[1990-07-04-USWA Texas] Steve Austin & Jeannie Clark vs Chris & Toni Adams

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This is a long chinlock. The crowd really wants to see Jeanne and Toni lock up, and they're obviously making them wait. The crowd pops huge when they both tag in. The post-match is better than the match itself, as Austin gives Adams a piledriver on the floor and then run in to hold Toni while Jeanne throws slaps at her. They tie her in the ropes while Austin brings Adams in the ring for another piledriver. Toni finally breaks free and chases Jeanne away. Meanwhile, Austin climbs to the top rope for a splash, Toni crawls on top of Adams to protect him and gets splashed. Two angles involving violence against women on the same show ... yeah. This led to the USWA losing television in Dallas, so enjoy this while it lasts.

[PeteF3]

Tony Falk quickly breaks up the opening brawl, declaring that this is going to be a straight tag match. This descends into some pretty epic chinlockery on Austin's part, but the crowd goes nuts when Jeannie and Toni get tagged in. Hot post-match angle after a DCOR or DDQ or something, as Austin piledrives Adams on the floor as Jeannie works over Toni's injured ribs. Austin shoves Adams' carcass back into the ring and gives him another piledriver as Toni sends Jeannie out. Toni then sees Austin going to the top turnbuckle and dives on top of Chris to protect him, but Austin leaps off anyway and levels both Adamses with a splash. Jeannie's gloating over this is pretty great.

 

Ft. Worth kicked the USWA off the air over this episode, and both instances were pretty gratuitous. Tatum's breakdown could have been handled another way (shoving Tessa would have gotten the point across) and there was nothing new to seeing Chris and Toni get destroyed again. This had great heat for the ladies and the beatdown was very well-done, but this was ultimately a disappointment for a match that had possibly the best build on the set to this point.

[soup23]

Pretty disappointed in match of this as they built up the sequences for the women fine but didn't give enough good action with the men to justify. Post match is good but does lose some impact based on just what we saw with Tessa. This still is a pretty big show overall.

[shoe]

The long chinlock spot didn't bother me so much. It kept building anticipation for the girls which the crowd was jonsing for. With that said it didn't quite hit the mark. Still the post match was tremendous and set up so many possibilities.

[Kevin Ridge]

Men versus men and women versus women only. The chinlock spot was long indeed. I know they wanted to keep the women on the outside as long as possible to build to their involvement but wish they did a bit more than the chin lock. When the women do finally get in it is way too short of action. Austin finally hits the top rope splash!.... on Toni. Two attacks on females in one show is way overdoing it.

[ajtroma]

Jeanie not only doesnt put her long long hair up in a ponytail, but she's still wearing her earrings for this match. Clearly, she's in way over her head and hasnt been in a real fight. The gloves were hot, though.

 

The match itself was just pure tease, sit in a long chinlock until the crowd is either yawning or dying to see the Blonds roll around.

 

Austin waited seemingly for hours for Toni to jump on top of Adams. I think he even waved her over to the fallen Gentleman.

 

So yeah, it not only appeared that the July 4th show didnt draw, but also the Two Acts of Violence against women pissed off the TV station. Sometimes, things just have to end.

[garretta]

I'd comment on the match, but it wasn't really a match at all. The guys are supposed to hate each other as much as the women, right? Well, if that's true, the best way they have to show it is a reverse chinlock? I'm not a huge fan of mixed tags anyway, as they're really two totally separate matches in one, with one of the matches (usually the women's) guaranteed to stink because the participants have no idea how to work. Such was the case here, but the men didn't even try to save it a little bit, which was surprising and disappointing.

 

Then came the postmatch. The idea of Austin leaping on Toni is awful enough, but as Pete said, in the end it was just another long beatdown of Chris and Toni in a feud that's had far too many of them, which (at least from a booking standpoint) is worse. So Jarrett not only serves up the same old dish, but puts it in a revolting package guaranteed to anger both his sponsors and most fans with a working brain and/or a functioning soul.

 

The more I watch of USWA Texas, the more I'm convinced that at some point, Jarrett wrote the whole acquisition off as a bad job and proceeded to do his dead level best to kill the territory on purpose. Think about it: he does everything but bury the Von Erichs, pushes Memphis stars like his son Jeff and Bill Dundee that no one gives a hoot in hell about as his top babyfaces, features a World champion (Lawler) who barely breaks a sweat during most of his matches, and to top it all off, knowingly books not one, but two angles on the same show that not only involve violence against women, but violence against two women who are far from professional bumptakers and could thus get hurt much more seriously than the average female wrestler simply by accident. I'm not sure if it says more about the ladies' courage or their respective males' "show must go on" mentality that they not only took those bumps, but came back for more long before common sense (and kayfabe) dictated they should have.

