Buddy Rose

I wrote many words about Rose a few years ago for a top 25 US wrestlers ever poll on another forum. I feel like some of these talking points are ones Matt D has gone into much better detail on already, but either way my take on Buddy was that he's amazing and I've since come to dig him even more (he was just outside my top 10 for the PWO poll).



He's maybe the most versatile wrestler ever. There are really only two major US territory mainstays I can think of that spent lengthy periods of time - we'll say 5+ years - working not just at the top of the card as the ace of their promotion/territory, but literally working in front of the same crowds, in the same studios and arenas, *every single week.* Rose and Lawler are those two guys. Lawler worked the same Memphis studio and the Mid South Coliseum every week because that's how Memphis ran, while Rose worked Sandy Barr's Flea Market/the Portland Sports Arena every Saturday and Tuesday because that's how Portland ran. I know Memphis ran shows in other venues, and I'm sure Portland did as well, but they had their base of operations and ran them constantly. Flair in JCP moved around Atlanta, the Carolinas, Maryland, West Virginia, etc. Every NWA Champion of the era did (though Flair wound up working more places than anyone before him ever did). AWA ran shows from Minneapolis to Milwaukee to Vegas to Chicago, so it's not like Bockwinkel was stuck in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. WWF took over the world and ran everywhere, but even before that they had New York, Philly, Toronto, etc. so Bruno and Backlund and Hogan weren't just working MSG. Mid-South ran from Oklahoma to Louisiana to Texas. Dallas had the Sportatorium, but nobody was a definitive ace there the way Rose or Lawler were in their own territories. You get the point.

So, basically, and I don't say this to take a shot at someone like Ric Flair, guys like Rose and Lawler arguably HAD to alter how they worked regularly, because if they didn't and they decided to do the "Rose Show" or "Lawler Show" every week, you're essentially giving the people the exact same thing they saw the week or three days before. Of course both of those guys had their signature spots and things they liked to do regularly like every other pro-wrestler that's ever lived, but Rose in particular is one of those cases that I would say inarguably stands out as someone who was versatile in the ways he worked (I think that's one area in which he's clearly ahead of Lawler. In fact it's one area in which I think he's ahead of every wrestler in US history).

Given how PNW ran their TV episodes, he had to be able to work long 2/3 falls matches (they seemed to run 2/3 falls matches of 30+ minutes every other week on TV). He excelled at this. It sucks that we have no arena footage from Portland - or at least hardly any - but it's great that we get to see him on TV working the kinds of matches other territories would only run in the arenas (it's also why it feels like Portland had some of the best week to week wrestling on TV during the late 70s/early 80s). I've never once seen Rose approach a 2/3 falls match the same way. Could he have come up with a general template ala Flair and slot guys in, altering some bits here and there where the opponent's signature spots would come in, and gotten away with it? Possibly. Hell, PROBABLY. Flair wasn't the only guy with a formula then and he certainly isn't now. But either way, whether it was the fact he was working the same crowd every week or not giving him the impetus, Rose very clearly put effort into doing something different every time out. He could've worked Rick Martel in 1980 the same way he'd worked Lonnie Mayne or Jay Youngblood in '77. But he didn't. He always threw in different ways to approach something, and more often than not the match would be at least good. He had a 2/3 falls with Martel in late April 1980, then two weeks later he had another 2/3 falls with him. Both were different, both were awesome (like, MOTYC level awesome). He could work the mat and keep things interesting by almost never sitting idle in holds, he could flip a switch and create a sense of escalation, he could get mean and vicious, he could sell his ass off, and he is the almighty god of fat boy rope running sequences.

But of course he wasn't just a 2/3 falls guy. He excelled in tags, whether it be straight up two v two tags teaming with Ed Wiskowski or Rip Rogers or Chris Colt or Sam Bass or Doug Somers, or wild multi-man tags teaming with the Sheepherders and/or any variation of those other guys, or bloody tag team cage matches against the Rockers. He excelled WITHIN tags as the chickenshit stooge running away from Roddy Piper or Dutch Savage, or the much-tougher-than-he-looks asskicker who along with Wiskowski would try and break your spine in between falls, or the heel in peril, or the enforcer for his team, or even riling people up from the apron. He's also the almighty god of fat boy rope running sequences. He did everything.

Then you had him working everything in between, from dog collar matches with Killer Tim Brooks to competitive squash matches against Cocoa Samoa to lengthy one fall title matches against Bob Backlund. Take any of those examples above and you've only scratched the surface of Rose's versatility. Put him in there with anyone at all and it would be worth watching. And that's not even touching on things like overall selling, bumping, offence, etc. Which, by the way, he was also great at.

I think the one thing you could argue goes against him is that he never had the longevity some of his peers did. He doesn't have incredible matches twenty years apart like Lawler or Hansen or Funk do (I mean, not many people do, but still). That said, and I haven't even seen any of his Portland stuff from mid-'81 to '85, his '77-'80 run is outstanding and puts him on the level with any other wrestler as potential "best in the world" during that stretch. In '79 and '80 I would say he was, actually. Then he goes to the AWA in '86, supposedly at a point in his career where he was too tubby to be on anything other than a steep decline, and for a year or so he looks like one of the best wrestlers in the world again, taking part in a programme that went from traditional southern style tag rivalry to bloody hate feud with both teams trying to kill each other that produced a couple of the best US tag matches ever. I guess, then, the case for Rose would have to be made mostly on his peak, but really, that peak - or at least what I've seen of it so far - is fucking exceptional.

He was my #4, and he'd go up on my 2016 list before he went down.