El-P Posted February 4, 2012 Report Share Posted February 4, 2012 Watching the full run of USA Pro Wrestling out of Knoxville from 1988. They were only around for less than a year. It was headlined by guys like The Bullet, Scott Armstrong, Doug Furnas, Mongolian Stomper, Ron Wright, Moondog Spot, Bill Dundee, Buddy Landell and other guys. Towards the end of the run, they brought in Wendall Cooley, Jerry Lawler, Tommy Rich and The Stormtrooper. Stormtrooper looked like Bill Dundee under a mask doing a nazi gimmick. He had the Swastika on his shirt, Swastika flag and even did the Hitler salute. Kinda shocked me that they did this in 88 even if it was the south. Funny thing is he was managed by Ron Wright and had Mr. Hughes as his bodyguard. I wonder what the last Nazi gimmick was in America? I know it's common in Mexico with Dr. Wagner and La Nazi.SMW had a jobber called The Stormtrooper in 1992, wearing a Swastika mask and t-shirt. It's funny because the announcers called absolutely no attention to the fact the promotion had a Nazi sympathizer working for him, he was just Joe Nazi trying to earn a living in the world of professional wrestling. He wrestled Dixie Dynomite in one of his two matches in a battle of racist gimmicks, and after losing, helped Killer Kyle attack Dixie and leave him laying, which seemed to make no sense. Anyway, this guy did not resemble Bill Dundee in stature at all so I doubt it was the same guy, even though it was the same area in the same time. Holy shit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted February 4, 2012 Report Share Posted February 4, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui2uXcAxwjI I remember loving the Taz/Jerry Lawler/Jim Ross angle from 2000 despite how silly a lot of it was and watching it back now I still really loved it. Shame they didn't get more time, but the pay off match was fun while it last and JR celebrating the shot with the candy jar was tremendous I'm a sucker for announcer angles. That one is pretty good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Waco Posted February 5, 2012 Report Share Posted February 5, 2012 Watched Onita v. Hayabusa and Onita v. Tenryu in the Barbed Wire Cages. Really interesting to see them back to back. The Hayabusa match is almost incredible in how little Hayabusa gets. To be fair it made sense from the perspective that they were trying to put over Hayabusa as someone who could take the punishment you need to take to be effective in that style and he definitely did that in the match. The timing on the big bump into the cage coinciding with the exploding ring was a bit shaky, but it made for a huge dramatic moment which was really the point of all of the big Onita FMW matches. Everything after the explosion was really good as you got Hayabusa surviving the Thunder Fire powerbombs, his rana near fall and of course the missed moonsault. Good, but not great match, though it was a great moment in a way. Still I can't imagine how anyone could have thought it was good business for FMW going forward to turn over the promotion to a guy who had just been eaten alive for the entire match by the guy who retired with the title. Tenryu match was a better match in my view despite a couple of awkward moments. Still crazy for me to see Tenryu in that setting. Him taking a head bump into the wired cage was pretty nuts in hindsight. Also was interesting to see how different this was form the Busa match as here Onita takes most of the major punishment and gets put away after a sequence of bombs from Tenryu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLIK Posted February 5, 2012 Report Share Posted February 5, 2012 Still I can't imagine how anyone could have thought it was good business for FMW going forward to turn over the promotion to a guy who had just been eaten alive for the entire match by the guy who retired with the title. No, they knew it was fucked up going in but it was Onita's show, he wanted to go out on top and no one else worth a damn wanted the death slot of having to job to him Still crazy for me to see Tenryu in that setting. Much less known but Tenryu did a crap load of death match tags vs Onita over the years, really fun stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Evans Posted February 5, 2012 Report Share Posted February 5, 2012 Watching the full run of USA Pro Wrestling out of Knoxville from 1988. They were only around for less than a year. It was headlined by guys like The Bullet, Scott Armstrong, Doug Furnas, Mongolian Stomper, Ron Wright, Moondog Spot, Bill Dundee, Buddy Landell and other guys. Towards the end of the run, they brought in Wendall Cooley, Jerry Lawler, Tommy Rich and The Stormtrooper. Stormtrooper looked like Bill Dundee under a mask doing a nazi gimmick. He had the Swastika on his shirt, Swastika flag and even did the Hitler salute. Kinda shocked me that they did this in 88 even if it was the south. Funny thing is he was managed by Ron Wright and had Mr. Hughes as his bodyguard. I wonder what the last Nazi gimmick was in America? I know it's common in Mexico with Dr. Wagner and La Nazi.SMW had a jobber called The Stormtrooper in 1992, wearing a Swastika mask and t-shirt. It's funny because the announcers called absolutely no attention to the fact the promotion had a Nazi sympathizer working for him, he was just Joe Nazi trying to earn a living in the world of professional wrestling. He wrestled Dixie Dynomite in one of his two matches in a battle of racist gimmicks, and after losing, helped Killer Kyle attack Dixie and leave him laying, which seemed to make no sense. Anyway, this guy did not resemble Bill Dundee in stature at all so I doubt it was the same guy, even though it was the same area in the same time. Holy shit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 Minami Toyota vs Kyoto Inoue Is this how you all feel watching Davey Richards matches? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 Yes, that match is pretty hard to get through. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chess Knight Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 A Davey Richards match + Toyota's screaming. Oh lord. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Making a pause with WCW, I'm filling the void of my ECW watch from a few year ago, basically the Hardcore TV that aired at the same time as ECW on TNN. Always heard HCTV was better than TNN, which was indeed pretty bad. No Joel Gertner co-hosting makes it already a huge plus. Getting back into ECW from that era sadly reminds me how much the promotion had sunk. Thankfully the Dudz just left, and Taz was on his way out (couldn't stand Taz as babyface ECW champ). Hopefully not too much of Balls will air on HCTV. And I get to see more Tajiri which is always pretty awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cross Face Chicken Wing Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 EDIT: Post deleted. Wrong thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KB8 Posted February 9, 2012 Report Share Posted February 9, 2012 Working my way through some stuff on the Mid-South set again. Butch Reed came out of that set the first time as my all-time favourite wrestler behind only Eddie Guerrero, and re-watching some of the '84 stuff over the last week or so, I'm reminded why I became a huge mark for the guy in the first place. A lot of peoples' eyes were really opened to Chavo Guerrero thanks to the set, and I went and tried to seek out a bunch more Chavo after watch it all myself, but watching the Guerreros/Fantastics match from 10/12/84 last night makes me want to go and watch a ton of Hector Guerrero from around this time as well. I remember his singles match with Buddy Rose on Will's Rose comp being a lot of fun, and I've seen some other bits and pieces from elsewhere (the Hector part on the Memphis Extra Extras discs was awesome), but there has to be more out there worth tracking down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregor Posted February 9, 2012 Report Share Posted February 9, 2012 The title of the video I just watched is "Buff Bagwell in blackface 7/19/99," and there really isn't anything that I can add to that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Waco Posted February 11, 2012 Report Share Posted February 11, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUDrII1ABx8 Tenryu/Kitahara v. Koshinaka/Kimura This was a launching pad for the WAR v. NJPW feud. Tenryu does the least in this and is still easily the star of the match as his facial expressions and posturing are really something to behold. I don't know if I've ever seen anything quite like his performance here. Koshinaka is a much better heel than face and does a great job keeping the insanely hot Korakuen crowd going, though I hated his selling the first parts of this. Finish run was pretty great. Chaotic as hell match and the ending stuff with Saito was awesome too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KB8 Posted February 11, 2012 Report Share Posted February 11, 2012 Koshinaka during the WAR feud is my favourite Koshinaka by quite a large margin. The New Japan set turned me off him big time, but all of the stuff in the WAR feud is really entertaining. I mean, WAR v New Japan is probably my favourite feud ever, but still, he shows up and potatoes dudes and gets potatoes right back, so he's all good with me when he does that. Also, while I'm here, Hector Guerrero is fucking awesome. That Guerreros/Landel v Lothario/Dundee/Brickhouse match on the Mid-South set is ridiculously fun and Hector is basically Eddie Guerrero before Eddie Guerrero. And, well, Eddie Guerrero is my all-time favourite wrestler so there's no way I wouldn't dig that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Waco Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 Jerry Lawler v. Steve Keirn This is a title v. title match from 1990 with Lawler as the traveling defender of the USWA crown v. local PWF champ Keirn. The Arena is really sparsely populated and DDP and Lee Marshall are on commentary both opening cheering for Keirn. Match has a shit finish but is a really fun heel performance from Lawler who takes a totally insane bump off of the first lock up and spends the rest of the match doing his staple foreign object spots, cowering into the arms of everyone he can find including a camera man, et. Worth watching for sure. Cool video package from Memphis on the Lawler/Patera feud from 83 including clips from the MSC match where Patera beat him for the title. Looks like the outline of a really great match Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Evans Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 I'm watching the 1990 Evansville USWA tv show. Loss is right that it's very edited as it's a mix of Memphis and Texas. It still has some fun stuff. Billy Joe Travis and Terry "Beauty" Garvin make a fun tag team. Billy offers James "Buster" Douglas $50,000 dollars to box him. They were feuding with Bill Dundee and Jeff Jarrett which is fun. You also have some fun random stuff like Steve Austin in Devastation Inc, A PY Chu Hi vs Matt Borne football match feud. I hope the PY squash where he's wearing a full football outfit is on the 1990 yearbook. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 The Evansville set is just barely scratching the surface of the great footage that exists for the year. There is great stuff both in Memphis and in Dallas that will blow people away. We'll probably have to make some edits at some point, but at this point, I have 120+ Jerry Lawler promos that all feel great in their own way and like must-haves. This is the year to pick up to really assess his GOAT candidacy too, as he's in a variety of long matches against guys on polar opposite ends of the spectrum -- guys who don't get a lot of praise like JYD and Jimmy Valiant, and guys who are pretty well regarded like Jeff Jarrett, Eddie Gilbert, Terry Funk and Bill Dundee. He was also really the only world champ-level guy in wrestling at this point who's traveling from place to place. This set has him in Memphis, Dallas and Florida. I will say that there is one thing that sometimes bugs me about Lawler as a heel, and that's when he works the hidden foreign object thing. I like it as schtick, actually. I just don't like it when he's world champion. Doing that stuff feels very midcardish. The world champion should wrestle like he's a step above everyone else on the card, and when you have a roster full of heels taking similar shortcuts like that, even if Lawler does a similar routine much better than they do, it's just too much comedy at the main event level. So while Lawler is outstanding at carrying himself like a top guy, I wish he was a little more aggressive and less stooge-like bell-to-bell when working heel. I love Lawler equally as a talker when he's a heel and a babyface, but I prefer his in-ring by and large when he's a babyface. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 I should also add that there are feuds like Steve Austin/Chris Adams that will be represented very well on the 1990 yearbook that aren't covered on the Evansville set at all because they only worked Texas. And while the Dundee/Tatum feud clips represented on the Evansville set are fun, it doesn't really do justice to how awesome that feud was at times. John Tatum's descent into madness is one of the most eerie things I have ever seen in wrestling. He's wrestling Bubba Fangman on an episode of Championship Sports and is extremely depressed over the loss of Tessa. He's seeking hugs from the referee and his opponents. When fans heckle him, he just grabs them and hugs them and won't let go, which is pretty funny. Anyway, those same hecklers are persistent and he snaps and actually throws Fangman into the front row! He immediately breaks down in tears. A female fan chastises him, telling him he could have hurt someone! He says, "I know! I'm so sorry" and is hysterical. He finally runs out of the building in shame. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Schneider Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 It sounds like Will should make a separate 1990 USWA set, I would buy the shit out of that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 I forgot to mention Lawler/Snowman! Jerry Lawler works redneck UWFI style! I am NOT joking. I floated one of the Lawler/Snowman matches to a few people who can vouch for me on that, that I am not crazy in saying that. The takedowns and strikes are pretty outstanding. Tim, one of their matches is on the Evansville set and I'd really be interested in hearing your thoughts on it when you get to it. Four others aired in Memphis only that are worked similarly. Also, Lawler vs Leon Spinks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Schneider Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 Here is my review of that Snowman match http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2011/11/y...-scene-all.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 Oh Phil, I gave you the wrong date for that match. It's actually 5/28. They had another match on 6/11. I was able to better confirm the timeline after getting all the WMC-5 Memphis footage. Evansville would throw stuff from random weeks together sometimes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Evans Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 How does one get a hold of the WMC footage? That's gotta be a gold mine. I just watched the break up of the Stud Stable where Fuller destroys Brian Lee because Lee talked about Sylvia leaving him. That was a great angle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 I found it in a few different places after digging around and forking over more money than I care to say. After the 1990 yearbook is released, I will make all of the footage (I have almost everything from Dallas as well, including lots of arena matches that aired in full on USWA Challenge) available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted February 12, 2012 Report Share Posted February 12, 2012 Footage exists for Texas through mid-September, when they were kicked off of KTVT after John Tatum superkicked Tessa and Austin splashed Toni Adams from the top of a cage in a mixed tag match on the same show. Not long after that, Kevin Von Erich took back over Texas after a dispute, Jerry Jarrett left the area and there is no TV from there until Jarrett steps back in at the tail end of December. Most of that will end up on the '91 yearbook since that's when they aired, except for a couple of standalone matches that are really good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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