Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling- 1990

Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling- 1990
Gair Maxwell and Bulldog Bob Brown on commentary, this show was taped outside at the exhibition in Riverside Albert, New Brunswick

1) Bobby Bass and International Champion Rip Rogers vs. Mike Lozanski and Robert Messerall
Lozanski came out of Calgary and would go on to wrestle in Mexico, Japan and briefly in ECW. He’s a young rookie here who looks great in the ring. I don’t know anything about Messerall, which I don’t know if I’m spelling right, but he’s announced from Moncton so I assume he was a trainee of AGPW. He takes the heat for most of the match, getting worked over by Bass and Rogers. Bass is moving good at this point and Rogers is just a superstar. He eventually takes the match after a DDT. Longer match then I expected but fun and there was a great promo afterwards where they are challenging tag team champions Leo Burke and Bobby Kay.

2) Rick Baker vs. Bulldog Bob Brown
I know nothing about Rick Baker. Rip Rogers was on commentary for this match, talking about his buddy the Bulldog who did a quick squash in this match. Bulldog was way up in years at this point but I remember him bringing a real presence to AGPW in its last couple years of its original run. He was all offense and took no bumps here and that’s ok. He finishes it off with a piledriver and a couple legdrops.

3) Leo Burke vs. Diamond Timothy Flowers
This match has Bobby Bass on commentary, who absolutely loses his mind when told that he and Flowers have to wait in line for a shot at the tag titles held by Burke and Bobby Kay. In a time capsule moment, they reference how Mike Tyson has to wait for a shot at Buster Douglas who will be taking on Holyfield first.
Flowers is much different from how I remember him. He was actually about 30 here and I would have thought he’d be older. They reference that before he “crossed over to the dark side” that he wrestled on the US Olympic team at the 1976 Olympic Games. A profile of him online says he was an alternate for the games. He’s pretty talented at this point, working smoothly with Burke and taking some of the better bumps I’ve seen in these shows. This was a fun match between two name guys with your traditional bad-guy beatdown followed by big Leo winning after rolling Flowers up with a schoolboy after Bass’s interference backfired.

4) Stephen Pettipas and Buddy Lane vs. Chi Chi Cruise and the Alaskan Bear with Bulldog back on commentary. I realized during this match that Bulldog sounds like Winnie the Pooh.
I remember Chi Chi from the Grand Prix comeback in the late 90’s and I saw him have a fantastic match in North Sydney with Joe E. Legend. He was a major babyface then but in 1990 he was a young heel associated with Bulldog. I checked out an article on him at http://www.canoe.ca/SlamWrestlingBios/bolton_bobby.html and it looks like he did a lot of travelling in Europe and in the southern U.S. I think he could have done really well and it’s a shame he didn’t get the chance early to tour Japan, Mexico and Europe or he could have been up there with the other great names of his generation to come out of Canada. He bumps a lot, works hard and most importantly has awesome hair. He and Buddy Lane do the majority of the work in this match, mixing it up with the two veterans in what could be part of the formula that gave the Maritimes the reputation as one of the top places to learn. Pettipas goes wild at the end of the match, finishing off the Alaskan Bear with a Fisherman Suplex, a move made popular at that time by “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig in WWF. There was a confrontation between Bulldog and Pettipas after the match, with Bulldog taunting Stephen, leading to a slap in the face for Bobby and an unaccepted challenge to take into the ring.

5) Bobby Kay vs. Butcher Vachon
My memories of Bobby Kay (brother to Leo Burke and one of the famous four Cormier brothers with Rudy Kay and The Beast) so this should be fun. This is not the famous Butcher Vachon, just the Maritime version, kind of like in the mid 90’s when people would get hyped for bands like “Road Apples” coming to town doing cover tunes of The Tragically Hip. Anyways, Bobby Kay is fun in the role of the aging veteran here and it’s like watching a comeback of one of the Harts in Calgary or one the Armstrongs in Alabama. Nothing wrong with this match, with the two of them going through their spots and then picking up the pace toward the end, with Bulldog escalating over the tag title situation on commentary until he got up and rang the bell, which of course always ends the match when done by the timekeeper but Bulldog did it on his own. Apparently this referee had no mind of his own since he declares the match a draw. Being bad guys, Timothy Flowers and Bulldog adamantly defend these actions, much like George W. Bush when no w.m.d.’s were found in Iraq.