Slaughter, Patterson, and Buckets of Blood

For some reason you don’t see this one until the early 2000s, even if your e-wrestling buddies have been talking about how great it was since forever. An “alley fight” in the WWF between big fat Bob Remus, the villainous Parris Island drill sergeant, against not-so-Pretty Boy Pat Patterson. By the time you watch this, you’ve heard all the rumors about how Pat Patterson sexually harassed midgets and handsome ring announcers and other people. Patterson, the openly gay and openly tough as nails wrestler who could work a match like none other. You’d never seen him wrestle. He was probably better when he tag teamed with “Crippler” Ray Stevens back in Roy Shire’s San Francisco promotion, but you don’t know. All you see is a sorta fat, sorta in-shape (that instantly recognizable way all former athletes gone to seed start looking in late middle age) dude wearing an “I <3 NY” t-shirt that he has tucked, for no obvious or essential reason, into skintight jeans. Is this how you dress for a fucking “alley fight,” for the match that supposedly inaugurated, even more than the dismal Sheik-Abdullah and Rhodes-anybody else bloodbaths from the 70s, the hardcore style of the 90s and beyond? Who cares. Now out comes Sgt. Slaughter, one of twenty or so real humans who was lucky enough to have a G.I. Joe action figure modeled after him (comics writer Larry Hama and pro footballer William “Refrigerator” Perry were two others). The Grand Wizard, a forgotten transitional figure in WWWF/WWF history, leads out Remus/Slaughter, who is wearing much more sensible loose khakis and a wifebeater. The build-up for this was huge, but it’s hard to wrap your brain around the pre-Hogan WWF goings-on. Why was the world “strap” still on “Howdy Doody” Backlund? Why wasn’t it on an awesome villain like Slaughter? Why is Pat Patterson, aging and worn down and looking like Tommy “Wildfire” Rich’s gross uncle, still headlining cards like this one? Why is he wearing cowboy boots? Why why why?At the 3:55 mark, Pat removes his belt. What I thought was coming, based on my knowledge of Patterson, isn’t what happens (lawlz). Pretty Boy Pat whips and strangles Slaughter with the belt. They’re really selling their hearts out. I can’t believe it. Is this the same federation that gave us an endless array of squash mashes and stiff Backlund title defenses? From 6:00 to nearly 7:00, they writhe in agony on the mat. At 7:15, the belt is wrapped around Patterson’s mouth like a ball gag, and then, per announcer Vince McMahon Jr., “Slaughter starts working on that ‘I <3 NY’ t-shirt.” Meaning he rips it off and chokes Patterson with it. Why a t-shirt instead of the belt? Why not Slaughter’s belt? Patterson’s fortysomething man belly is really amazing, but the guy is also clearly in shape and able to go. At 9:30 he gets some decent elevation on a second-rope “cowboy boot stomp.” It’s easy to forget how drawn-out these matches were, and how good old troupers like Slaughter and Patterson were at selling fake pain. Slaughter finally juices, possibly from a real bite but most likely from a blade, at 10:30. The WWF/WWWF never got as bloody/nasty/hepatitis C-filled as the southern promotions, but this one’s about to get ugly. More slow kicks and punches, but my goodness, the selling. Why does this look so good? These guys are just out of shape slobs and yet they’re as compelling as a half-dozen First Responder funerals. After some hot and heavy action around the ring apron, Slaughter is really busted open around the 13:00 mark. He’s stumbling around the ring better than prime-period R Flair, and his face is redder than prime-period D Rhodes. This is the real deal, and McMahon can’t stop, uh, gushing about it. Slaughter blasts a great low blow at 14:00 that Patterson sells as if it were the cannonball that sunk the Titanic and precocious toyboy Leo Di Caprio along with it. Then at 14:40 there’s a beautiful close-up of Slaughter’s badly damaged face. To’ up from the flo’ up, as they (whoever they are) would say. Patterson, from 14:00 on, is just beating the holy hell out of Slaughter. Slaughter’s stumbling, bumbling—where’s the drama here? Yet by 16:00 you’re totally into it. You wouldn’t be surprised if Patterson stuck a gun in Slaughter’s mouth and blew the Sarge’s motherloving brains out. It would seem totally apposite, given the context. Patterson’s doing all of this labor with the grim resolution of Christ lugging the cross up to Calvary. “This place is absolutely bonkers,” McMahon says at 17:25, and he’s not dramatizing for effect. The Madison Square Garden crowd is “popping” (it’s crazy to imagine a real, mainstream Northeastern audience watching this kind of trash and “marking daqfuqout,” but here we are), and when Slaughter retires at the 18:00 mark, the boos ring out like so many call-backs on a mediocre rap album. There wasn’t much left of Patterson as a full-time grappler after this victory, though both he and Slaughter would hang around the sport for three more decades. Slaughter would headline Wrestlemania VII in a terrible Gulf War-related angle involving “Hulk” Hogan, and Patterson would plot out the finishes of dozens of classic matches while allegedly molesting a fair amount of the backstage talent. How much of the anti-Patterson material was simply just anti-gay stuff is unclear, but “Pretty Boy” Pat never apologized, never played a gay gimmick…just acted every match like it was the match of his life, and maybe this one was. It’s certainly the only Pat Patterson match I’ve ever watched, I’ll tell you that.

OLB