORST Wrestling Show In History

He worked a heat spot with Bushwhacker Butch early, but he didn't so much drive knees into his back as nudge an old and tender pet, just to check if he was still alive. The Sheikh could enter the ring to make saves, just, but he could not leave on his own feet, and so after a falling tree bump he crawled out of the ring on his hands and belly. It was a pathetic, sad sight. To compensate for his shortcomings, during one double-team heat spot, Butch, in his plea to the referee, had to wind his fist up like a broken toy, waiting for Sheikh to get his deeds over with. A broken toy, depending on the points of articulation, may have moved more animatedly than the Sheikh.

An announcer by the name of Randy Rosenbloom, an eleventh hour replacement for the ill Gordon Solie, was as ignorant as Art Donovan and - in literally the only joy to be extracted from 2+ hours of skeevy vibes and pitiful athleticism - almost as funny. He referred to the decrepit Iron Sheik as the 'Iron Curtain' throughout, appearing to conflate his foreign menaces in a muddled - but to be fair, very successful - attempt to channel wrestling's old, racist spirit.

That's not strictly true - a blackballed Tully Blanchard, and this isn't snark, cut a better, more beautifully furious promo than anything heard on RAW this year - but his match, too, was a sad, enervated affair. The fire in his belly couldn't make up for the dust in his knees. One Man Gang and Abdullah the Butcher made each other bleed in slow motion, like a pair of cheese graters rubbing up against one another on an airport conveyor belt. The crowd, wowed by the claret, actually reacted to that one, but Jimmy Snuka immediately killed them dead in his match with Bob Orton Jr.

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