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And now here it is, the dream match,
that so many of the fans have asked for.
This is a six-man tag-team battle for one fall with a 10-minute time limit.
In the red corner
at a total combined weight of 935 pounds,
"The Big Cat" Ernie Ladd
along with his two Samoan warriors, Afa and Sica.
(JUNKYARD DOG THEME SONG PLAYING)
And in the opposite corner,
at a total combined weight of 1,015 pounds,
the "Eighth Wonder of the World," Andre the Giant
and his partner, Dusty Rhodes, The American Dream,
and the Junkyard Dog!
BOYD: Now you have it, the introduction. It could become...
Three individual matches would've been great, but you fans
on the dream match sent in those cards and letters
and the intriguing six-man team,
Afa and Sica, the Samoan warriors,
(BELL DINGING)
...against Andre the Giant, Dusty Rhodes and the Junkyard Dog.
Bill Watts, it's going to be wild once it breaks loose.
WATTS: You really see a contrast. Jack Howe's about a 225-pound referee,
and yet he looks like a dwarf out there.
And then, Ernie Ladd, look at him, he's 6'9", 320.
And then look right across the ring and you see just how awesome,
how huge the Giant is, 7'4",
and 485, probably going on 500.
There's Dusty Rhodes, The American Dream, at 275 pounds,
and he is just silhouetted there in front of the Giant.
The Junkyard Dog, 265. The Samoans are 300 pounds apiece.
This is a great contest.
Fantastic. You, the fans, made this match.
There's American Dream.
JYD coming in there.
Catching that forearm that would just level an ordinary human,
it puts the Samoan down. A pair of rugged guys.
The question is will Ernie Ladd be able to offset enough
with his tremendous athletic ability.
Hank Stram said the other day on national TV,
when they were having a fight in one of the playoff games,
that we need Ernie Ladd here to referee the match, to break it up.
Told what a great all-pro defensive tackle
Ernie Ladd was with the Kansas City Chiefs
when Hank Stram was coaching there.
Will he be able to offset in any way
the awesome power of Andre the Giant, that's the whole key.
Because if you can't break the Giant down,
you're certainly not gonna have Dog and Dusty Rhodes
helpless long enough to beat him.
Afa and Sica sure have stepped into the frying pan
when they came off their suspension.
Listen to the crowd, they want Ernie Ladd and the Giant.
Everybody that wrote in, that was one of the matches they wanted.
Ernie Ladd's trying to avoid the issue.
I just wonder one thing, Boyd Pierce,
would any referee in a match like this
have the nerve to call a civil disqualification on a match
that some 70% of the 100,000 paying fans picked,
and they know they want to see.
It's settled among these six men...
How tightly will the rules be enforced?
I know that as a referee,
Jack Howe or any referee would have to be extremely intimidated out there.
BOYD: Not only how tightly will they be, how tightly can they be enforced?
WATTS: Here we go.
It's the lockup everybody wanted to see, these two giants.
Ernie Ladd didn't come off too well on that one.
Ernie Ladd, who used to slap around the opposing offensive lines
in the Nation Football League, he was just inducted in the Hall of Fame
for the San Diego Chargers.
Man was all-pro with three different teams.
He's not gonna physically intimidate this man.
There they got... Trying to hook up Andre by the tights.
Oh, an open chop!
WATTS: Trapped there with Andre in the corner.
Which has got to be their strategy, they gotta isolate Andre.
Where they can try to go to work on him.
And take some of his size and strength away from him,
and certainly in that aspect there's three against one.
And I gotta say three big men.
Not one of those men under 300.
The Giant just flat pulling the one over the top rope from behind into the ring.
Just walking out with him.
They can't stop him, he's like a big freight train.
Look at that man, look at that awesome power.
BOYD: Using all parts of his body!
WATTS: American Dream is out there showing
the style that made him a world favorite.
Last week we saw a momentous occasion from the fans on Mid-South.
The actual signing of the contract from Dusty Rhodes,
made Mid-South his exclusive booking agent,
and since then, Grizzly Smith said the phone has rung off the hook.
Vince McMahon of Madison Square Garden, Joe Blanchard, San Antonio, Texas.
Jim Barnett and Paul Jones of the Omni in Atlanta.
The Baba group out of Japan.
All the major... The Inoki group.
All the major promotions around the world
have called Grizzly Smith to start getting availability on Dusty Rhodes.
Ernie Ladd chopping Dusty in the trapezius area.
Dusty tags the Junkyard Dog.
Dog, that's one thing right there.
Dog gonna get out as much of Ladd, break him down as much as he can.
JYD.
There is the man right there that is the fastest rising Superstar on the horizon.
He's already captured all of North America by storm.
And he's the next Superstar, megastar, international star
in the wrestling scene, he's already grown into that stature,
and we here at Mid-South have got to watch him develop along these lines.
The Giant's got the Samoan!
The referee down for the count, Ernie Ladd in from behind.
That should be a disqualification right there.
But I don't think any official's gonna call it.
Both the Samoans are getting on the Giant. They're slamming him!
Took every ounce of strength they had,
but they got the Giant down with a lot of trouble.
Ernie Ladd is still the legal man in the ring.
Ernie Ladd trying to put the Giant...
What a feather in his cap if he could pin the Giant.
You know, the one thing the reason the Giant keeps gravitating
to the Mid-South area,
it's the only place he and Dusty Rhodes were ever beaten as a team.
It was in the Superdome.
The Giant blasts Ernie Ladd, and Rhodes...
It's filling up in there, it's breaking down.
Giant's pulling Ernie Ladd back into the ring.
Dusty and Dog have got rid of the Samoans.
We got a double back drop.
Ernie Ladd! And the Giant's climbing on the ropes.
I don't even know if they'll hold him.
And that's a giant splash off the ropes on Ernie Ladd.
(BELL DINGS)
BOYD: And what a splash!
And it's a victory for Andre the Giant,
Dusty Rhodes and the Junkyard Dog
over Afa and Sica and giant Ernie Ladd.
A dream match and what a dream match it was, Bill Watts.
We'll have more great action coming up,
right after this important message from Mid-South Wrestling.