[1993-11-20-SMW-TV] Heavenly Bodies vs Bruise Brothers

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes. One of them goes after Cornette to choke him and Pritchard saves him with a chair. Finally, Cornette hogties him to the ringpost while he's out! Cornette pushed himself too much. There, I said it. He finally breaks free and brings a board to the ring to help his brother out and the SMW mayhem continues.

[El-P]

Barely decent, but that is to be expected with the Bruises. Man, this guys had a good look but they were so uninteresting in any other way. A bunch of big boots are their only semi-decent looking offense. The Bodies bump a bit but there is just nothing to bump of really. Cornette's intervention is goofy but why not ? I don't care for this program, just like I don't care for the Moondogs showing up. This is right with the other terrible teams that ended up in ECW later. No interest in that kind of lame brawling.

[Kevin Ridge]

I do not think Cornette got his Boy Scouts badge for Knot Tying.

[PeteF3]

Ron (or Don) absolutely CREAMS Del Ray with a board to end this, which is the highlight. Cornette tying Don (or Ron) to the ringpost probably sounded better in the booking meetings than in execution.

[GSR]

The twins are no longer coming out to the ‘Immigrant Song’ so a clear indicator they are now faces. After Prichard and one of the twins start fighting on the floor, Cornette gets involved and nails the Bruise Brother in the back with his rack. He doesn’t register the shot and turns his attention to his ex-manager. The distraction allows Prichard to hit the twin with a chair and then Cornette ties him to the ring post with some rope (although this was a struggle). The Bodies double team the other twin in the ring whilst Cornette gets some shots in on the tied up brother. He eventually frees himself, heads to the back and returns with a piece of wood that he breaks over Del Ray and Prichard’s heads. Despite the Bodies double teaming the twin inside the ring for over 90 seconds, it is only when the Bruise Brother uses the piece of wood does Mark Curtis call for the bell.

 

I know it's almost sacrilege to criticise him but Mark Curtis really comes across as an idiot in an awful lot of the stuff that I have watched on the TV sets. This was a nothing match although there was nothing wrong with the match itself, it was there to just build for the ‘gang fight’ series on the Thanksgiving Thunder tour.

[garretta]

Magnum has it nailed on Mark Curtis. You'd think a proponent of old school as Corny supposedly is wouldn't want his refs to look like they're incompetent or, worse, deliberately on the take, but he certainly looks to be in Mama Cornette's pocket here. The worst part is, I don't think there are now, ever have been, or ever will ​be any other refs in this promotion, so we have about two more years of this guy. I know he was well-loved by the boys, and I know he died way too young, but I'm not looking forward to this.

 

The bigger issue is Corny tying Ron (I have to give them one name or the other; if I'm wrong, who's going to know?) to the post. It's not the tying that gives me trouble; it's the dragging. Someone as wimpy as Corny's supposed to be simply shouldn't be dragging a three hundred-pound man around like he weighs three pounds. If he wanted to do this spot, he should have called Brian Lee (to name just one possibility) out from the locker room to help him, then ​tied Ron's ankle to the post. Either that or have Don trap him in the ring while the Bodies took care of Ron outside. Either way would have worked, and how Corny didn't think of one of them I'll never know. If he thought of and rejected both, shame on him.

 

I've said this before, but for all his bluster, Corny's getting just as hardcore and farfetched in SMW as his old friend Heyman is in ECW. The difference is, he thinks it's cool because he's doing it with guys seventies and eighties fans would remember. Well, so is Heyman at this time. But Heyman set ECW apart by discovering and pushing new guys and becoming a legitimate part of the national wrestling landscape, while Corny and his old-schoolers stayed in Tennessee and went out of business. Corny has trouble dealing with that, so of course hardcore is wrong and evil, as is making hash out of the "established rules" of wrestling. Never mind that in November 1993, Corny's actually neck and neck with Heyman in the "Disrespect the Business" derby.

 

Watching Corny pull his Lou Ferrigno act distracted me from almost everything else, but I liked Dutch criticizing the Bodies for trying to hit fancy moves that had no effect on the Harrises. The man continues to bring intelligent, insightful commentary to SMW, and even though JR coming in in '94 will be a good thing overall, they're still going to miss Dutch (and Bob Caudle, for that matter) like you wouldn't believe.

[soup23]

Decent enough action but the Bruise brothers are so sloppy and not in a good reckless way like the Moondogs. I agree that the hog-tie spot sounded probably great on paper but was pretty clumsy in execution. The board shot to Jimmy Del Ray was brutal. I am kind of ready for this feud to be over.