[1995-07-15-USWA-TV] Rock & Roll Express vs PG-13 / Interview: Rock & Roll Express / Mark Curtis and Lance Russell / Interview: PG-13

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Finish of the match from MSC. Morton eats the pin and Mark Curtis ends up handing them his boot for a post-match attack, which sees the Rock & Rolls with Mark Curtis kicking ass. Pretty nice post-match beating, and I wish we had more complete matches from this feud. Scott Studd and Brickhouse Brown try to make the save and don't get very far, and Lawler and Brian Christopher finally run them off. Hales juices, and the Rock & Rolls should have had a major league heel run at some point. Had they stuck around in 1988 JCP when the audience had grown tired of them, that would have been the perfect time for it. To make this even more awesome, we get lots of STILLS after the fact and they sell this as a serious, hardcore angle.

 

Back at the studio, Russell is doing an outstanding job selling and explaining this entire angle. "Mark Curtis, you are no head referee, you are a thug!" This makes the case for him as the best wrestling announcer who ever lived.

 

We cut to a dim-lit promo of the Rock & Rolls and Mark Curtis. Again, Curtis can cut a solid heel promo, and Ricky Morton is outstanding. They hype a Texas Death Match coming up. Morton is just so focused and angry and I can't say enough for how good he is in this.

 

Now, we go back to the studio and Mark Curtis tries to snatch the mic from Lance Russell's hand, which Lance doesn't take to that very well. They start to get physical, with Russell about to throw a punch! PG-13 comes out to run Mark Curtis off. We get a really somber PG-13 promo. Both are great, with Jamie Dundee doing a really serious, fired-up, almost Dusty-esque promo. Russell tells them that if not for Dave Brown and Randy Hales, he wouldn't have come back, so this is really hitting close to home for him.

 

ALL of these guys are such professionals who know who they are and what they're doing, and this is just fantastic -- taken all together, it's one of the best hype jobs for a match I think I've ever seen.

[Tim Evans]

It's a shame that the rematch between the two teams never happened cause Morton no showed. He was so great in this with his promos. I liked when he went "you can't win by Knocking the ref out, USWA ref" and Mark Curtis goes "of course". Just the timing of that is spot on and funny. Then you have Lance Russell who puts this over like no one else could. Liked his confrontation with Curtis. Even Dave Brown wanted a piece of him. The Randy Hales bladejob was just brutal looking. I liked how Corey Maclin of all people tried to save him from the attack.

[PeteF3]

The full match (or nearly full) is absolutely awesome as I recall, on the level of their Louisville bout. A standout performance by Robert Gibson (!) again. Here we just get the finish of PG-13 regaining the tag belts and a LONG post-match beatdown. Mark Curtis hands a spur off his cowboy boot to Ricky Morton to bust up Randy Hales and he drops legs on referee Bill Rush, while Gibson uses his high position in the ring to head off PG-13 and Brickhouse Brown. Hales is eventually stretchered out (the EMT yells at the cameraman to turn the thing off in a nice touch).

 

Russell reports back in the studio that Hales looked like he was in "some horrible car wreck" with ultra-high blood pressure just to sell this angle even more. Lance puts over how the Rock 'n Rolls have been unable to adjust to a new era where PG-13 are a more popular team--it's like 1990 Sgt. Slaughter! Fantastic work from Lance. His balance between explaining the angle and his righteous disgust for their actions is stupendous. Mark Curtis cuts a promo comparing decrepit old fossil Lance Russell to "that old Indian in the commercials." The entire USWA--heel and babyfaces--are upset over the injury to Hales, which Curtis finds amusing. Eddie Marlin has now phoned up Bob Armstrong (a conversation I'd love to hear) and a Texas Death rematch is set for Monday. Great promo by Morton putting over the match stips.

 

Lance declares that Smoky Mountain Wrestling is a HAVEN for outlaws. Now Curtis is out and they immediately take steps to make this look unplanned--shaky cameras, Curtis yanking the mic away from Russell and Lance swiping it back, etc. He and Lance almost get into a fight(!) before PG-13 run Curtis off. Wolfie cuts a very serious promo putting over what Randy Hales does for the company.

 

The quality of the USWA has dipped quite a bit since 1990, but they've proven on multiple occasions this year that they can hit it out of the park when they have to.

[ajtroma]

One thing I loved about this particular segment was how Lance shifts the tone of the whole feud. It was first a rivalry between two top teams. It suddenly became very personal. Also, not overtly called upon was that now PG-13 would have to finally grow up. They're not the skinny little weasels from 1993 or the gutsy, white-meat babyfaces barely scraping by. They would have to become men or else they (and the whole USWA) were going to get eaten alive.