Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Tully Blanchard vs. Dusty Rhodes

On Wednesday February 17, on AEW Dynamite they announced that Tully Blanchard would be returning to the ring in a six man tag match teaming with FTR against Jurassic Express.  That kicked off another Tully Blanchard kick for me on the WWE Network.  Thanks to their extensive library there are hundreds of Tully Blanchard matches to watch.  One thing that stood out to me was how many matches that Blanchard had with Rhodes that are available on the WWE Network.

I checked out cagematch.net and found they have listed 256 matches between Tully Blanchard and Dusty Rhodes.  This includes singles matches and tag team matches, war games, and ect.  However I do happen to know that this is not correct.  I bought the Rise and Fall of CCW: Carolina Championship Wrestling from Highspots.  It's a 5 disc set about the promotion that ran in 2004 - 2005 and this set features three matches putting Tully Blanchard against Rhodes and cagematch only has one of the matches listed.  So I can bumped that match total up to 258 matches.

However if you add the five times that Blanchard wrestled the Midnight Rider, it brings their match total up to 263 matches.  Another thing to consider is that all but four of these matches took place between May 1984 and August 1988.  

The first time they were in the ring together was on January 3, 1982 at the annual two ring battle royal in Houston Wrestling.  Their first singles match was May 24, 1984 on Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling in Greenville, South Carolina with Tully walking out with the win.  Their last match was on November 19, 2005 for CCW in Spartanburg, South Carolina where both men fought to a no contest for the vacant CCW Heavyweight Championship.

They fought in many differ stipulation matches including cage matches, War Games, Lights Out Texas Tornado, Bunkhouse, Lights Out Tag Team Steel Cage, If Tully wins Rhodes must leave town vs. $10,000 of Tully's money, Texas Death, Lights Out match, multiple Barbed Wire matches, First Blood,  Bullrope, Indian Strap, Chain strap, no disqualification, I Quit Steel Cage, Lights Out Barbed Wire Ladder Match, and more. 

They also feuded over the NWA World Television Championship and NWA National Championship, and had matches for the NWA World Tag Team Championships.  

There are a couple very big moments that stand out between the two outside the ring.  On the December 28, 1985 edition of NWA World Wide Wrestling Blanchard fires Baby Doll slapping her in the face and Dusty makes the save for Baby Doll.  

On the March 26, 1988 episode of NWA World Championship Wrestling Magnum TA had returned from his career ending car crash cutting a promo when Tully came out and laid out Magnum.  Dusty made the save and with a baseball bat wen to town on Blanchard finishing the segment choking him out with the bat.  It was pure violence.  

Incidentally Tully Blanchard's last singles match was on August 10, 2007 at the NWA Legends Fanfest in Charlotte, North Carolina against Dustin Rhodes.  

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Until next time!!

3 comments:

  1. 263! Thats gotta be a record right?! Consider my mind blown!

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  2. Does anyone remember the match where Dusty made an entrance to wrestle Tully and he had Tully’s name written on the sides of his head. Seems like I remember Dusty shaving the hair above the tops of his ears and wrote Tully with a marker? Long time ago!

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    Replies
    1. I believe that was the First Blood Match at the Great American Bash

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