[1993-03-06-SMW-TV] Tracy Smothers vs Dirty White Boy

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Dutch Mantell is just SOOOO good, probably the best announcer in wrestling in 1993.

 

Excellent, double-juice match with a great finish. It's mostly brawling, but they sell it well enough and the camerawork and announcing is good enough that there's a lot of drama.

 

For the finish, Ron Wright gets out of his wheelchair when the ref is distracted and hits Smothers with some type of foreign object, leading to a DWB pin.

 

Really good, my favorite SMW match so far.

[Cox]

White Boy and Smothers work really well together, wait until you get to their chain match at the Bluegrass Brawl. One of the best matches of that type that I've seen.

[shoe]

This was a great SMW t.v bout. These two have a lot of chemistry together in the ring. The finish was great here.

[El-P]

Best SMW match I've seen thus far. You can do that much with a bunch of punching if you punch and sell well. Blood, drama, a build to a really awesome finish that took me by surprise. Just great stuff.

[Frankensteiner]

I didn't really think this was that good at all. The build in the match was pretty weak and there wasn't any real progression to their work. Other than the standing punch exchange, all the spots in the 2nd half of the match could have been done in the first and vice-versa without making much difference. Plus the selling and transitions seemed a little spotty and arbitrary. They flew through the 2nd part of the match too fast without creating much drama.

[Kevin Ridge]

I’m with those who really liked it. Brawling looked good and both guys end up bloody. I loved the finish with Ron Wright jumping out of his wheelchair to clock Smothers. Wright showed great agility backing into his wheelchair after and holding his chest like he was going to have a heart attack.

[PeteF3]

Very good, intense, heated brawl with a great, great shocker of a finish. Completely deflated the hot crowd, but the fact that Wright had stayed planted in his wheelchair for a year and a half makes the climax so much more important.

[WingedEagle]

Now this is punching and brawling I can get behind. Dirty White Boy is busted open and bleeds a lot. Smothers got a hell of an offensive run to start this one out until missing a dive which opens things up for White Boy to bloody him up. Just love the sight of these two bloodied and throwing punches and bombs at each other. It doesn't produce a classic or anything, but this is hot and at the high end of what they're going for. This feels like a great way to jumpstart and build a feud coming off of what feels like a non-finish waiting to happen. After Smothers hits a superkick and jawjacker, White Boy distracts the ref which lets Ron Wright get out of his chair for the first time and KO Smother. AWESOME

 

***1/2

[soup23]

I can't believe people don't like this match. I am really conflicted on a star rating as I thought for what it was and what they were trying to accomplish, it was flawless. The escalation seemed there to me with the blood and dazed selling. Sure, the match was all punches but the punch attacks were so varied and crisp that I remained completely engaged. Add to that a fabulous finish with Ron Wright being healed and you have one of my favorite matches from watching all of these sets. I can't wait for the rest of this feud if this match is any indication. ****

[Robert S]

Mantell had a great line: "My contacts just fell out, I did not see anything." (about Ron Wright raising from the wheelchair and interfering into the match) - did Bobby Heenan ever use that one?

[GSR]

This comes across more of a fight with Smothers out for revenge after what has gone down previously between the two of them. Tremendously heated brawl and they get so much out of just exchanging punches with one another. Smothers puts a beating on the White Boy early and bust him open after ramming him into the ring post. Anthony ducks a crossbody and the momentum turns. Wright distracts the referee and the White Boy throws Smothers over the top rope to the floor, before hitting him with the title belt and busting him open as well. DDT from Anthony that Smothers kicks out of, small package from Smothers and the White Boy kicks out. The two continue to exchange punches, just trading back and forth with each other. Smothers drops Anthony with a double ax handle off the top for another near fall. Splash in the corner, super kick and Smothers again ascends the turnbuckles. Jawjacker and both men are down. The Dirty White Boy grabs the referee THEN RON WRIGHT GETS UP OUT OF THE WHEELCHAIR, WALKS OVER TO THE RING and nails Smothers with some brass knux knocking him out. Anthony covers him for the three and retains his title. Bob Caudle says that Wright got out of the wheelchair, he was walking! Whilst Dutch Mantel claims to have lost his contact lens and wonders what happened.

 

Excellent ending and amazing that for over a year we've been led to believe that Wright is confined to that chair and can't walk. Really interested to see how Wright explains this one or if the chair will now be a thing of the past (I can half imagine him claiming it was a miracle or something!). Great dramatic match, heated and given plenty of time too (which is a bit of a rarity with these TV matches). Good stuff!

[garretta]

This might be one of the best TV matches of the decade. Usually, we get a bullshit finish in featured bouts like this, and we do here too, but in this case it's literal, as Ron's found to be full of the aforementioned. Even though I knew it was coming, he's played his "pathetic old man with a thousand and one ailments" character so well that to see him walk perfectly normally and have enough balance to nail Tracy with the knucks was still a legit shock. I can't remember the last time an angle was paid off quite this exquisitely. The only false note was Dutch, as he pulled the old blind heel announcer routine. I would have much preferred him to say something like "Hallelujah! It's a miracle! Ron Wright can walk, ladies and gentlemen!"

 

The match itself was one of the fiercest brawls I've seen in a TV match, as both men juiced and threw so many great punches that it was hard to keep up with them all. I don't believe we saw a hold for the whole bout, just high-impact strikes, and that includes the flying bodypress that Tracy missed. I'm sure we'll see a few holds from these two before their feud's done, but the brawl we got here fit perfectly after what Tony did to the Stars and Bars.

 

Even though it didn't make the set, I'm glad to see that Dutch is back in the ring. SMW should have used him as a wrestler more than they did, and I wonder if they didn't let him wrestle more because if he did, the only experienced color guy they would have had available on a weekly basis would have been Corny.

 

I'm sure that Dutch and Tony had crossed paths a few times here and there before arriving in SMW, but I'd have laid down good money to see them in a heel vs. heel series for the SMW title.

 

Just a suggestion twenty-three years after the fact: Since Tony was playing a durned supposed Yankee from New York in this feud, they should have let him come down to a recording of Steve Kamen's "I Love New York", which (as some of you may remember) was the theme of New York State's tourism commercials for about ten years beginning in the late seventies. (I would have suggested "New York, New York", but Sinatra's version is such a classic that the song itself may have drawn cheers even though a heel was using it.)

 

I can't wait to see the next chapter in this feud, which is most likely the Tennessee chain match at Bluegrass Brawl. If this match was the appetizer, the main course ought to be out of this world!