 

At any rate, if I'd been running KTVT, the USWA would have been off the air immediately after this aired, not two months later. It'll be interesting to see how the Adams/Austin angle is handled in the future now that Jarrett knows he's in big trouble from his Dallas flagship station.

 

By the way, kudos to Craig, as he finally acted like a real announcer would in selling the shocking nature of the aftermath. Who knows, maybe he really was shocked that they would run another female violence angle after Tessa literally got her brains kicked in. Anyway, I hereby nominate "Austin has gone wild!" as the first official Craig Johnson patented call. Here's to many, many more!

[drew wardlaw]

Ahh this was disappointing. I was expecting a really wild brawl with lots of focus on Toni vs Jeannie and we didn't get that. I'm led to believe there'll be future matches after the finish, so we'll see how those go.

[GSR]

The heels are out and in the ring first followed by the Adams’. As soon as Chris and Toni enter the ring they go straight for their opponents and we have a hot twenty seconds with all four fighting in the ring. The women really do look like they are catfighting with one another. Sadly Tony Falk spoils the fun, grabs the mic and tells them to cut it out or he’ll stop the match before it has even started. He’s the referee, he wants some order and they’re going to have a tag team match.

 

Toni wants to start the match against Jeanie, which the crowd are pumped for, but Steve insists on starting for his team and the men open. Almost immediately Adams gets Austin in a chinlock and they work five minutes based around this (Jeanie’s interference leads to Austin escaping and then applying a chinlock of his own). Austin tags in Jeanie and she starts hitting Chris, but he picks her up, carries her over to the corner and tags in Toni. The crowd come alive and it’s clear they want to see the women fight. Jeanie hits Toni in her injured rib and tags Steve back in. Austin starts to celebrate as he’s about to get his hands on Toni, but whilst he’s celebrating she crawls over and tags in Chris. He almost takes Austin’s head off with a clothesline and a right sends him flying over the top rope to the floor. Back in the ring and Adams comes off the top with another clothesline and then starts to stomp the back of Austin’s neck to get some payback of his own. Jeanie comes in to help her man, but that only brings in Toni and all four are fighting in the ring again. The men end up on the outside and Austin posts Adams BEFORE PILEDRIVING HIM ON THE FLOOR! The bell starts ringing and I’m assuming that both teams have been disqualified. With Chris down, Austin goes back into the ring and grabs Toni so that Jeanie can start laying into her. Tony Falk is flapping his arms about and Austin does us all a favour by dropping him. He ties Toni up in the ropes and Jeanie starts slapping her in the face and ribs all while laughing at the predicament Toni is now in. Austin drags Chris into the ring and gives him up another piledriver. Toni manages to free herself from the ropes and chases Jeanie from the ring. Austin by now has climbed to the top turnbuckle and is about to splash Chris when Toni goes over and lies on top of him to try to protect him. It doesn’t matter as he splashes both of them (finally hitting that move!). Toni is screaming in pain and clutching her ribs, Falk gets shoved to the floor again and Austin and Jeanie walk around the ring gloating, surveying the damage and getting in a few additional digs along the way.

 

This really was a match of two halves. The crowd clearly wanted to see the women fight, so I can only assume that was the reason why Austin and Adams worked so long around the chinlock. Almost bore the fans into submission to build up the tension and anticipation before the women finally get it on. If that was the case, judging by the crowd reaction, it definitely worked. I like how the women fight too, it’s like they are ‘fighting’ and not ‘wrestling’. The match picked up from this point and the post-match attack was tremendous. I certainly wasn’t expecting Austin to splash onto both of them so that came as a shock, and similarly to John Tatum’s superkick to Tessa, a hush fell on the audience as though they were in disbelief at what they had just see. Are two men on woman angles in one show overkill? Probably, especially after how vicious the Tatum/Tessa was. Adams’ left laid out in the ring yet again. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last either.

[dawho5]

Post-match blows away the actual match. The chinlock killed pretty much everything early and the women didn't get near enough time to make the premise work.

[El-P]

Different times, when you could sit in chinlocks for five minutes while still getting shitload of heat just for anticipation of something to come, that could not even be that good. But yeah, what a post-match. Jeanie is glorious gloating about Toni and Chris getting injured. She's a real revelation to me after watching here be kinda just there in WCW.