Exploring Buddy Rose's Portland Wrestling Video Collection: June 11, 1983 Episode
A look at a territory era pro wrestling TV show
I feel fortunate to own a copy of Buddy Rose’s Portland Wrestling video collection.
This is not a commercial market release. It is the personal collection of the late pro wrestling star Buddy Rose and consists of TV episodes of Portland Wrestling. The episodes range from the late ‘70s to the early ‘90s, and Rose taped them off television as they aired. He did this to review how he performed in matches and on promos.
The Portland Wrestling TV show was taped every Saturday at 8:30PM at the Portland Sports Arena and then aired at 11PM that night on local channel KPTV. The show had a decades long run on that channel beginning in February 1967 and ran uninterrupted until it was taken off the air in December 1991.
There is a massive amount of footage in Rose’s private collection. All totaled, it’s approximately 450 hours.
In my recent post, The Story of Buddy Rose's Portland Wrestling video collection, I tell in detail how the footage came to be preserved and made available to others. This was thanks to the dedicated efforts of Rich Patterson, a friend of Buddy Rose and fan of Portland Wrestling who first started watching it in 1970.
Seeing complete episodes of Portland Wrestling has been a real treat for a student of pro wrestling history like me. I began watching the footage purely as a fan a few months ago and have been enjoying it tremendously, and I felt compelled to write about what I have been watching.
So far, I’ve watched a ton of pro wrestlers early in their careers who would go onto great heights in wrestling in the years that followed, names like Roddy Piper and Curt Hennig. This is also my first time watching many well-known territory wrestlers that I only knew of prior by name, like Rip Oliver for example.
Collectively, the matches have a certain grittiness to them and the promos a raw spontaneous feel.
The action is all captured wonderfully with two stationary cameras from an elevated platform. There are no quick cut camera angles and fancy editing, and the result is an intimate professional wrestling viewing experience that is easy to get immersed in.
It is clear to see after watching just a few episodes why Portland Wrestling was so revered by fans who experienced as it happened.
For my first write-up on a TV episode from the collection, I’m taking you back 42 years to June 1983.
Much more to follow as I delve into this collection and curate what to showcase here in the written form.
Are you a fan of Portland Wrestling who watched it had it happened?
Share your memories with me by sending me a message on Chat here on Substack or commenting below this post.
I would welcome conversing with fans of Portland Wrestling via email and hope to weave fan memories of the promotion into to future write-ups on TV episodes from the Buddy Rose collection.
I am also looking to obtain copies of the print newsletter Ring Around the Northwest and Portland Wrestling print match programs. If any readers have these, please let me know.
Readers of The Pro Wrestling Exuberant interested in obtaining a copy of the external hard drive with the entire Buddy Rose Portland Wrestling video collection can email Rich Patterson at portlandwrestlingvideo@yahoo.com for more information and to also receive a complete listing of everything that is included on it.
- Russell Franklin
Portland Wrestling TV Episode: June 11, 1983
What was happening in the months prior:
Buddy Rose returned to Portland Wrestling earlier in the year after having spent much of the prior year in the WWF. His time there included headline title matches against both world champion Bob Backlund and intercontinental champion Pedro Morales.
Curt Hennig also returned to Portland Wrestling earlier in the year, with a match in late March against Buddy Rose. The two had feuded prior in the territory, with Rose injuring Hennig and putting him out of action.
Hennig won the Pacific Northwest title in May, the top title in the territory, by defeating Ali Hassan on card headlined by NWA champion Ric Flair vs Roddy Piper.
Other recent arrivals that spring were Jesse Barr (who will go to WWF a few years after this and be rebranded Jimmy Jack Funk) and Al Madril, a well-known territory era wrestler who had a run in World Class a few years after this that included a notable feud with the Von Erich family.
A top heel is Rip Oliver. He is the co-holder of the Pacific Northwest tag team titles with The Assassin. Oliver is looking to grow his heel faction, The Clan.
Notes on the 6-11-1983 episode of Portland Wrestling:
The commentator, Don Coss, encourages fans to come down to the Portland Sports Arena to experience the action in person. He reminds fans they can go home after the show and might see themselves on TV a few hours later since the show airs at 11PM that same night.
The atmosphere is extremely energetic in the Portland Sports Arena, with the fans loud right from the start of the first match.
There is not a ringside camera capturing the action like is the standard in pro wrestling for the last few decades, and from the first-time watching footage in this collection, I quickly realized it’s not needed.
The action is captured completely from an elevated perched that faces the center of the ring (called The Crow’s Nest). The camera view for the show reminds me of what it felt like watching a wrestling show from the middle rows of elevation as a fan at WWF and NWA shows in that era, only this environment feels much more intimate.
The camera shows what appears to be three rows of seats at ringside followed by fifteen rows of seats in stands behind them. The angle does not allow the viewer to see much to the sides of the ring beyond or what is directly below from where the camera is filming. Reports I’ve seen indicate at that 2500 people was the average crowd at these. It seems much larger when watching it.
