garretta
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This is the type of beatdown I was calling for last week, and the sides are finally where they should be, at least for most of the fans (there are still a few Snowman supporters out there, but not many). Lawler must be back in face mode, because he actually gives Spinks credit for hitting him hard, although Spinks isn't even on offense for the short bit of the match we see. Pete referenced up above what a comedown it is for the man to beat Muhammad Ali to not only have to work a wrestling match as a heel, but to be bailed out by a wrestler. I would add to that being a throwaway in your own match, as he'll now be forgotten about as quickly as he came in. He's certainly not talked about today in the same terms as some of Lawler's other famous non-wrestling feud partners (Andy Kaufman, Adam West, and William Shatner, just to name three). I don't recall seeing any other Snowman matches on the set, although I know he keeps the belt and wrestles for the USWA throughout the summer. Was this a case of him simply not having good enough matches to be included, or was this more a case of Lawler (as always) remaining the focal point of Memphis wrestling whether he held a belt or not?
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The server ate my first try at this one, so here we go again. Lawler sure does have a beef, as Michael St. John (who I assume was filling in for a vacationing Dave) says. This should have been his face turn, if only to spare us that absurdity they so laughingly called a promo from Spinks. The biggest problem isn't that he's inarticulate (though he is) or that the camera people make him look worse by jump-cutting every time he makes a mistake (which they do; I counted six distinct cuts, which has to be a record), but his false teeth, which he doesn't seem to know how to talk with. My mother sounded way different when she wore hers because she wasn't used to them, and it was noticeable. Well, it's even more so with Spinks; they're distracting visually, and they turn a man who isn't the shiniest spoon on the table to start with into a total moron. Who could possibly cheer this man except out of pity? They should have turned both him and Snowman heel with a post-match beatdown and stuck Ronnie P. Gossett in his corner to do the talking. If they didn't want to do that, have Snowman cut the promo for him. Something, anything. They also miscalculated by having the screwjob be so obvious. Lawler didn't do a thing to justify Spinks attacking him, and even the crowd at the MSC was booing Spinks. Unless we missed the part where Lawler had been in Spinks' grill for part of the match (which we very well could have), there was no reason at all for him to get physical. A crowd which should have been rooting for Spinks to pound Lawler into hamburger meat was mixed at best, which just adds another strange chapter to this whole saga, as I don't think a boxer in a boxer/wrestler confrontation has ever been booed even lightly. The whole point of having a boxer as a referee is to beat up the heel, after all. It should be interesting to see who the crowd favors in the upcoming clips we have of Lawler/Spinks; after that, we finally get the Lawler face turn we should have gotten months ago, if what I've read is right. They're just lucky Lawler's so revered that the fans will stick with him no matter what; in most promotions, a face turn delayed this long for such an obvious hero may not have been enough to prevent business from going in the tank and staying there for a long while.
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If I'd been basically beaten by two guys, one of whom is barely a wrestler and the other of whom hasn't been a relevant boxer in twelve years, I'd have been whining just like Lawler, if not even more. So a feud that started out as a worked shoot over race relations in Memphis as it relates to the USWA turns into Lawler against Leon ever-lovin' Spinks? Somehow it figures, but I'm still disappointed. (I know he's not in the particular match referenced here, but he still screwed Lawler at the last Evansville card to set up the upcoming bout, so my rant's still on point.) I know they probably did this at least in part for some scrap of mainstream publicity, and Leon Spinks is still a famous name since he beat Ali, but I'd be asking if I was a believing fan whether Snowman really wanted to seriously change the political structure of Memphis wrestling or if he just wanted to get up Lawler's nose like Andy Kaufman way back when. Whatever his motive, he's up the King's nose now all right. Off to see now just how big a trainwreck Leon really is. What I've read so far doesn't sound promising.
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Nice video here, as Jeff seems to be coming home soon. With three hot feuds ahead of him in Texas, Dad could afford to bring him home to add some depth to the face side. Weren't they trying to push Jeff in Texas as "Simply Irresistible" earlier in the year? He's an odd choice for a chick-magnet babyface, despite his rugged good looks. They must have done this video twelve to eighteen months before, judging by the presence of Bigelow and the Stud Stable.
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It's a testament to Lawler's continued status in Memphis, even as a heel, that he's the one chosen to deliver this message. How many other dyed-in-the-wool heels got to do anti-drug messages?
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As Cox said, this match seemed more traditional than the others; most of the shoot aspect of the feud was gone now that Snowman had made up with Eddie Marlin. All three Memphis heel managers at ringside for Lawler? We didn't see any explanations for this in the buildup, and it seems like major overkill. I know Bruno had been scouting Lawler, and Gossett's appeared with him before, but what possible explanation was there for Reggie B. Fine? I didn't really catch Kerry's performance until well after the fire had been thrown by Lawler, but not wanting to count a pinfall for your biggest rival after you're pretty sure he'd just thrown fire (whether you'd actually seen it or not) seems perfectly natural to me. As for his movements, the man had a prosthetic foot and was most likely higher than a kite. You expected Baryshnikov? I'll be interested to see how they can possibly get three more weeks of matches out of this. Fairly or not, Lawler has dominated the series, and this is usually about the point where he moves on, even when he's lost the title during a feud.
