SMW Ongoing Thread

[Dylan Waco]

Random aside kinda, but thinking about it I'd say SMW was EASILY the best in ring promotion in the States in 95:

 

Thugz v. Bodies

Jannetty v. Snow

RnR's v. Unabomb/Snow feud

Gangstas v. Thugz from Carolina Memories (my U.S. MOTY)

Landel v. Michaels

PG-13 v. Thugz

Landel v. Smothers

New Southern Boys v. Gangstas

Morton v. Snow

The Final Shows Six-men

 

Lots of good shit there. Maybe five matches in that group that would be in a U.S. overall top ten.

[Tim Evans]

Really? I thought 95 had way too much Cornette and lots of bad gimmicks like Sgt. Rock and the Wolfman. It's like Jim was involved in every match and the commentary was really bad. I did like the stuff with the RNR and Thugs vs PG13 though.

[Dylan Waco]

Really? I thought 95 had way too much Cornette and lots of bad gimmicks like Sgt. Rock and the Wolfman. It's like Jim was involved in every match and the commentary was really bad. I did like the stuff with the RNR and Thugs vs PG13 though.

Edited in a list.

 

I think you could make the case 95 was the worst year for their tv.

 

Match quality wise they had a really strong year though, and considering how down the rest of the States was that year I think it jumps them a good bit ahead of the pack

 

Then again I've seen very little 95 USWA

[Cox]

I'm looking forward to seeing this '95 greatness. The only SMW show I've really seen from '95 was the Superbowl and a couple of early TVs before Candido left, but I too have heard the reputation that '95 SMW wasn't that great, so now I'm intrigued to look at it with a new outlook. Then again, I think most of what I have for '95 is TV, so I might miss out on some of that.

[Cox]

Random aside kinda, but thinking about it I'd say SMW was EASILY the best in ring promotion in the States in 95:

What about ECW? I know you've stated a preference for later ECW, but ECW in '95 still had Benoit, Malenko, Guerrero, and Scorpio tearing it up for all or part of the year, and the Gangstas carried TPE to probably their best ever brawls and Cactus carrying Sandman to some good brawls too. Plus, for whatever shit Raven deservedly gets for being lousy, '95 was probably his best year. As you've said, wrestling domestically wasn't exactly lighting the world on fire in '95, but ECW was a much fresher promotion than death knell era SMW, even if SMW had some gems at the end of their run.

[Dylan Waco]

I think SMW was better in the ring than 95 ECW. 95 ECW did have some really good stuff, but a lot of it is overrated. Scorp's best year was 96, Benoit really didn't do much of note there, Malenko and Eddy had each other. I just don't think the best stuff is comparable to the best SMW stuff in terms of depth

[WrestlingPower]

"Death knell" SMW as you call it really was short lived I think. Sure the TV production values had fallen and the announcers too seemed like it was getting down to whoever they could have drive in for cheap, but talent didn't start to fall off until right before the end. I remember everyone was extremely excited coming off the Super Bowl/Fanweek shows. SMW historically cooled off in Sept/Oct due to back to school time & heated things up for Thanksgiving Thunder. 95 was notable for Snow & Unabom leaving in Aug along with the cool down. It really wasn't until the use of Wolfman, Sgt. Rock, Cornette vs. the midget etc. in building Thanksgiving that things started to look rough. Even the good stuff they had at the time seemed kind of stale as the only "fresh" talent they had at that time was Brad Armstrong coming off years of being buried on WCW TV. In hindsight, Cornette had to know the end was probably near & he couldn't afford the TV clearances much less bringing in high priced new talent. They were even going to have an interpromotional feud w/ a Knoxville indy if the promotion had gone a couple months longer.

[Matt D]

Random aside kinda, but thinking about it I'd say SMW was EASILY the best in ring promotion in the States in 95:

What about ECW? I know you've stated a preference for later ECW, but ECW in '95 still had Benoit, Malenko, Guerrero, and Scorpio tearing it up for all or part of the year, and the Gangstas carried TPE to probably their best ever brawls and Cactus carrying Sandman to some good brawls too. Plus, for whatever shit Raven deservedly gets for being lousy, '95 was probably his best year. As you've said, wrestling domestically wasn't exactly lighting the world on fire in '95, but ECW was a much fresher promotion than death knell era SMW, even if SMW had some gems at the end of their run.

