[1993-04-02-SMW-Bluegrass Brawl] Heavenly Bodies & Bobby Eaton vs Rock & Roll Express & Arn Anderson vs Stud Stable & Dutch Mantell (Street Fight)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

All the pre-match promos are excellent, but this is the best part:

 

Dutch: "Let me say something. I came here today on pack mule. I went through boats, ferries, walked a while, I hitchhiked, I stole a car, I got kicked out of a motel restaurant and a newspaper office, all today before I got here, so you can say I'm not in a real good mood." Awesome!

 

Okay brawl, but pretty disappointing and aimless for the most part, sadly. Arn's DDT train toward the end is the best part.

[FLIK]

Couldn't remember a thing about this match, actually completely forgot I even had a copy until seeing this thread today.

Decided to give it a re-watch and I thought it was pretty good, little aimless for the 1st 1/3 to 1/2 or so, reminded me way way too much of those Gangsters matches from ECW a few years later but I thought it got better as it went on and became a bit more focused.

 

Bobby Eaton completely stole the show for me as he does a bunch of goof ball shit like wrestling with a tire wraped around him and getting his pants pulled down.

[FLIK]

BTW what was the backstory on The Studd Stable's involvement in this?

 

Cornette's team vs Rock & Roll needs no explanation, Studd Stable vs Rock & Roll I get just on the basis of good guys vs bad guys.

 

What was the beef between the Studd Stable & Cornette's team though?

[Cox]

The Bodies had wrestled the Studs in a #1 contender's match and the Studs had won, but when it was time to get their title shot, the Studs had four flat tires and the Bodies stole the title match and beat the Rock 'n' Roll for the belts.

[shoe]

I thought this was a pretty kick ass brawl.

[El-P]

little aimless for the 1st 1/3 to 1/2 or so, reminded me way way too much of those Gangsters matches from ECW a few years later but I thought it got better as it went on and became a bit more focused.

Word. Got more focused after the Studd Stable left, simply because it's easier to work a focused match with less people in the ring. Dr. Tom bled a gusher.

[Kevin Ridge]

Fuller who has a funny grin on his face is lifting weights in the background during Dutch promo. Poor Eaton loses his pants and needs partner Lane to help pull them up. Gibson and Eaton try to turn this into a scaffold match by randomly climbing up the back of a basketball hoop. I don’t get Pritchard’s loaded knee brace since it was over his thigh and was nowhere near to hitting Gibson. A bit too much going on at times with so many guys involved and not a great brawl by any means.

[PeteF3]

The greatest array of pissed-off southern redneck interviews in the history of our sport, is how I think an old DVDVR review put it.

 

I saw this on a tape in 1995, before I'd seen any ECW, and I thought this was the most mindblowing thing I'd ever seen at the time. It's not exactly mindblowing now, but I still liked it. Not to get all Meltzer here but this did come off as something incredible at the time, and it still stands out in the context of the Yearbooks. I continue to mark out for wrestling moves in the middle of chaotic brawls, so the big spots that stood out were Robert Fuller busting out the Fuller Leglock and the Bodies raining down on Robert Gibson with repeated rocket launchers. Arn clears the ring with a fire extinguisher(!) and then DDTs all three Bodies in a great moment. Prichard steals the win by strapping on a loaded kneebrace and hitting Gibson with a knee off the top as he was busy figure-fouring Cornette. The Tennessee chain match didn't last very long as the best SMW match.

[WingedEagle]

Loved the pre-match promos from Studd Stable with them doing bicep curls, then hearing from RNR & Arn. Great stuff. Pritchard remains my favorite promo in the Bodies group. Crowd is really hot for this, with even a strong face pop for the Studds. Say what you want about the horrific mini movies, but I am most bitter towards 1993 WCW for Stealing Robert Fuller. Dutch working Pritchard with his whip, Lane using a garbage can lid, there's so much happening its kind of tough to follow. Fuller whipping people with his belt. Garbage can, singapore cane, tire around Eaton's neck, just chaos. Fans pelting the ring with trash. Eaton hangs Gibson. Lots of juice, especially Pritchard. Dutch goes after Cornette but Pritchard saves. Gibson pins Fuller to eliminate the Studds in an awful booking decision. Bodies with a pair of rocket launchers onto Morton, but Gibson saves. Arn in with a fire extinguisher and DDTs all 3 Bodies. Gibson figure fours Cornette but Pritchard hits him with a supposed loaded knee and the Bodies win.

