Joseph and Colette Discuss Pat Patterson vs. Sgt. Slaughter

Can you *really* trace the influence of the 1981 Alley Fight to the modern WWE main event style?

This week, Pat Patterson and Sgt. Slaughter turned Madison Square Garden into their own private alley, battering each other with belts and boots and fists in an instant classic of pre-Hulkamania WWF bloodshed. Before joining Joseph and Colette in conversation about this match, be sure to check out their essays, and watch the match, which is in full on Dailymotion.

Joseph: Sgt. Slaughter vs. Pat Patterson Don’t Need a Referee
Colette: Pat Patterson Gives Sgt. Slaughter Everything He Deserves

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Joseph Anthony Montecillo
Going as far back as your preview to this match in our last discussion, you called it a "pretext for decades of WWE's style of main event brawl." Of course that's true in a strictly chronological sense, but I think I sort of struggle to connect this Alley Fight to a lot of what we see in WWE today. I think I have a much easier time to following that throughline to the 90s though, especially around some of the better Austin or Foley matches perhaps. Do you think the spirit of this match survived into the 2020s still? Is there a link I'm missing here?

Colette Arrand
I have watched WWE so infrequently since my professional obligation ended to it that I forget that we're in 2022, and well into an era that's built around Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns' particular strengths, and not, say, John Cena, who I would peg as someone who benefitted from Pat Patterson's knowledge and experience more directly than either of those two. In my piece, I mention that the first time I saw Patterson/Slaughter was during a WON Match of the Year watchlist project on my old wrestling forum in 2007, a few months after the Cena/Umaga Last Man Standing match at the Royal Rumble. I didn't re-watch that match in this context, but I remember feeling like I'd cracked the code on one of my favorite kinds of WWE match, to say nothing of seeing a lot of this match in Patterson's treatment of faces and heels. His influence wound down, and really this kind of back and forth brawl went out of favor when Lesnar crushed Cena at SummerSlam 2015. So it's been out of fashion for awhile, and honestly that's too bad. I love this style of wrestling and think of it so strongly as a WWE signature, so its absence feels like one of the many reasons I found myself drifting away from the company.