[1993-06-05-SMW-TV] Down and Dirty: The Armstrongs and Heavenly Bodies & Jim Cornette

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Bob Armstrong is an outstanding promo. If Cornette wasn't around, he may be the best interview in wrestling at this point. He promises revenge on Cornette from home while Cornette laughs. He explains that Jimmy Del Ray has been supporting himself while in training by acting as a gigolo. Cornette pulls out a letter from Scott Armstrong's girlfriend, "a brazen hussy", saying she will leave him anytime he wants. Scott and Steve have finally heard enough and come out and run the Bodies off. Steve and Scott actually do a decent fired up promo.

[KB8]

I agree with Loss; Bob has been ruling it huge on this set. He drops another awesome interview here, maybe the best one he's done the whole year (although I'm partial to the one where he calls Cornette a piece of Scandinavian snake feces, which makes absolutely no sense but is amazing regardless).

 

Whole segment was really good.

[El-P]

I second this too. Bob Armstrong was one of the best promos in wrestling at this time. Great stuff. Jimmy Del Ray is one the sleaziest looking wrestler ever, and he's actually pretty efficient on promos too.

[Kevin Ridge]

Dutch and Cornette are on more friendly terms now. I liked the Armstrong Ave street sign hanging up in Bob's garage.

[PeteF3]

Cornette and Dutch officially make nice, and Cornette asks to see the latest from Methuselah Armstrong. Bob cuts one of the promos of the year--absolutely spellbinding, laying out how he felt getting strung up in the cage and beaten, dropping the official tease of Brian Armstrong's arrival after his discharge, and his training regimen (ARMSTRONG AVE.) for coming back. It's so good that even Cornette's response pales in comparison, at least until they read a letter from Scott Armstrong's girlfriend (at least, the parts they can say on television.) That brings the Armstrongs out and the Bodies and Cornette bail.

[soup23]

What an awesome promo by Bob Armstrong. He starts off very calm and calculated and has controlled rage in his voice getting over his disgust for Cornette in general. The Armstrong brawl at the end was well done too. This angle has been done superbly so far.

[...TG]

As great as annoyed, put-upon SMW commissioner Bob Armstrong was, pissed-off old man Bob Armstrong is even better. This promo and the one in his backyard were both great.

[GSR]

Dutch says that although they haven’t seen eye to eye recently, it was a masterpiece the way that they got to Bob Armstrong. Cornette says that Dutch has always been cunning, devious, underhanded and dishonest and he admires a man who is good at what he does, so he doesn’t have a problem with him either. He knows that Bob Armstrong has sent another video in and he wants to hear what old man Methuselah has to say.

 

Bob is in Armstrong’s Avenue, the gym that he built over the years and where he is spending most of his time at the moment. His application to be a wrestler has been accepted and he has received the license that allows him to manage and wrestle in Smoky Mountain Wrestling. Steve and Scott have been doing the best they can against the Heavenly Bodies, he trained them in Armstrong’s Avenue and they know how to go hard and fight hard. For every lick Cornette gave him he’s going to get one back, he won’t be chained up this time and as much as he beat him, as much as he hurt him, what hurt him more was calling his son Brian a deserter. He was afraid that his son wouldn’t come back, but he did, gets out of the Marine Corps in June and that will be hear before you know it. He says that he is building an Army, he’s the general of it and is taking new recruits every day. He is working out harder and harder each day and is going to issue more pain than any human has ever had to endure to Cornette.

 

Back in the studio and Cornette says that they have already proven ‘Bullet’ Bob Armstrong is shooting blanks, he is finished and was beaten up like nobody has ever beaten him up before by Jim Cornette! His boys are totally ineffective, they can’t stop the Heavenly Bodies, his mystery team are going to run rough shot over everyone and the fact is that Jim Cornette rules Smoky Mountain Wrestling. He says that Jimmy Del Ray is the greatest natural athlete that he’s ever seen in his life, if he doesn’t rival Bobby Eaton, he bests him. He’s been training down in Florida for four years where they kept him a secret, because one day they knew they would need a secret weapon, an ace in the hole. He has been supporting himself as a gigolo there and the Armstrong women have got wind of this. Scott Armstrong’s girlfriend even wrote him a letter which he has with him today: ‘Dear Gigolo Jimmy, Every time Scott leaves the house I call you but you never answer. I will leave him anytime you say, nobody has ever **** (they’re not allowed to say that word on TV!) like you did it. I love you Gigolo’. The Armstrong’s race out from the dressing room and Cornette and the Bodies flee the ring. Dutch does an about turn and says that he didn’t like what Del Ray just did, he thinks it’s despicable and it’s despicable what they did to Bob Armstrong too. Scott says that all Cornette and he need to know is that bob Armstrong is getting better every day and is going to be coming back to Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

 

Tremendous stuff from Bullet Bob and this brief period after Scott unmasked has been the best I have ever seen him.

[garretta]

This was tremendous on all sides. Just to show how good it was, Corny's the weak link by far, and that's saying something. Bullet Bob delivers another classic promo from his gym, looking like the scariest over-fifty man ever put on earth. Then Del Ray gets his turn, and he's so slimy and sleazy you can feel hm ooze through the screen. He does Rick Rude better than Rude ever did himself, at least on the stick.

 

Then the Armstrong brothers clear the ring, and while they're not exactly glib, they show the world just how angry they are and even make veiled threats to Dutch, which I wish they would have been allowed to act on in matches. This may be the single best talking segment SMW has done since its inception, and that covers a ton of classic promo work from some of the best guys to ever pick up a mic.

 

Was Corny actually thinking of using Brian in this feud somehow once he got home? I don't remember him wrestling, but I could swear that he acted as a cornerman for his family at least once in a big match of some sort.

 

Hype is hype, but I hope Corny realizes how high he's set the bar for Jigolo Jimmy by comparing him favorably to Bobby Eaton.

 

The letter was a masterstroke. Corny knew that his same old stuff would fall flat on the heels of Bullet Bob's brilliance, so he devised the letter as a new way of getting heat on himself and the Bodies by slandering Scott's girlfriend. It certainly snapped the crowd back to attention, as some of them sounded for all the world like they were ready to rush the ring until Scott and Steve beat them to it.

 

Dutch does his typical two-faced gladhanding once he realizes he's all alone with the extremely angry Armstrongs, and it's a treat to see that side of him again. He does it better than any heel I've seen try it, including Bobby Heenan. He's mastered the art of sounding sincere even when everyone in the arena knows damn well that he doesn't mean a thing he says. No wonder Corny loved working with him so much.