TYWGIGB is a series where Sam breaks down the wrestling that was in 1984 week-by-week. Always expect match of the week but a grab bag from there.

Match of the Week

Rocky Johnson & Tony Atlas vs. Adrian Adonis & Dick Murdoch (WWF 2/10/84)

As a wrestling fan, my brain is truly and utterly screwed. Give me an ounce of blood and I’m clapping like a seal. Give me a bucket of blood? You don’t want to be near me, I’ll be impossible to stand. The moment I see Rocky Johnson come down to the ring with a white bandage over his foreheard, I’m salvating. Literalyl the bell hasn’t rung and you see blood pooling under the bandage. He’s out, which I find a little hot, and Tony Atlas is trying to tell him to at bare minimum not start the match for the team. By the time cooler heads pervail, Rocky’s on the apron with blood dripping into his eyes. Is there anything more beautiful?

At this point, before the match has even officially started, there wasn’t a ton they could do to mess this match up. All four dudes doing the bare minimum but Rocky bleeding buckets would have me giving glowing reviews. If that means you want to dispel of any praise I give this match, go for it. I would think less of you but you probably have a more traditional head on your shoulders..

What we get is a more of a cosmic gumbo. A mix of the cartoonish of WWF and more of the structure and violence you might get out of Jim Crockett. When I say cartoonish, I’m pointing my finger heavily at my dear close personal foot fetish friend, Tony Atlas. He’s bumping to the rafters early and often. That juxtaposition of Rocky Johnson being of your traditional valiant babyface while Tony is bumping closer to a heel, the huge exaggeration, that brings a uniqueness to it all. Pieces don’t always have to perfectly fit. If the outcome draws the eyes rather than making them glaze over, I’ll take it.

If this isn’t Rocky’s best performance ever, has to be up there. Besides bleeding a bunch, for the entire second half of the match he’s expected to hold the entire of weight of the bout. Getting worked over, doing the comebacks, the nearfalls on both ends, Rocky is doing every part of the babyface side of the equation and it shockingly works. The comebacks often feel opportunistic of the heels playing with their food a bit too much but also Rocky has a gravitas. You’ve heard of The Rock. You see how it runs in the family and all that.

I’m sure some people will look at the finish and write it off but you would be doing yourself a diservice of one of the best individual performances in the WWF so far this year.

PS Don’t come at me with “The video says 2/19/84 you idiot”. Go find the 2/10/84 show and shut-up

SUPERFLUOUS OF THE WEEK

Squash of The Week

Jason Walker vs. Ted DiBiase (GCW 2/11/2025)

Maybe Parv was right. Ted DiBiase gives us two minutes of damn near perfect work. Hounding pressure from the get go, chaining each piece of punishment into one another. Unlike a lot of the squash’s folks clip into gif’s this isn’t full of killing a janitor who makes far too little. This is pure work. I hate saying “the little things” cause they are more “the simple things”. They are as big as a powerbomb in my eyes but a lot less physically demanding. Grinding the boot into the face, holding the arm to chain together submissions or to pull up into a whip. The finish puts the easy heel bow onto this thing. Ted carries himself like a Class A Asshat.

OTHER MUSINGS

• In many other weeks Team Inoki vs. Ishin Gundan would have been an easy Match of the Week. An absolute top tier Yoshiaki Fujiwarw performance where he gets color. This feud is a great match engine. Plug in the parts and let good things happen. More promotions should try putting a bunch of great wrestlers in a feud. The show also featured a darn good Cobra and Kuniaki Kobayashi match. Two wrestlers we don’t talk about that much in 2026. My understanding is people still hold Kobayashi as a “sneaky good” junior wrestler who didn’t have a lengthy run. Cobra…do people not like him? Has a ton of matches from ’79 to ’89 and then still wrestlers sparingly from ’90 to ’04. I kind of liked the Zero-1 matches. And that is old, fat George Takano. Probably not a top 100 wrestler of all-time so people don’t care. Honestly, most of what we get from the show is good. And by that I mean it also has Rusher Kimura an Hulk Hogan squaring off. That Rusher Kimura, quite the scrapper he is.
• I think Lanny Poffo and Masao Ito might have a bit of chemistry? Ito has an all-time great wrestler body. A meatball of man. The way God envisioned pro wrestlers to look when he divined us with this great sport. As a bit of an audio head, definitely feel Junkyard Dog would have had an amazing Ringer podcast on voice alone.
• Houston puts on a humdinger of a show. Has its own Poffo and Ito match-up, fun performances from both Junkyard Dog and Wendi Richter, and a damn good main event between Mr. Wrestling II & Magnum TA and Midnight Express. The main event is honestly about as much of a sure thing as you can get. The promotion just generally gets how to make a Complete Show which is not something we even get to see right now because of footage. But even when you only get a couple pieces, you can tell that most of them wouldn’t be able to do it. Paul Boesch’s territory has the magic.
• WWF has the best match of the week, a stunning feat for a promotion that I hated in January, but also has the worst match of the week. Another dull as dirt match. This time Jimmy Snuka and Mr. Fuji. Made me want to take my eyeballs out with a melon baller. We can’t treat Snuka like some sort of Sneaky Good worker.