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Not quite your standard heel Lawler promo, as he works the analogy about the melting snowman into his spiel expertly, along with bringing out the fire extinguisher. I like the fact that they used a green screen for this; it really heightens the effect. Kerry being the guest referee is treated as just as much of a big deal as the match itself. The way this looks to be set up, either Lawler will throw fire at Kerry and/or Snowman, or Kerry and Snowman will conspire to screw Lawler out of the title. Either way, it should translate into a sellout at the MSC.
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And here we go. Snowman's officially a face now, or at least as much of one as he can be, so I smell a replay of the Lawler/Cobra and Lawler/JYD feuds dead ahead. The King will no doubt begin unleashing his stock lines in the next segment, and all pretense of this being anything close to a shoot will be gone. It's a shame. really. Someone should tell Snowman that you shouldn't tell jokes unless you can do it well; his line about it being humid in Memphis and Dave not giving the weather right became hopelessly snarled between his brain and his mouth and just sort of laid there. Nice to see peace between Snowman and Eddie Marlin; now maybe we won't see Eddie getting up in people's faces and acting way tougher than he should for his position and age, at least for a while.
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Another real-looking street fight the likes of which we seldom see in American wrestling. It's hard to tell who the better worker is in these bouts, because so little work, at least in the way we recognize it, is being done. They obviously want to keep Snowman around since he and Lawler are drawing so well, so they're branching him out into other guys. It's interesting that his next issue is with a fellow African-American; I know we don't see this on the set, but I wonder how Snowman is going to handle a "brother" who has a problem with him. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Lou Winston basically enhancement talent/lower midcard? Was putting him in the middle of this hot angle Jarrett's way of giving him a small push?
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This is a Texas promo, not a Memphis one. Not only is Lawler talking about Tatum, who isn't wrestling on the Memphis side, but he's doing the promo in either the locker room or the shower, which is typical of his Texas stuff. Texas doesn't recognize the Dundee/Lawler history either, so Bill really is just another insignificant opponent for the King, at least to the Dallas fans. I wonder who this "Inhuman" was supposed to be. Whoever he is, we don't actually see him wrestle on this set. Why would Lawler put Dundee over as an opponent when he's not even going to wrestle him? He's sending this "Inhuman" character to face Bill instead, so why shouldn't he have a good time burying him?
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Lawler is gold here, straddling the fence by defending the honor of the promotion in one way (by continuing to give Snowman title shots) while still wrestling as a heel (his beating of Freezer Thompson, which didn't contain one legit wrestling move). The interesting thing about all this continues to be that they have no problem essentially proving Snowman's point; Lawler's being protected from a beating on television and the loss of status that would go with it by an unusually physical Eddie Marlin and the studio security. Eddie has no fear for his own safety whatsoever, consistently poking Snowman forcefully in the chest and sticking a finger inches from his face. Presumably, Snowman doesn't beat him to death for fear of being banned from the USWA, but this makes him look like something far less than the kick-ass invading force he's being talked up as, and allows Lawler to take shot after shot at him on the mic with impunity. It's becoming more and more obvious that they don't want to turn Lawler face, which making Marlin into a sacrificial lamb would undoubtedly do, so it's only a matter of time before this stuff devolves into the same old Lawler heel schtick, The only question is how they're going to get it there. (Yes, I've read some of the other threads, but even if I hadn't, it's been obvious from the start that there's a level to which they're just not going to go that would put it above business as usual. From what I've read, the Moondogs feud from '92, which is in no way a shoot, actually comes off as more chaotic and "real" in a wrestling sense than this stuff ever did. I can't wait to see for myself down the road.) Don't get me wrong, this was still brilliantly booked, and maybe I would have needed to be a Memphian in 1990 to feel the full impact. But as terrific as it is, it's not the game-changer some tout it as. Multiple non-workers (especially Dave Brown) would have needed to do stretcher jobs over a period of several weeks, the show would have had to be actually knocked off the air at least two weeks in a row due to the chaos (not taken off by the suits, but knocked off in the sense of technical difficulties), and some type of quasi-shoot that was even better than the ones we got would have been needed to make it that way.
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The only wrestling move in the whole match was a single-leg takedown by Snowman, but this really feels like one of the biggest bouts in Memphis history. These two guys aren't out to show off their talents; they just want to beat the living shit out of each other, and they proceed to do just that. Brilliantly done. One question: If this was a non-sanctioned match, why did Calhoun DQ Snowman? I thought non-sanctioned was supposed to mean that the competitors could do whatever they wanted because the match wasn't officially happening.