 

There was a lot to like about 95 WCW. It just wasn't necessarily on the PPVs/A Shows. Just a great tag division with Blue Bloods, Bagwell/Patriot, Lightning Express (then Armstrongs), Slater/Bunk, Austin/Arn (for a month or two at least), Harlem Heat, Nasties, Southern Posse, Pillman/Badd (then Pillman/Arn or Benoit).

[shoe]

What Meltzer said about the Gangstas in the current back issue of the Observer.

 

 

 

Having caught up on the videos the past few weeks, one thing is really obvious. The Gangstas didn't work. Forget politically correct, a phrase that has nothing to do with wrestling, this is a business about making money. Nine times out of ten when a company reaches too far, either out of desperation or inspiration, it turns off more fans than it turns on. When I watch the Gangstas TV matches, all the heat these guys were supposed to be getting is disguised as silence. When I saw the title change match from Knoxville, it looked like Ricky & Robert were leading two independent guys through a watchable, but not heated nor exciting match. Live attendance since they've been on top speaks for itself. Nu Jack can talk really well, but his interviews don't hit you in the gut and aren't going to sell any tickets. Neither he nor his partner can garner anything but basic heat from their ringwork, even working with Ricky Morton who is one of the all-time masters. Although he gets no credit, the one who is doing the good interviews in the feud and almost totally carrying it is Morton, and obviously that isn't close to enough. In the ring it's obvious the two aren't ready for main events. Mustapha isn't even ready for opening matches. The race card didn't work, probably because this gimmick was 100% the race card with no substance backing it up and not two guys who were ready for main events that also happened to be black and played upon that as a gimmick. This situation is going to come up again in wrestling and if there is criticism, people will start screaming about people are trying to make wrestling politically correct and again miss the entire point of the argument. Not always, but in most cases, it just doesn't work because the audience isn't as backwards as it needs to be for race feuding with no substance to be enough to draw money.

[WrestlingPower]

Interesting to read that. I'm not sold on that argument though. RnR were famous for carrying people so it could have worked regardless of how bad of workers the Gangstas were. The issue, as Cornette explained it and I totally agree with, is that people didn't want to pay to see the Gangstas get beat up. I don't think he "underestimated" racism, maybe overestimated it, people didn't want the guys in their town & didn't want to pay to see them there. They were too in-your-face with the "I'm going to move into your neighborhood" stuff as opposed to traditional heat that would get people to pay to see someone get revenge on them. Having seen the infancy of the gimmick live, it was very much cheap race-baiting, I'm going to move to your neighborhood, get with your old lady/daughter, etc. type fan baiting instead of putting heat on the babyfaces they would feud with. It was a very political time & Cornette thought they could garner attention with the NAACP, Rodney King stuff.

[Cox]

After a few month break, I've started watching these DVDs again and I'm in February of '93 now.

 

-The Stud Stable/Heavenly Bodies stuff was really well done. I'd say they did a better job building to this feud than they did building to Bodies/RnR, as they gave it a nice, slow build, with the two teams starting as friends, but since they were heels, both sides were condescending towards one another. Finally, it built to a head where both teams were looking for blood, after Cornette went all "four flat tires" on Fuller and Golden and stole their tag team title shot (and then stole the tag team titles thanks to the arrival of Bobby Eaton). I can't wait until the Pikeville brawl between these three teams, and I'm looking forward to seeing Arn Anderson in the next few weeks. For that big three team street fight, you're going to have two of the all time best promo men (Arn and Cornette), three really good, underrated promos (Morton, Fuller, and Mantell), and three decent promo guys in their own right (Lane, Prichard, and Golden). Should be good stuff.

