[1990-10-08-USWA-World Title Tournament] Jerry Lawler vs Mark Callous

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

It's always fun to see how athletic Undertaker was prior to taking on the new gimmick. This was a really good, action-packed match. Maybe Lawler's best singles match of the year, not counting the really short Snowman specials. A clean finish would have been nice, but who's complaining? I'm liking this tournament so far.

[PeteF3]

Okay stuff. Callous unleashes some of his big moves like the leaping clothesline, while Lawler mostly stalls and sells despite working babyface. Callous levels Jerry Calhoun and they're still clinging to the technical-loss thing.

[soup23]

Fine match and good glimpse at Taker right before his big run in WWF. Bruno was really good at being annoying on the outside.

[Childs]

This actually made me want to see a full match between them, with a real finish. Taker was pretty good as a heavy-handed, green big man. And Lawler's comeback, though abbreviated, was great as always. It's a total cliche to say it, but no one in wrestling history punched like the King.

[Kevin Ridge]

Dundee got eliminated in first round by count out. Lawler gets the pin but referee is distracted by Bruno. Didn’t feel like that was necessary when Lawler still ending up winning the match. Rough referee decision with Mean Mark getting disqualified for accidentely hitting the ref.

[garretta]

This was perfectly fine. Lawler was obviously pacing himself for later on in the card, so Taker got to look a little better here than he otherwise might have. This match is just long enough for Lawler to pull down the strap, which overjoys the crowd. As we see later in the month, they're hoping to push Taker as a major challenger once Lawler gets the belt, so we get a DQ finish.

 

The problem is that most of this match is about Downtown Bruno: his yapping, his distractions, his interactions with the announcers. We even get an extended joke where Bruno uses Craig's Coke cup as a spit cup for himself (I think). Of course, he's involved in the finish, so it makes sense to pay some attention to him, but not to this extent. It just goes to show that Jarrett had no more idea of how to use Taker effectively than WCW did. Fortunately, his destiny would change for the better in just over a month.

 

I was kind of put out to hear that Michael St. John took Dave's place for the match, but it makes sense; for better or worse, he's the voice of the MSC at the moment. I just wish there hadn't been so much of the worse from him lately.

[drew wardlaw]

Undertaker looks really big and ripped here. Really athletic too. This was a pretty good match. This tournament is really interesting to me in that I generally think of tournaments more in the "pure sports build" realm, where Memphis is way more based on storylines and angles. They've managed to weave storyline stuff into this but there's still some standalone matches like this one. I'm digging this so far.

[dawho5]

Liked seeing pre-Undertaker Callous get to look good. Lawler was taking it easy, but we still manage to get a good match out of it.