A Samoan drop later and three seconds later, Albano had a championship team once again.

The Samoans seems so unstoppable, no tag team could beat them, not even two good singles wrestlers, like Santana and Putski could beat them.  Only two champions could beat them.  Enter WWF Champion Bob Backlund and Intercontinental Champion (and former World Champion) Pedro Morales.  They met these two tough savages at the same Shea Stadium Showdown where Sammartino was taking on Zbyszko, and defeated the Samoans for the belts.  However, the WWF Championship committee ruled that they could not keep both belts, and rendered the belts vacant once again.  A tournament was set up, and The Samoans proved good enough to make it to the finals against Garea’s newest partner, Rene Goulet (who was a high flying babyface at the time).  When the dist cleared, The Samoans were champions for the second time.

But Garea soon found another partner in a Canadian up and comer Rick Martel.  They meshed well together, and finally at a house show at the  Philadelphia Spectrum they upended The Samoans for the belts in controversial fashion.  Garea was getting pummeled in the Samoans’ corner before finally making a tag, and Martel cleaned house (in what is the first and only time I ever heard an announcer use the term “Bonzo Gonzo”).  A pier six brawled ensued, and Martel hit a sunset flip on one Samoan while the other Samoan pinned Garea, and the referee counted three.  The match was awarded to Garea and Martel based on the fact that Martel was the legal man.

In case you’re not doing the math, babyfaces at this time seemed to consistently hold the tag titles for about four months, while heel teams hold them about seven or eight months.  However, occasionally there comes a face team that deserves a longer reign.  Martel and Garea were such a team.  So after their usual four months as champions, they fell to another pair of savages, in The Moondogs, Rex and King (Randy Culley and Sailor White respectively).  The finish came when a Moondog used a bone to gain victory.  This would be on television in March of 1981.  During their reign, King had visa trouble when traveling from Canada to the United States, so he was temporarily replaced in the team by Spot (Larry Latham).  Garea and Martel received several shots at the titles, including one in Madison Square Garden with Gorilla Monsoon as the special referee.  Martel even faced Lou Albano in a singles match in Philadelphia.  But retribution would come on television when after a four-month reign by the Moondogs, Garea and Martel would reign once again.

This popular team’s second reign was a little shorter, however, when Mr. Fuji returned to the scene with a new partner in Mr. (Hiro) Saito.  I remember them as the sneakiest team I ever laid eyes on.  They would switch when the referee wasn’t looking, and clap their hands so the referee thought there was a tag.  Then in July of 1981, Fuji and Saito got their big chance.  Just as Martel was coming off the top with a cross bodyblock onto Saito, Fuji threw a handful salt into his eyes on his way down.  Saito reversed the bodyblock and a three count later, Albano’s Japanese tandem were champions.  Fuji and Saito’s main challengers were not Martel and Garea, who split up shortly after.  Instead “Chief” Jay Stongbow found a long lost brother to team up with in Jules Strongbow (Frank Hill, a mid card wrestler from the Pacific Northwest, probably worked with Don Owen).

Since I went over this feud in a previous column on the year 1982 and 83, I’m going to lightly glaze over it here.  Okay, Jay and Jules win the title in New York’s Madison Square Gardens, but the decision is reversed because the heel team’s foot is on the ropes and the titles are held up.  They have a return match on TV where the Japanese team throws salt all three of a best of three falls match.  Strongbows protest by not letting any more matches occur on the show until they are granted a rematch and win the belts in Allentown in October of 1982.  The funny thing about the whole scenario is that when it happened, I remember the announcers saying the Strongbows were not recognized as champions after the initial win in MSG, but today they are readily recognized as two time champions.

Anyway, Albano would be denied for long, so he brought back the Samoans to defeat the Indian team when Jules is Samoan dropped for three.  The Strongbows received a rematch on TV, but failed to deliver the belts back home.  This seemed to be a last hurrah for the Chief, and I believe Jules fell back into obscurity for the remainder of his career. 

I’ll finish up the history of the WWF’s tag titles by taking them from the Samoans to this site's ending timeline of 1989.  Only six years, but the six years that are the freshest in my memory, so I’ll be able to offer more detail that previous installments.