 

-DWB/Tim Horner has winded down and it looked like they were going to go with Horner/Orndorff as a program before Orndorff went back to WCW. Now I've been watching the slow build to Smothers/DWB, first with Smothers winning the TV title tournament beating White Boy, then White Boy promising every week that Smothers would not win the $5,000 bonus at the end, then White Boy subbing Orndorff in for Paul Lee one week (in Orndorff's swan song) to White Boy finally taking out Smothers before his last match for the $5,000 bonus and helping the Nightstalker beat Smothers. Then they went with heavy heat with White Boy handcuffing Smothers to the ropes and burning his Confederate flag (and as an aside, I feel REALLY uncomfortable with Smothers handing that flag to kids in the audience to wave on his way to the ring, but that's my own regional biases I guess). Good stuff, and another feud I'm looking forward to watching conclude in Pikeville.

 

-I also liked the little mini angle they did with Reno Riggins and Ron Wright, where Wright tries to get Riggins to join his stable. First he offers him a spot, Riggins needs a few weeks to think about it, finally turning Wright down. First Wright tries to manage Robbie Eagle to get revenge on Riggins, and when that doesn't work, the Dirty White Boy attacks him and beats the snot out of him in a vicious little squash match until Smothers makes the save (another part of their slow build). Kind of a shame Riggins didn't really stick around here, as I could see him eventually meaning something, but I think he goes back to being a TV jobber shortly thereafter.

 

-Brian Lee is back, and his fired up promos on Kevin Sullivan are better than anything he was doing as the babyface champion. I just think he was in the wrong role when the promotion started off, and here as a secondary face looking for revenge, he works a lot better. Kevin Sullivan is yet another great promo guy they have working the territory.

 

Overall, good stuff, and it feels like things are picking up here. It also feels like stories are less rushed than they were in the past, like with the Horner/DWB feud or Bodies/RnR. Looking forward to continuing to watch and see how '93 progresses.

[Cox]

I've had a chance to get a few months further into my SMW watching, I'm around the end of May now.

 

-Feels like they are starting to cycle more talent in and out now. Gone are Stan Lane, Bobby Eaton (who wasn't in for long but I think he still counts), Robert Fuller, Jimmy Golden, Kevin Sullivan (as a full-timer, as I believe he works some part time shots after this), and the Nightstalker. In are Jimmy Del Ray, Steve Armstrong, Chris Candido, Tammy Fytch, and soon the Bruise Brothers will be in. With Paul Orndorff, Ronnie Garvin, and the Fantastics having left at the end of '92/beginning of '93, the only guys there from the start still around are Brian Lee, Tim Horner, Jim Cornette, and the Dirty White Boy. As a result, it's starting to feel like a different promotion.

 

-The Rage in the Cage angle with Cornette's team destroying Bob Armstrong and the subsequent promos have all been awesome. They did a great job slowly building to the point where Cornette has a problem with Armstrong over Armstrong foiling all of Cornette's plans, building to Armstrong popping Cornette over calling Brian a deserter, and then Cornette getting revenge by destroying Armstrong 6 on 1 in the cage in Knoxville. Armstrong has vowed revenge and has resigned as commissioner of SMW to become a wrestler again. It will be fun to watch this play out between Cornette and Armstrong's Army.

 

-One recent thing that annoyed me. After Tracy Smothers won the Bluegrass Brawl chain match (one of my personal favorite matches of all time), a month later they do a real bullshit finish in a Smothers/Dirty White Boy Coward Waves the Flag match (Tim Horner starts beating down Don Wright with the flag while Smothers has DWB in a submission and somehow the ref calls this a win for DWB - why on Earth would Horner wave the flag when Smothers had the advantage in the match?) and hold the title up. Now, I get that Cornette wanted to try to keep the Smothers/DWB feud going while another heel challenger was set up, but the finish came off to me as being really cheap and hurt Smothers' momentum a little. I'm looking forward to SMW building up a new heel challenger for Smothers, and while I know it's going to be Brian Lee, I wonder if the original plan was to go heel with Horner before things changed? Smothers keeps making constant references as Horner being his best friend, and then they have a little disagreement after the Coward Waves the Flag match, so there are some neon signs pointing towards a Horner turn, but it never happened. I wonder why it was scrapped, other than Horner would have needed a strong heel manager to pull it off. For that matter, I wonder if another tag team fell through before Cornette got the Bruise Brothers to come in to feud with the Rock 'n' Roll - he keeps talking about how his new tag team has been on TV, cable TV, network TV, etc, and as far as I know, the Bruise Brothers had not yet had a run with either WWF or WCW by this point.