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Sorry, Loss. You're right, I must have missed the sarcasm. Thanks for the info on Tommy Dreamer, Pete. It's always interesting to see where the big stars started from and how much they had to do to get their big break.
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I have a pretty good idea just how far in the can this was: December 1, 1989, when JYD defeated Lawler by disqualification at a show in Palmetto, Florida. Interestingly enough, wrestlingdata.com doesn't list the promotion's name as IWA or anything else, so this interview may be for a scheduled show at some point in early '90 that never came off. Nothing new from JYD here, at any rate. Anyone know who did the interview?
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Now a stock promo from Kerry, if there is such a thing. He hits all the talking points about SuperClash, which is in all likelihood the only match between him and Lawler that the Florida audience has seen, and promises to be Unified champion for the last time. Considering that he's leaving for Vince soon, if he'd won he would have been more right than he ever knew. Nice to see that he's not quite as spacey as usual, either. Maybe being seen in front of a new audience inspired him to clean up his act, at least temporarily.
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Another one of Lawler's go-to promos delivered to a new audience. Sometimes it's hard to remember watching all these promos in a row like we do in this Yearbook that there were actually people who hadn't heard them before.
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Nothing we haven't heard before from Lawler, but a nice introduction to him in a new setting. Lee didn't look too bad when he was the ring announcer at Mania 2 in Los Angeles with no mustache, but the clean-shaven look doesn't do him any favors here whatsoever.
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Oh, lighten up, guys. This is one step above high school gyms and flea markets. You expected Mean Gene Okerlund or Gordon Solie? Dawna does what little she does as best she can, and Madison is inoffensive. Does anyone know if he made it big, or at all?
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Considering where he ends up and what he ends up doing not too long from now, Cox, I'll take these promos as they are and be glad. Still, it would have been nice to see more than one of Tony's matches so far during this run. (That's not a criticism of Will and Loss, by the way; knowing how much they love these promos, I'm sure that if more than one match had been considered worthy of inclusion, we would have seen it.)
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This works because Atlas is so good, but it would work even better if we knew who the hell he was talking about.
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The best part of this is Percy selling the hot sauce as a weapon. He says it's the hottest sauce he's ever tasted, and even when Travis comes down with a wet towel, he says it won't do Jarrett much good. Heel, face, or whatever else, Percy's the best commentator USWA Texas has at the moment. Yes, the one-on-four business was a bit overboard, but I think they were going for the hot sauce being a shocking development, and they couldn't have done that with a prolonged beatdown. Besides, Jeff should be able to fight four ham-and-eggers like these off, at least temporarily. Another tremendous angle from USWA Texas. No other promotion out there has so many legitimate top-flight angles going on at one time currently, and the size of the promotion makes that achievement even more remarkable.
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Another great promo from Percy. It's kind of a shame he's becoming Paul Bearer soon; while the character definitely fits with the Undertaker, it basically ruins him as an effective promo, with the cartoon-creepy voice and the constant death puns. If Taker had been any less over than he was, the Paul Bearer character might have ended up as one of the prime examples of wrestlecrap. Just as an aside, it's easy for a promotion to hype a match as the last between two given competitors when both of them are leaving within a week or so, like Kerry and Borne are.
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Again, Toni outshines Chris on the mic, although I liked Chris detailing the injuries that he and Toni have suffered at the hands of Austin and Jeannie, Like I said earlier, it's the girls who have made themselves into the attraction here, and I'm not sure that's really what Jarrett wanted, but he's wise to go with it. Craig again smiles through the whole promo, and while it might be justified this time, he's done it so often it adds nothing to the effect. Maybe they could have at least made Percy the interviewer, though he seems not to be working in the booth this week, as he has a promo in the next segment. I enjoyed Chris dealing with the Austin heckler and apologizing for shouting so much. Little touches like that remind us that wrestling's best when it's at least mostly spontaneous.
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I'm surprised that some of the raunchier stuff made TV. Austin gets himself bleeped here, which is a nice bit of foreshadowing for Stone Cold later on, and Jeannie turns up the innuendo as much as she dares, which is guaranteed to draw heat in conservative Texas. I liked the references to Stallone, but I don't think that was actually her in the picture with him. Craig kills the mood by smiling through the whole thing. Honest to God, wasn't there anyone else they could have used? Take Percy out of his angles and make him the full-time play-by-play guy, for heaven's sake. Anything but this guy, who's actively hurting everything you're trying to accomplish on a weekly basis.
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Another great promo from Dundee. Being able to work with different people and in different types of angles seems to have energized him, although his absence from home base in Memphis is one of the major things that's dragging business down there. I guess Percy's still a babyface except against the Von Erichs. Or, as someone suggested in an earlier thread, is he back to being a babyface temporarily because Craig isn't there? This feud needs a few promos from Tessa, even if they're short. As great a talker as Dundee is, I'd still like to hear her feelings on what's been going on lately.