They came back and immediately started feuding with the Mid-Atlantic Tag Team champions in Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood and for months these two teams had one of the greatest feuds ever and as 1983 was on the horizon, the feud would become greater. 

1983 started out with Slaughter and Kernodle riding high as NWA Tag champs, but Steamboat and Youngblood were knocking on the door as they got some big wins in matches against the champs, but didn’t get the belts. This feud had to come to head and it did on March 12^th 1983 in front of 16,000 fans in Greensboro, North Carolina as Jim Crockett ventured for the 1^st time in closed circuit television as Slaughter & Kernodle vs Steamboat & Youngblood were co-main eventing the card along with Ric Flair vs Greg Valentine. The match would be held inside a steel cage and if Steamboat & Youngblood lost, they vowed never to team again. The match was a grueling matchup as all 4 men were battered and bloody and they worked their asses off to make it a match to remember and Steamboat & Youngblood pulled it off and won the NWA Tag Team titles. Then throughout the month of April on the house show circuit, the stips reversed and it was Slaughter & Kernodle vowing never to team again if they lost and they lost every time and their final match as a team happened in Richmond, Virginia on April 30^th 1983. Soon thereafter, both Slaughter and Kernodle jumped to the WWF. 

In 1984, Slaughter returned to JCP for one night only as he wrestled Ricky Steamboat on Ricky’s “retirement” tour in Charlotte, North Carolina and of course as Slaughter was working for Vinny Mac there would be no clean job, so Slaughter knocked down ref Sonny Fargo and Steamboat hit his top rope splash and Slaughter pinned forever, but Myers called for a DQ. Also in 1985, Slaughter made one more appearance for JCP as he teamed with Don Kernodle & Magnum T.A. to take on The Russians (Ivan & Nikita Koloff and Krusher Khrushchev), but after the match, Sarge went back to the AWA for good. 

NEXT MONTH:

We will look at the “Pearl Of The Orient” The Great Kabuki and the impact he made on the Mid-Atlantic area.