 

-I like the addition of Jimmy Del Ray to the Heavenly Bodies. I had forgotten how good of an athlete he was. It kind of felt to me like Stan Lane was going through the motions towards the end of his run (and don't get me wrong, going through the motions Stan Lane vs. the Rock and Roll Express is still good, but it also felt a bit stale). Looking forward to their matches with the Armstrongs.

 

-Chris Candido and Tammy Fytch have done some promos on TV, and it reminded me of something said in the Yearbook threads about SMW being a promo territory. I think it's true, and as a result, both seem stilted on promos when they first come in, with all the great promos all over the territory. That said, I know from experience that both will eventually become pretty good promos, and I think that's because SMW was such a good promo territory, and there are so many good promos in the territory that it's almost impossible not to become better (well, if we pretend that Tim Horner is still a horrible promo). It will be interesting to track their improvement over the next few months.

 

-Random observation: did Kevin Sullivan bring Taz to SMW so he would have somebody shorter than him in his stable?

 

That's where I'm at for now. Looking forward to the summer with Cornette/Armstrong, Smothers/Lee, Candido/Horner, Armstrongs/Bodies, Rock 'n' Roll/Bruise Brothers (if anybody can have a good tag match with the Bruises, it's the Rock 'n' Roll, right?), and DWB/Bobby Blaze (mostly because I look forward to just about anything the Dirty White Boy does). I'd say this looks to be just about the high point of SMW coming up, and it's a slow decline after DWB turns babyface (not that it was his fault, just that everything around the company seems to fall apart after the face turn for whatever reason), but still looking forward to watching it all, as the 1995 Yearbook thread makes it sound like there's some good stuff even as SMW is dying.

[El-P]

-Random observation: did Kevin Sullivan bring Taz to SMW so he would have somebody shorter than him in his stable?

When Woman managed the Sullivan/Tazmaniac team in ECW, I swear she looked taller than both of them, wearing high heels and all.

[Cox]

-Random observation: did Kevin Sullivan bring Taz to SMW so he would have somebody shorter than him in his stable?

When Woman managed the Sullivan/Tazmaniac team in ECW, I swear she looked taller than both of them, wearing high heels and all.

 

She may very well have been taller than both without heels.

[WrestlingPower]

I was at the match where Tim Horner "waved" the flag by beating up Don Wright. I really don't remember much about the match but don't remember it hurting momentum or anything. I do remember they were planting seeds for Horner/Smothers and they may have had a match in Morristown or something. I'm thinking Cornette addressed this in one of the Q&As. My guess is Horner didn't want to turn, I can't remember, I just know that by the end of 93 Cornette was coming up with creative ways of using him (I think he had a couple different masked gimmicks).

 

I always look back on 1993 as the peak of the promotion, particularly Bluegrass Brawl.

[Cox]

I was at the match where Tim Horner "waved" the flag by beating up Don Wright. I really don't remember much about the match but don't remember it hurting momentum or anything. I do remember they were planting seeds for Horner/Smothers and they may have had a match in Morristown or something. I'm thinking Cornette addressed this in one of the Q&As. My guess is Horner didn't want to turn, I can't remember, I just know that by the end of 93 Cornette was coming up with creative ways of using him (I think he had a couple different masked gimmicks).

From watching the TV, it just felt like they had good momentum with Smothers as champ, and the finish just came off as a way to create a rematch and keep Smothers/DWB going. Not that it mattered, since Smothers was ultimately only a transitionary champion, but it felt like they built to this one big moment with Smothers winning the belt, and then a month later, they're holding the belt up.