On an aside, I was traveling through Portland in the mid-2000s while working on a series of bodybuilding training videos that featured primarily competitive bodybuilders but also fitness-enthusiastic pro wrestlers (this was how I met Rob Van Dam as referenced in the post The Wisdom of Rob Van Dam).
One of the people with me had attended shows at The Portland Sports Arena in the ‘80 and they talked about it the same revered manner that I talked about the building I saw NWA shows as a new pro wrestling in that same era. They mentioned that we were about to pass the area where the building was located. We decided to stop to see what the building looked like on the outside now and also on the inside, if possible.
The building had been sold to a church and was in use, and we were unable to go inside, but we did walk around the sides of the building so the person with me could excitedly showed me where he had once seen Andre The Giant enter. He said the regular fans knew about this side entrance and would often wait there to get autographs from the wrestlers.
A security guard approached us to see what we were doing, and although he said he was not a pro wrestling fan, he mentioned wrestling fans frequently stop by to look at the building and share memories. He also said that he was a life-long Portland resident, and he had known a few former Portland wrestlers over the years that had lived in the same neighborhood, including Dutch Savage.
The first match on the June 11 episode is Al Madril vs The Assassin.
Sandy Barr is the referee. He is legendary as the referee for Portland Wrestling, and from scanning assorted footage from various years of this collection he is the only referee I have seen.
He’s not dressed like your typical referee with a black and white striped shirt. Instead, his attire looks like it’s casual Friday at the office (that was a common edict among office managers in the ‘80s and ‘90s in “office” businesses where the employees had dress codes). Barr is wearing blue dress pants and a casual short sleeve dress shirt.
Madril and The Assassin lock-up to start the match, but The Assassin quickly backs off and preens to the crowd.
The crowd responds with a loud chorus of boos for this simple action from the heel.
There’s lots of arm drags and some standing and seated arm bars from Madril in the first few minutes of the match. The crowd is very into everything he does.
When The Assassin puts on Madril in a bearhug, Madril starts untying The Assassins mask. We’re told there is a $2500 bounty on the mask.
A few minutes later after Madril delivers a flying shoulder tackle, instead of covering The Assassin for the pin, he goes after the mask again.
A third attempt to remove the mask occurs when two are cinched against the ropes.
The finish has The Assassin throwing a wide swinging punch and missing when Madril ducks. The momentum sends The Assassin flying right over the top rope. Madril goes after him, but The Assassin scrambles back in the ring first.
When Madril tries to re-enter the ring, he gets caught in a front face lock against the second rope. The Assassin doesn’t break the hold at the Barr’s five count, so he gets disqualified.
Before the second match begins, the commentators, Don Coss and Dutch Savage, promote the upcoming week of shows.
There are eight shows over the next day eight days, with Monday off and an afternoon and evening show the following Sunday. The only match they mention is a cage occurring one of the nights, but they don’t say who will be wrestling each other in the match.
Jesse Barr vs Scott Ferns is the first second of the episode.
This is a heavily mat based match. Coss and Savage refer to it as a “scientific match”, a common term in that era whenever two wrestlers, neither of them heels, worked a clean match with no cheating from either one of them.
The action is mostly an assortment of arm bars, arm drags and amateur wrestling mat holds.
The commentators mention that Jesse Barr is a former amateur wrestling champion.
Coss and Savage spend a portion of this match talking about Buddy Rose’s upcoming match that night, noting how Rose paid to have Dynamite Kid as a tag team partner because Dynamite was “too expensive” for the promotion to afford.
The match between Barr and Ferns ends in a time limit draw.
Next, we have an interview segment at The Crow’s Nest, the perch above the ring where the cameras film the action and also where the commentators sit.
Buddy Rose and The Dynamite Kid are the interviewees, and Dutch Savage is the interviewer.
Rose welcomes The Dynamite Kid back to the Portland Wrestling (he had been there for a brief time in 1982). Rose then talks about how he is the person responsible for bringing The Dynamite Kid back to the Portland. He notes that Rip Oliver wanted The Dynamite Kid as a member of The Clan, a heel faction that Oliver is looking to expand.
Rose also talks about how The Dynamite Kid recently won the World Junior Heavyweight title in Japan, as well how athletic he is and states that he can do a dropkick across the ring.
The main event is a two out of three falls match with Buddy Rose and The Dynamite Kid vs Billy Jack and champion Curt Hennig.
Two out three falls matches were the common format for the TV main events in Portland. In between falls, there would be interviews with either the wrestlers from the match or another wrestler from the roster.
All four of these wrestlers in the main event will be in the rapidly expanding WWF at some point in the years that follow.
Buddy Rose, under the mask as The Executioner, wrestles in the opening match at the first WrestleMania in 1985 against Tito Santana.
The Dynamite Kid starts in the WWF (as a member of The British Bulldogs tag team) in 1985.
Billy Jack (Haynes) starts there in 1986, with a run that will include a WrestleMania 3 match against Hercules in 1987.
Henning, after a run in AWA as both a tag team champion (with Scott Hall) and world champion, will be rebranded as Mr. Perfect when he joins the WWF in 1988.