 

How can Cornette dump on ECW when this is what he's doing? Tough to rate as a match, but a fun spectacle and probably great fun live.

 

***1/4

[soup23]

Different from most comments here in that I thought this started out hot and then kind of staggered to the finish line. The pre match promos were great and set the stage. The match itself was hectic at the beginning and a ton of fun with plunder and weapons shot mixed in. Once they scaled up the basketball goal, it kind of sputtered. I did appreciate the fact that the brawl felt really different from the chain match we previously watched. Probably one of the top SMW shows in history. ***1/2

[garretta]

When Corny's the worst promo in any set of promos, you know you've heard some good talking. Nobody really disappointed, but Dutch and Arn were the best of the lot. I especially thought Dutch was good; you can tell he's been holding back for months while he's been in the booth and is happy to be back in the ring where he belongs.

 

As for the match, I'm through the first fall, and this has been way too chaotic for its own good. I'd have rather seen a three-match round-robin series, with each combination fighting each other. It's not the fact that there are multiple guys or weapons, it may be that they needed to put a cage up and do WarGames if they insisted on having all three teams fight at once. It not only would have focused the wrestlers better, it would have done the same with the cameramen. WarGames has one more guy than this in its classic form, spread out over two rings, and yet I've never felt that I've missed anything important in those matches. The standard long shot/closeup/back to long shot doesn't cut it here, and if Corny hadn't had seasoned pros like Lance (Welcome back, Lancer!) and Les in the booth, this would have been damn near unwatchable.

 

Why did the Studs go out first? It's simple; Dutch was going back to the booth full-time, and Fuller and Golden were headed for Atlanta. I'm surprised that they lasted over fifteen minutes under the circumstances; I might have beaten them in the first five minutes and gone most of the way with just six guys plus Corny, which would have made for an easier match to follow.

 

The finish absolutely reeked. First of all, if Gibson had a bad leg as the announcers claimed he did, why was he trying for the figure four on someone who wasn't even in the match? Lance had to cover for this bit of stupidity by surmising that maybe Corny could legally be defeated, which was bunk and he knew it. Worse than that was beating Rock 'n' Roll at all here. When you bring a special surprise like Arn, who's way beyond high school gyms in Pikeville, Kentucky or anywhere else, in as a guest on your card, he goes over. Period, no questions asked. Piper and Orndorff didn't beat Mr. T at Mania 1, whether they should have or not. Boxers always got the best of wrestlers in some way whenever possible, Ali-Inoki aside. Even Jay Leno went over in a tag match, and I'm a better wrestler than he is, even with cerebral palsy.

 

The fire extinguisher, the table spot, and Arn DDTing Stan, Dr. Tom, and Bobby should have been the finish. Use Bobby to eat the fall since he's not staying long, and have that be the end of it. But the Bodies went over so Corny could remain his own top heel, as if he couldn't regain his heat the first time he opened his mouth the next weekend on TV. For this we needed Arn? Use Tim Horner as the third guy for Ricky and Robert, or being in some prelim schlub like Ben Jordan or Tommy Angel. I'm guessing Arn didn't have a problem with this since he wrestled the match, but it really fried me. I could have understood if the belts had somehow been on the line, but the Bodies had nothing substantial to lose here except a bit of Corny's overinflated pride.

 

The more I watch of SMW, the less I like Corny as a booker. I'll always admire his verbal ability, and I can listen to him rant and rave for hours on end, but he's everything he despises Paul Heyman for with the pencil in his hand. Let's just hope he doesn't start copying (four years before the fact, no less) his other most favorite person in the world, Vince Russo.