 

It definitely felt like they were building to something with Horner and Smothers. They spent a few weeks teasing it, with Smothers always calling Horner his best friend (when they hadn't really done anything on TV before that to establish them as best friends), which smelled like a turn was coming, but it never happened. I think it's ultimately for the best, as heel or face, I think Horner would have been bland as a top heel, and turning Brian Lee heel wound up giving him a direction he had lacked since the Sullivan feud ended and gave him a personality he had lacked, period. It felt abrupt for a SMW turn, though, but I guess that's because Tony Atlas had decided not to come in (and probably made a smart decision, at that).

 

I always look back on 1993 as the peak of the promotion, particularly Bluegrass Brawl.

So far, 1993 has definitely been better than 1992 (which I also enjoyed). The TV format can get repetitive with all of the squash matches, but the good promos keep things moving along and there's usually at least one decent TV match and clips of other matches that look like they were pretty fun, so I'm enjoying it.

[goodhelmet]

The new SMW set will be released later on tonight so keep an eye out for it in the trading forum.

[Cox]

You'll have money from me at some point this week, in that case. Crap, I've already watched almost two years' worth of TV, why not add this set on top of it as well?

[goodhelmet]

The new SMW set is ready for pre-order. Check the trading section for match listing.

[Kevin Ridge]

Excellent. Ordered this one. I really have began to appreciate SMW more and more thru these yearbooks. Looking forward to this overall set.

[shoe]

This is from an Observer In August of 93. Meltzer does a solid job summarizing SMW.

 

 

On the positive side, no promotion in the country has as high a percentage of good workers. The television, despite having virtual no production budget as compared with the big boys, as is good as any around. No promotion can touch SMW for the quality of interviews from top-to-bottom. And at least based on three shows this past week that I attended, from top-to-bottom SMW puts on the best consistent house shows in the country. A Friday night show at an old red brick high school gym in Morristown, TN was, for heat and match quality, as consistently good quality as any PPV show thus far in 1993 besides the WCW SuperBrawl. A Monday night television held at a middle school in a coal mining town somewhere in the hills of Virginia before 300 fans was more entertaining than any WWF taping held in the Bay Area in the past eight years. From a spectator standpoint, the wrestling ring they work in is the best in the country, and leaves one confused as to why WWF and WCW can't or don't build a comparable ring. The key seems to be the amplified noise level that impresses the audience with every bump. On the negative side, fans watching the first hour of the taping were hit with so many angles that few were able to remember them all. The promotion also uses more groin shots per capita than any promotion I've ever seen. Without exaggeration, there must have been close to two dozen on Saturday night in Johnson City, TN.

[Cox]

I'm pretty far along into 1993 now, and I'm really digging the Dirty White Boy babyface turn. It's really the first major face turn in the company (the Bruise Brothers turned around the same time) and it's handled very well. It's a slow progression where DWB starts off as a heel who's unhappy with Brian Lee and Tammy Fytch for collecting a bounty that he feels he earned, and three months later, Wright (who had been storyline kidnapped by Lee and Fytch) climbs out of the wheelchair to make a save for DWB only to get laid out by Lee and carried out of the building. Somehow, the promotion has the two most vile, evil motherfuckers in the company for the first two years of the company's existence (save for MAYBE Cornette) and managed to make both of them sympathetic thanks to a series of masterfully laid out angles. I think it will be hard to imagine another storyline done better here.

 

In a nice touch, none of the other babyfaces have embraced DWB yet, notably Tracy Smothers, whom they are making a big deal to note that he doesn't trust DWB. I assume that Smothers is seen as a surrogate for the fans, who might be willing to cheer DWB over the more hated Lee, but may not yet be ready to get behind him completely, so when the time comes and Smothers DOES accept DWB, the fans can get behind him completely. Really good stuff.

