YESSIREE, BOB…BACKLUND! ONE NITE ONLY

As an eleven-year-old back then, I was incapable of appreciating the magnitude of what I was watching, the rarity of some of these matchups. For starters, it was rare to see Tiger Mask and Dynamite Kid wrestling each other in the United States, as their feuding mostly occurred in Japan. Good luck catching a Tiger Mask match of any kind on American televised wrestling.  Tiger Mask was an elusive and exotic figure in that wrestling era. If you weren’t up on your wrestling magazine reading, you might not have even known he existed.

To watch Tiger Mask and Dynamite Kid wrestle each other was to watch two wrestling virtuosos at the height of their powers. Sadly, Dynamite Kid, who was widely revered for his all-around in-ring athleticism, was left wheelchair-bound after battling spinal injuries throughout his career.

Brett Hart once proclaimed Dynamite Kid “pound-for-pound, the greatest wrestler who ever lived.” Although I couldn’t possibly know that about him at the time, I’m still grateful I had the chance to see him and Tiger Mask display their virtuosity.

Then there was Pat Patterson and Cowboy Bob Orton. What I recall about this match was how much I wanted to see Orton beat Patterson. I was a big fan of Orton’s finishing move: the Superplex. It was a finishing move requiring the use of the ropes and not many wrestlers were doing that at the time.  The match was ten minutes long and one-sided in favor of Patterson, but fast-paced and exciting nevertheless.  

The rarities of this match were seeing Patterson wrestle at a time when he was mostly relegated to his boring television color commentary on TV and seeing Orton when he was on the downswing from his earlier unsuccessful bids for Bob Backlund’s WWF championship. A few months after this match with Patterson, Orton left the WWF for the NWA, where he had a successful run for two years before returning to the WWF as “ACE”, Roddy Piper’s cast-wearing bodyguard. This second incarnation was the more successful run for Orton.   

Pedro Morales versus Jimmy Snuka was a much better matchup than Orton v. Patterson. First of all, there was a lot more at stake. Morales was the WWF Intercontinental Champion. Snuka was a top contender who’d had some memorable title shots against Bob Backlund and was getting a lot of heat as a bad guy; increasingly winning over fans everywhere he fought.

These two along with Don Muraco and Greg “The Hammer” Valentine were the dominant rivals for the Intercontinental championship. These rivalries were akin to those of Thomas Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, and Marvin Hagler in boxing.  

This was also a rare opportunity for me to stand apart from my father by openly rooting for Jimmy Snuka. My father, if you recall from a previous episode, was a huge fan of Pedro Morales, and rightfully so. Morales was the pride of Puerto Rico. Not only was he the then-current Intercontinental champion but also a former WWF Heavyweight champion, and one-half of a WWF Tag Team Championship he shared with Bob Backlund for exactly one day (a WWF rule at the time prohibited anyone from holding two championships at the same time).

This made Morales the first WWF Triple Crown Champion. His heavyweight championship reign is the fifth longest in WWF history: 1,027 days. Is there any wonder why my dad loved this man so much?

As an eleven-year-old, none of the above stats mattered to me. Pedro was old school while Jimmy had all the physical characteristics of a leopard, making him new, scary, and thrilling. But no matter whom they were rooting for, the wrestling fans in attendance that night knew they’d be in for one hell of a match.

Here’s the thing about outwardly siding with Jimmy Snuka. My father would have considered it cultural treason to root for the non-Latino. He never cheered for the non-Latino, and the same was expected of me. On top of that, my father’s enthusiasm was so damn infectious.

As the excitement unfolded in the ring, my dad had the habit of swinging his fists in time to the punches his hero was throwing. It was like he was fighting Snuka. He never hit me with his elbows, but he did grab my forearm in a viselike grip once or twice, leaving mild black-and-blues on my arm for a day or two. To this day, I do the same thing when I’m cheering for someone to win. I learned it from him.

The point is, I also cheered for Morales to win. My dad had won me over with his straightforward pride and the physicality of his enthusiasm. And damn it if it didn’t feel good to stand with him rather than against him, the two of us displaying our Puerto Rican pride, cheering together, bonding over wrestling, bonding over Pedro.

The match ended in a double countout, just as it should have. These two men weren’t giving up an inch to the other. They lived to fight another day, and so did my dad and me.