White Boy Problems

The Heels take control when Reed illegally knees Taylor.

Here are scenes from a fun Squash Match recently uploaded to the NWA Classics website.  That’s a monthly subscription website I joined for about $10 a month that posts rarely seen old-timey wrasslin’ matches from the 1970’s and 80’s.

In this Tag Team battle, Ernie Ladd and Butch Reed square off against Terry Taylor and Sonny King.  The fun begins when our eager blond hero, Taylor, floats gracefully across the ring, preparing to bounce off the ropes, only to be dropped by a surprise knee to the kidneys.

Reed spikes that Face right into Ladd's size 13 boot.

In front of a heated Texas audience, the big thuggish Heels proceed to brutalize young Terry Taylor.  They yank him around by the hair, put their hands all over his body, double-team him, and generally disrespect him.  Here Taylor’s face is driven into the sole of Ladd’s boot — a symbolic (and painful) humiliation in which Taylor is basically forced to kiss the black daddy’s foot.

What the hell, Reed?!? YOU are not the legal man in the ring!

Taylor’s partner is a large, powerfully built stud named Sonny King.  His opponents are also both large, powerfully built slabs of beef.  Taylor stands out as the lone white boy.

When I saw Taylor enter the ring among these Mandingo Warriors, looking young, blond, Baby-Facey, white, and cute, I thought to myself: Really?! I wonder which wrestler is gonna end up playing the Face-in-Peril?? (I actually did NOT wonder about it — I knew right away Taylor was gonna suffer a whipping.)

A handful of hair enables Reed to perfect his aim.

If there is one body-part on Taylor that these Heels target for abuse, it might be his hair.  They constantly and repeatedly grip his blond locks in their fists, dragging him to his feet, tossing him out of the ring by his mane, holding him steady with a hair-pull in order to jack him in the jaw.

One gets the sense they may be obsessed with the feel of white guy hair.  Maybe they’ve never touched hair so flaxen and silky before — at least not on a man — so they enjoy entangling their fingers in those pretty long locks.

Reed shakes his ass, nearly inciting a Klan rally.

The Heels do a great job controlling Taylor while also stirring up the audience with some arrogant antics.  Down in Texas in the summer of 1984, you probably didn’t see many black guys get away with Finger Jabbing a white dude in the throat, and then shaking ass over him with some jive dancing moves.

But Reed and Ladd have the fans’ number, and Taylor plays along nicely by acting submissive, helpless, and totally compliant — frustrating the audience even more by refusing to assert any hope of domination, power, or mastery over his Overlords.

I forget who wins this match — I only paid attention to the long torture scene in the mid- to late-stretch when Ladd and Reed inflict whatever degrading and painful moves they want on their helpless blond Baby.

I think maybe Taylor finally reached the hot tag and his partner Sonny King stormed into the ring and cleaned house.  And later I think Taylor may have tagged back in again only to fall for some dirty trick and suffer the humiliating pinfall.  You can subscribe to NWAClassics if you want to view the whole match and see who wins.  Or just keep skipping to the Face-in-Peril part of the match like I usually do.