 

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how much better Brian Lee is as a heel than as a babyface, and how much Tammy has improved over the course of six months. She seemed wooden and forced when she started, but now her promos are great, and I have to imagine that every woman fan in the area must want to kill her. And Tammy's Tips are a must-watch segment every week! Add Chris Candido to the improved category too...his promos felt a little stilted when he started here, but now his promos are a highlight of every episode.

[goodhelmet]

When we talk about great SMW tag teams, we often forget about the Candido - Lee team. Granted, it may be the benefit of working with the Rock N Roll Express but I think they are represented as much, if not more, than the Gangstas or the Thugz or the Stud Stbale who are given credit for being really fun teams in the territory.

[Cox]

So I've been watching the SMW TV and I got to thinking about Chris Candido and Tammy Fytch. Every week I watch them, they get a little bit better. Tammy's first promos were a little wooden; now, she feels like a strong main event manager, no easy task in a territory that has Jim Cornette and Ron Wright. Chris also felt a little wooden at first, but eventually owns the "real world's champion" gimmick and elevates the crybaby gimmick and makes that work in ways a lesser worker wouldn't. His matches look better every week, too.

 

That said, it's sad to me in ways to watch them knowing how things turn out. Tammy turned 20 in 1993, Candido turned 22. Yet after they leave SMW, they'll never be quite as good elsewhere as they are here, and their WCW run in particular is quite embarrassing. Tammy would become a star in the WWF for a very short period of time, but flames out hard, develops a serious drug problem, gains weight...she is all but out of wrestling before she even turns 30 years old. Candido never became a star, develops some of the same problems, and will never celebrate his 40th birthday.

 

I don't want to make it sound like I'm not enjoying them, because I have enjoyed their work a lot, and suspect I will really enjoy them in 1994 as I assume both will continue to improve. At the same time, it's hard not to feel bittersweet about it knowing Tammy peaks before she can legally buy a drink, and knowing Chris will never quite get the opportunities his talents should have gotten him. At the very least, he should have lived long enough for Punk or somebody to go to bat for him and get him a trainer's job in FCW. It's a damn shame, but I guess that's the wrestling business.

[Loss]

I have enjoyed quite a bit of SMW, especially in 1995. I encourage people to get the new set and not let any of my criticism make them think it isn't worth their time. But I do still think these things are worth discussing.

 

Cornette's on screen role is I think my biggest problem with SMW. I'm not fond of how strongly he positions himself. He doesn't sell as much as I think he should for wrestlers. He does sell for wrestlers and he takes bumps, but he's a non-athlete taking shots from a professional athlete and living to tell about it a little more than I'd prefer. He gets right back up. He also interjects himself in things like the Snow/Unabomb team for reasons I don't understand, because Snow was coming along as a promo and the feud was doing well without his involvement. I don't think he did it for ego reasons. That's not really Cornette's style. I think it's more that he's a control freak and thought doing it himself would be better than trying to convey to someone else what he wanted. But he booked himself too strongly.

 

There's also the lack of clean finishes. I understand wrestling was different in those days and it wasn't so much a case of screwing fans out of a winner and loser. But that's partially a copout, because Mid South had plenty of clean finishes, probably proportionately way more than SMW. The matches often times felt overbooked, with too many ref bumps and run-ins. I mind screwjobs much less than most, but I still thought it was excessive.

 

If you can get past that, there are some great things worth checking out. Buddy Landell did some of the best promos I have ever seen, especially one where he talked about his addiction to drugs and alcohol in the build to the Michaels match at Superbowl of Wrestling. It's a GOAT promo. There's a Cornette promo at home in a neckbrace walking through a series of upcoming house shows that's so perfectly done and textbook that I think it should be studied by new wrestlers. The Rock & Rolls/Snow & Unabomb feud is one of my favorites and produced some of SMW's best matches, angles and interviews. I absolutely loved it. I have never seen Kevin Sullivan used as well as he was in early '93. And no one in wrestling history has been more suited for their role than Bob Armstrong was suited to be SMW commissioner. I have seriously become a huge fan of his just based on his SMW commissioner role alone, and I would consider him worth the price of admission.