[1993-03-06-USA Wrestling] Junkyard Dog and Boris Zhukov

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

JYD has been hospitalized and is undergoing therapy. They show a clip of him visiting the Dothan Boys Club, then he comes out for a promo and he is presented with a "Big Brother Award" for being such a great hero to young people.

 

Then they show a clip of him winning a match the previous week, but after the match Boris Zhukov attacks him with a piledriver on the floor.

[benj]

The piledriver was crazy because Zhukov tries to get him up, can't, but they do the spot and JYD looked like he hit hard. And the Big Brother trophy gets smashed for good measure.

[shoe]

I thought this was well executed. Was JYD saying USWA to the kids at 1st and not USA wrestling.

[Kevin Ridge]

I thought they were going to botch the piledriver with Zhukov struggling to pick up Junkyard Dog. Instead Dog looked to get his head slammed into the floor. Ouch.

[PeteF3]

An angle as old and basic as wrestling itself, but pretty well-done. I don't know what's up with Boris' Rick Steiner headgear, though.

[WingedEagle]

Clips from last week of JYD at a boys club, then in studio to get an award, then the finish of a JYD squash and being attacked by Zhukov afterwards. Zhukov delivers a completely unintelligble promo.

[soup23]

JYD as an ace huh. I got to say that the novelty of this USA is starting to wear off with all other promotions in the US having consistently more engaging stuff for me.

[garretta]

A promotion where the main feud is JYD against Boris Zhukov had zero chance in 1993, no matter how well the feud was set up, They tried their best, and JYD still had his charisma from what we saw of the Boys Club clip, but there had to be either a younger heel or a heel whose gimmick wasn't hopelessly outdated to put him against. They could have turned Idol heel, for one thing. He was an older guy, but he wasn't a fake Russian juicehead whose gimmick had been obsolete for almost four years.

 

Yes, JYD was saying "USWA" instead of USA Wrestling at first, but he corrected himself eventually. It's not all that hard of a mistake to make, especially if you've spent a lot of time wrestling in Memphis like JYD had.

 

JYD took a hell of a bump on the floor, but Boris didn't look like much of a warhead trying to lift him and failing.

 

Boris has the worst, most unintelligible Russian accent I've ever heard. He's definitely someone who should have stayed American by birth and been a turncoat instead of trying to pass himself off as an actual Russian. The only time he's understandable is when he (almost) drops the accent completely and sounds like an American named Jim Nelson.