The winner of the main event here on this episode will get a tag team title shot the following week against Rip Oliver and The Assassin.
This is the earliest footage I have ever seen of The Dynamite Kid, and he makes an immediate impression.
The Dynamite Kid was way ahead of his era in terms of how he moved in the ring and the athletic urgency of his aerial moves. It is on full display here in this match.
In the ring, he had quick snappy movements to everything he does, appearing to move a few seconds faster than anyone else when he does something, and the other wrestlers are by no means moving slow.
The match starts with The Dynamite Kid and Hennig in the ring. The very first sequence with The Dynamite Kid was sure to have made a very strong impression on the audience at the time, be it live or watching it on TV. It’s just a basic wrestling maneuver yet Dynamite transforms it.
He bounces off the ropes and Hennig flips him over. Dynamite propels himself so high and far across the ring that on the landing his feet hit the ropes in the middle of one side of the ring. This was the first impression of him for many viewers in that moment, and it’s a mighty one that sets the tone for the audience on what to expect from The Dynamite Kid: crisply executed moves and bumps, and at a fast-forward like speed.
These artfully quick and natural looking movements are on full display again on another basic move when Dynamite reverses an arm drag that Hennig puts on him.
That’s followed by impressive looking snap suplex.
Dynamite goes aerial in a major way with a front drop kick off a top turnbuckle and then does a nip-up. Remember this is 1983 and not many wrestlers were likely doing moves like this, let along in such as smooth looking way. It was innovative then and looks ultra impressive still four decades later. It’s all in the execution.
The finish to the first fall is surprising in that it is Dynamite cleanly pinning the much larger Billy Jack (one year into his career as a pro wrestler) in a move the commentators call a “standing piledriver.” The move looks like a modern-day tombstone.
This finishing move is a doubly impressive visual because of the size difference between the two, with the much bigger man on the receiving end of it.
So, the story of the first fall is the dominance of The Dynamite Kid, the new wrestler the territory is hyping. It’s done effectively by giving him plenty of offense against the champion and his tag partner, the physical specimen of the territory.
Between matches there’s an interview in The Crow’s Nest with Hennig and Billy Jack. Hennig praises The Dynamite Kid’s ability and then hypes his title match that coming Tuesday against Buddy Rose. Billy Jack hypes his match against Rip Oliver on the same card. It was an important focus of the TV shows back then to get fans to come out to the non-televised events in their local areas during the week that followed.
Fall two begins with Dynamite and Billy Jack in the ring. Dynamite quickly gains control and works over Billy Jack, which makes logical sense based on how the last fall ended.
Coss and Savage put Dynamite over strong too on the commentary. This is a territory wrestling era textbook example of how to make a star and serious challenger out of a debuting wrestler: give them plenty of offense against stars and have the commentators praise every impressive move they do, even if said wrestler is a heel.
Dynamite goes aerial again, this time from the second turnbuckle, and drops a knee on Billy Jack’s sternum.
Haynes sells during a good portion of the fall, but when he finally tags in Hennig it is a quick rally. Hennig gets a pinfall on Rose after a dropkick from the top rope.
The interview between falls is with Rip Oliver and The Assassin, who talk about how the winner of this match will face them next week for the tag team title.
The climatic moment of the match comes quick in the third fall.
Billy Jack puts Buddy Rose in a full nelson but Dynamite Kid interferes and breaks the hold. Rose quickly grabs Billy Jack from behind and restrains him.
The next image is Dynamite flying in from off-camera with a dropkick, presumably from the top turnbuckle, although it is out of the camera frame. The way this is filmed, with the camera missing Dynamite’s launch, actually makes it a more impressive visual. Billy Jack moves and Dynamite hits Rose in the face, and Billy Jack quickly covers Rose for the pinfall and win.
Almost immediately after the pinfall Dynamite turns on Rose by punching him in the face. The two then start brawling. When Rose gets control, he calls Oliver and The Assassin to the ring for a triple team.
Once inside the ring, Oliver and The Assassin bypass Dynamite and attack Rose. Hennig and Billy Jack stand there indifferently, as they should logically since Rose is a long-time villain in the territory and being attacked by other villains. Oliver ends up attacking Hennig and Billy Jack from behind as they are leaving the ring.
The end result is Rose is left bloodied in the ring after being on the receiving end of a beatdown that included a headbutt off the top rope from Dynamite.
Rip Oliver, The Assassin and The Dynamite Kid close the show by going to The Crow’s Nest for an interview, where Oliver announces that The Dynamite Kid is the newest member of The Clan. As he announces this, a split screen shows Rose all alone in the ring, dazed and bleeding, to end the show.
How will Buddy Rose respond to the three on one beatdown he received from The Clan?
Who will win the tag team title match next week?
Those questions will be answered in my next post about the Buddy Rose Portland Wrestling Collection, as I cover the June 18, 1983 episode.
If any readers have a specific year from 1977 to 1991 of Portland Wrestling TV they would like covered in a future write up, or specific wrestler they want to read about, let me know in the comments.
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