His question was answered by a powerhouse of a masked black man with a familiar brawling style. The masked man loaded his mask and laid out DiBiase.

The next week, DiBiase's championship partner went after Lee, but had not much more luck. DiBiase interfered and got the mask off, to reveal a guy who looked a lot like Porkchop Cash. Just then, another Stagger Lee ran in, and the Rat Pack ran off.  Stagger Lee said he was there to avenge his childhood acquaintance (whose milk money he used to take). DiBiase, of course, insisted the mask covered only the face of the Junkyard Dog. Lee had proved to be a thorn in the sides of the tag-team champions, eventually wresting the North American championship from DiBiase. DiBiase and Borne decided to try something that had worked before -- the loser-of-the-fall-leaves-town match, with DiBiase and Borne putting up the titles.  Lee chose a genuine wrestling icon as his partner -- Mr. Wrestling II. The two made up what was, for all intents and purposes, a Mid-South dream team.

Unfortunately, the dream would not come true. Skandor Akbar's new acquisition, Kamala, had been on something of a quest for masks. During a match in which the Rat Pack ganged up on Tony Atlas, Mr. Wrestling II came out to make the save. Kamala soon came out and II held his own for awhile, but the Ugandan giant got the drop on the masked legend as he was chasing Kamala's handler, Friday.  The end result was a Kamala splash off the top rope that left Mr. Wrestling II in no condition to team with Junky -- uh, I mean, Stagger Lee.

Lee had to choose another partner, and went with the man who had been robbed of the titles alongside JYD -- Mr. Olympia. Another substitution had led to a defacto rematch of Borne and DiBiase's title win. Ring announcer Reiser Bowden even announced the challengers as the former Mid-South tag-team champions.

The match started off with a donnybrook, and did not slow down much or last long, as each team took full advantage of the no-DQ rule to wreak havoc on the other. The brawl was underway when Hacksaw Duggan again interjected himself. Duggan ran in as Olympia was getting the better of DiBiase with the sleeper. Duggan jumped up on the ring apron, wearing a helmet that had brought him more than one illegal victory. DiBiase, still in the sleeper, pushed off, driving Olympia's head into Duggan's helmet. Three slaps of the mat by referee Alfred Nealy, and the Rat Pack had once more used nefarious tactics to win the day.

Soon after Mr. Olympia's enforced 90-day expulsion from Mid-South began, JYD's was up. This time, the Mid-South dream team of JYD and Wrestling II would be challenged by the champs, who appeared to by the contracts of a couple of prelim guys (one of whom was Marty Lunde, who later gained some notoriety as Arn Anderson) and take their places in the match against JYD and II. The heroes quickly overtook the Rat Pack, but the match degenerated into chaos as Lunde and his partner ran back into the ring and attempted in vain to overwhelm II and JYD by sheer numbers. The two teams were not done with each other, but before they would meet again, DiBiase and Borne would face their biggest challenge to date.

Literally.

DiBiase and Borne found themselves defending the belts against Tony Atlas and Andre the Giant, who manhandled the champs to the surprise of exactly no one. Even DiBiase's loaded glove could not put the giant on his back. The Rat Pack's reign appeared to be crumbling, when fate intervened, once more in the mammoth form of Kamala.  The Ugandan giant attacked Andre, slamming him and leaving him bloody. Andre swore the revenge that he would extract at live shows around the horn, but DiBiase and Borne had weaseled out of justice once more.

The rematch between Borne & DiBiase and II & JYD was a back-and-forth battle, ending when Hacksaw Duggan attempted once more to save the belts for his allies. This time, the good guys had an ace up their sleeves as well -- Tiger Conway Jr. Most Mid-South fans had last seen Houston favorite Conway in a losing North American title effort against DiBiase, who planted him with the illegal glove. Conway was eager to be a fly in the Rat Pack's ointment and proved to be just that, as the referee went down and Duggan went to charge JYD and Conway met him with a chair. Soon, however, Kamala joined the fray and the referee threw the match out.

Conway was not finished with the Rat Pack, however. Soon, he would join Mr. Wrestling II as the next challengers for the belts.  The first encounter in early 1983 between the two teams was a non-title affair, with II's growing enmity for Mr. Olympia distracting him. Mr. Wrestling II said during Olympia's absence following his pinfall loss in the loser-leaves match that the vandalism of his masks had stopped. Strangely, the incidents resumed when Olympia's 90-day forced absence ended. II attacked Olympia after seeing his desecrated masks in Olympia's suitcase, but Olympia swore his innocence.

The non-title match was a thriller, ending with a Wrestling II pinfall over Borne, after Conway prevented Borne from using a chair after referee Alfred Nealy was knocked down. The crowd exploded into chants of, "Two! Two! Two!," but the masked hero seemed more concerned with the apparent actions of Olympia.

The champions would have II's full attention, however, when the two teams met again on March 12, 1983, in Houston, the night Ted DiBiase and Matt Borne ran out of tricks and lost the title after Conway took Borne down for three with a victory roll.  The title loss proved to be the beginning of the end for the Rat Pack. Borne teamed up with both Duggan and DiBiase to fire a few more challenges at the new champions, but was soon out of the area. Olympia proved not to be as innocent as he had claimed, and the masked man soon joined forces with the nefarious Skandor Akbar.

The remaining two parts of the Rat Pack split when DiBiase joined Akbar as well. Duggan had a problem with the allegiance, hinting at a relative who perished in the attempt to free the American hostages in Iran, home country of former Akbar charge the Iron Sheik.

As for DiBiase, he was not done with the tag titles by a long shot. About a month after losing the titles, he regained them over II and Conway, this time with Olympia as a partner.  In the end, Borne was gone, but the legacy of the Rat Pack would be a bloody war between its two remaining members that waged on and off for the next two years.

NEXT MONTH:

Our Rat Pack tale continues, as DiBiase and Duggan wage war on each other, with Akbar forming the wedge between them.