The OtherArena

[JAG]

So Pat Patterson did a podcast interview with Chris Jericho recently that Dave recapped in this week's WON. It featured a shout out to Misters Williams and Yohe:

...He said he never thought he would wrestle in the WWWF. He said they brought him in to work with Bob Backlund, saying the office felt Backlund was struggling and they wanted Patterson to teach him how to work (man are people going to freak out about reading that)....

I enjoyed it.

Jagdip

[jdw]

First known Backlund-Patterson match:

July 2, 1979, Madison Square Garden, New York City, NY
WWF North American Champion Pat Patterson defeated WWF World Champion Bob Backlund when the match was stopped due to excessive blood loss from the champion at 15:21

Backlund's best match:

July 27, 1978, Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, Japan
Makoto Arakawa fought Yoshiaki Fujiwara to a draw
WWWF World Champion Bob Backlund fought NWF World Champion Antonio Inoki to a draw in a Best 2 out of 3 falls match; fall #1 - Inoki defeated Backlund via submission with the Octopus at 20:22; fall #2 - Backlund pinned Inoki with a body press at 16:15; fall #3 - the 61-minute time-limit expired; only Backlund’s title was on the line

So, yeah... Backlund didn't know how to work before he faced Patterson. Hell, it's not like we don't have other matches as well prior to 7/2/79 to look at.

Before someone claims Inoki carried Backlund in that match, I would suggest:

1. watch it

2. then watch Inoki and Patterson carry each other to a weaker match on 12/01/77, less than a year before

Pat's basically blowing his own work-cock with this. Dave also will never go back and look at Backlund's career in depth to figure out whether he could work or not, or how his work looked in other "Like" comparisons. Such as Backlund vs Patterson comped with Backlund vs Inoki comped with Inoki vs Patterson. What Frank use to call Round Robins. Bob tends to come out well in quite a few Round Robin settings.

[JAG]

With all the great wrestling now available on demand, going back and watching all that Backlund seems like a tedious chore.

*ducks*

;)

Jagdip