[1993-07-10-USWA-TV] Jerry Lawler vs Brian Christopher

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

It's scary how much Christopher looks like Lawler here. At first, I thought it actually was him standing in the ring. Lawler's music plays for a long time before he finally comes out. I smelled an angle, but nothing. Paul Neighbors is the ref, which Lawler objects to since he's scheduled to team with Christopher in an upcoming match at MSC.

 

He does a half ass job of checking Christopher before the match, counts especially fast when Lawler is outside the ring, overlooks hair pulling and accuses Lawler of pulling hair after a clean takedown until Lawler finally loses his temper. He brawls with Christopher and bumps into Paul Neighbors. Bert Prentice shows up with a chain, which Lawler gets away and uses to punch Christopher.

 

Finally, Vampire Warrior (Better known as GANGREL) comes out to attack Lawler from behind and attacks Lawler, which they actually make kind of a scary angle because he starts biting Lawler's forehead until he draws blood! Scotty 2 Hotty makes a cameo as Scott Taylor trying to make the save. Chaotic! I was kinda hoping after all of this, the ref would come to and count a pin, as that would have put a big bow on this, but it didn't happen.

[BackToBionic]

Too bad Kevin Christian couldn't be the ref in this angle but I guess he was still upset after being fired by Tod Gordon.

[Kevin Ridge]

Paul Neighbors is a bit biased against Lawler during the match. Vampire Warrior is the next monster after Lawler! My favorite part of this was Vampire Warrior putting his feet up on the ropes to get extra leverage on biting Lawler.

[PeteF3]

Paul Neighbors has begun a heel turn and blatantly favors Christopher throughout the match, calling Lawler for phantom hair pulls and unclean breaks while ignoring Christopher doing the same. Christopher also has MISS SIMPSON in his corner--none other than our favorite wrestler's wife from 1990, Toni Adams! Too bad this Yearbook pre-dated 1990, because there was a whole Chris Adams/Brian Christopher feud over this that I'm sure would have been touched on more had its significance been known. After a ref bump, we get the debut of Vampire Warrior, the guy presumably behind Prentice that Lawler was talking about. He's still wearing his Black Phantom/Blackhearts gear at this point. I'd say objectively this has to be the most successful of all of the Memphis monster gimmicks. A number of jobbers try to save Lawler from the 3-on-1 (with Macklin particularly marking out for TD Steel), but to no avail.

 

Fun segment, about as Memphis as Memphis gets.

[soup23]

Not much here for me to get into as the Lawler stuff vs. WWF talent is more interesting than his stuff with Prentice and his charges. They do a decent style studio match but going through the 1990's it is clear that something never clicked for Christopher the way it did even for people like Jarrett and Jaime Dundee.

[garretta]

After the genuine off-the-charts intensity of the stuff with Bret and Lawler, the steep drop back into the regualr old Memphis bullsit was especially rough to take. This was more pf an angle extension than a match, as we join in the middle of Neighbors' heel tuen and also get the debut of the Vampire Warrior, another of Lawler's comic book monsters come back to life. Everyone worked hard hjere, and kudos to the King for bleeding on TV, but this didn't do much for me at all, especially the protracted beatdown where not one piece of main event babyface talent came out to help Lawler.

 

I take it that the "We Want Frank" chants referred to Frank Morrell the longtime Memphis referee.

 

I can't wait to get back to the good stuff with Lawler and Bret, although I seem to remember Neighbors' heel turn plays a part in that feud as well. I'm looking forward to seeing how they mesh the two storylines together in a way that makes at least a sliver or two of sense.