Portland BATTLE ROYAL - 6/14/80

They moved the anything goes match with Miller and Rose to the Tuesday after the last match and switched the Battle Royal to Saturday which works for us as we get to see it. I am not going to go through this thing like usual. I'll just point out cool things in bullet point format.

-One interesting thing about the Portland footage I've been watching is that it's really just the top of the card. Sometimes there's the extra match but i rarely have sense of what's going on in the rest of the card. This is 13 men so it's everyone in the area at the time.
-Steve Pardee, Roddy Piper, Mike Hennesey, Martel, Ricky Hunter, Tough Tony Borne, Sal Martino, Luke and Butch, Chris F'n Colt! Igor Volkoff, Rose, Rip Rogers
-Rose is great from the get go, running in and out of the ring to avoid the Sheepherders. Piper is also great just unloading on everyone.
-The crowd is irate for Rose to go in the ring. Battle Royals were huge draws back then and you can feel the excitement here.
-Ha! Sandy Barr is just chasing Buddy around ringside trying to cajole him in. Now one of the Sheepherders is chasing after him.
-Bonnema says it's a minimum $1500 purse "probably more with side bets" which is such a cool idea that it's a shame it gets brushed over so quickly.
-Okay, this is one of the coolest Battle Royal spots of all time. Sal Martino has Rip held and Pardee is about to dropkick him. Buddy comes flying in the ring, disrupts the dropkick out of nowhere allowing Rip to move and Pardee to accidentally dropkick Martino out. Buddy keeps on moving out of the ring. The timing on this is amazing. 
-Buddy pulls Piper's tights from the outside. Piper comes out. Colt comes out and holds him. Martel comes out to break it up and Buddy rabbits around the ring again. He heads down the aisle but Martino is leaving ringside and threatens him back. Everyone hates poor Buddy.
-Piper is going at the Sheepherders (And Pardee) but not Martel. He was really made for 1980 Battle Royals
-I get worried that Chris Colt was eliminated, but he's just hiding. Tony Borne goes and it was nice to see him briefly.
-Buddy pulls Butch under the ring rope and out but gets reversed into the pole and they brawl on the outside.
-Piper and Martel just about have Rip out but Buddy grabs all three of them and pulls the mass of humanity out from the outside. The base villain.
-Chris Colt begs off against Hunter(?) for no reason! Go Chris Colt. Oops. He got eliminated.
-Buddy goes for the leg of Miller again meaning to drag him out but gets dragged in instead. We're down to Sheepherders, Hunter, Volkoff and Rose. Rose sends Volkoff after Hunter, but he's a scrappy fighter. Rose comes to help and they toss him. 
-Heels and faces pair off as teams, but Buddy takes a powder letting the Sheepherders toss Volkoff. Fans go NUTS. 
-A Fan runs in from the crowd with a cane. He starts taking out the security guards, coming REAL close to nailing a female one by accident which is kind of a jarring image. In the melee, one Sheepherder goes out. Buddy sets up the other for a shot and they toss him and that is how Ed Wiskowski returned to Portland.

Very fun battle royal with a great stooging performance by Buddy and a really good one by Piper. Post-match the faces run back in and the heels run, with Wiskowski getting in a shoving match with a fan on the way out.