Bruno Sammartino vs Ken Patera (WWF - 3/7/1977)

Third

This was badass. In the January match Patera won the opening exchanges and revelled in it, his confidence growing with every instance of him getting to show the strength advantage of an honest to goodness Olympian. So this time Bruno takes a look at the crowd and immediately boots Patera in the guts and tries to punch the jaw off him. The place went bananas and this never really looked back from there. There were so many cool little touches in this, usually as a result of Bruno's scrappiness and/or Patera's willingness to stooge. I've always loved Bruno's mule kick dropkick thing but I don't remember him doing it from his back as a cut-off. He did it here as Patera went to jump on him and I don't think Patera was expecting it either, because it essentially became a mule kick to the balls. Patera's wide-eyed backpedalling sell was pretty much immaculate. The first half of this was pretty back and forth but every momentum shift was earned and made sense and I loved that Monsoon was actually really fun as the guest ref'. There was almost a running theme of both guys kicking out of pin attempts as forcefully as possible and every time one of them would basically land on Monsoon. Gorilla took it all in his stride but then Patera would get frustrated, not just at Bruno kicking out but at Gorilla trying to maintain some distance between the wrestlers whenever Bruno wound up on the floor. Patera obviously wanted to press the advantage and when Gorilla pushed him back to continue the count Patera cocked his fist like he was about to smack him. Of course like a total stooge he made sure Monsoon never saw it. Later on, after another one of Bruno's emphatic kick-outs, Patera landed right across Monsoon's shoulders. Patera got up raging, Monsoon looked at him like "are you sure you want to pull on that thread?" and Patera backed away with his ego stung. Patera takes over with a couple huge bodyslams before going to the bearhug, and these were some great bodyslams and Patera always has a quality bearhug. Bruno always makes it appear like he's actively trying to escape and he has bucket loads of charisma so if nothing else the crowd are going to be engaged. Eventually they end up on the mat and sort of roll around trading pin attempts, all while Patera still has the bearhug applied, then they roll into the ropes and when Patera releases it Bruno, from the mount position, starts blasting him with fists. Bruno standing up and immediately collapsing holding his lower back was a fucking amazing little bit of selling and Patera's running elbow drop while Bruno tries to crawl to the corner was honestly one of the best elbow drops I've ever seen. Bruno dropping about a dozen knees to Patera's lower back later while the crowd heat goes from molten to straight nuclear was unbelievable and I've never believed someone could break a man's spine with CLUBBERING more than I believed Bruno doing it to Patera here. Blood stoppages can sometimes be a downer and I knew we were headed that way as soon as Monsoon was adamant about checking the cut, but Patera being rammed into the buckle as a Full Nelson reversal and his subsequence posting were amazing moments so it's hard to really complain. Plus you need to give them points for Patera going buck wild with the blade and Monsoon doing his part by getting his crisp white shirt covered in blood. One of the best WWF matches of the decade.