[1990-10-08-USWA-World Title Tournament] Jerry Lawler vs Austin Idol

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Here we are at the finals, with Lawler still selling his neck injury. Babyface match with Idol promising to wrestle Lawler scientifically, which gets boos from the crowd. He offers Lawler time to rest, and Lawler is ready to just wrestle the match. Idol immediately cheapshots him after Lawler extends his hand. Idol beats the hell out of him, working over his sore neck. Lawler makes one of the best comebacks I have ever seen after taking a prolonged beating. It gets a huge pop and it's a sight to see. Lawler valiantly wins the tournament and title in what would be an iconic moment if the promotion was hotter at the time. Funk, Gilbert and Idol attack Lawler after the match with another spike piledriver, so Lawler has won the battle, but lost the war. Jeff Jarrett finally makes the save. This is some great stuff, and it's awesome that they heated up the crowd so much this late in the night. I thoroughly enjoyed this tournament.

[PeteF3]

Hey, Corey Macklin's here, too! Idol rambles on the mic beforehand about giving Lawler extra rest and wanting to wrestle scientifically. The crowd isn't impressed by this, but it's a nice set-up as Idol levels Lawler on the handshake. Lawler gets brutalized again as Idol methodically works his way through his offensive arsenal, but Lawler makes a furious comeback that might be the single best moment of this tournament. Idol manages to cut the comeback off by sending him into Jerry Calhoun, which brings out Gilbert & Funk. The triple-team backfires predictably and Lawler gets a 3-count by the skin of his teeth. Another beatdown follows as Lawler eats another stuff piledriver, and Jeff Jarrett gets beat down while he tries to make the save.

 

There were your usual Memphis booking quirks but it's hard for a one-night tournament to have this good of a percentage of decent-to-good matches. Who knows how many of these people stick around but even with the Unified World title situation finalized, there are myriad ways for the future booking to go. Three top challengers for the gold plus six-man possibilities with a Gilbert/Funk/Idol team.

[soup23]

Great capper to an awesome tournament. The booking was impeccable and Lawler came out looking like a hero. If this was a PPV, it would have been my PPV of the year for 1990 so far.

[Childs]

And the superb booking of this tournament continued with the perfect follow-up to Funk's beatdown of Lawler. Idol was rock-solid in executing the double cross and the beatdown, with his history against Lawler echoing loudly. But yeah, Lawler's furious body language during his comeback was a sight to see, the kind of inspired stuff that's only available to the greatest performers. The ending, with him briefly overcoming Idol, Gilbert and Funk, was both a great moment to end the tournament and a perfect set-up for the weeks and months to come. I loved everything about this.

[Kevin Ridge]

Idol gives a heelish type promo about having a match with no kicking or punching (which the crowd boos to). He lets Lawler have more time to regroup but kicks him in the stomach. I was expecting a quick finish to this match but Lawler hangs around. Lawler has a real fired up comeback but referee gets bumped. Gilbert/Funk try to clothesline Lawler but hit Idol instead. Lawler wins the title. Lawler came off like superman after the beating he took from Funk and Gilbert in the semifinal match.

[garretta]

I've watched all of the USWA stuff on the yearbook from this month, and I'm shocked that there really wasn't much made of this on regular Memphis TV, except for Jeff's knee injury being used to cover his Japan trip. We only hear from Idol once the rest of the month, and we don't hear from Funk at all.

 

I know that at least a few of the promos would have been on the set had they been available, so the question is: Why book Idol and Funk as such a big part of the final if you're not going to have them around at least semi-permanently? It would have made more sense to use Doug, Tony Anthony, and Kim, who were at least part of the territory on a full-time basis. I understand Lawler's history with both Idol and Funk, but that history doesn't mean much when the fans are presumably clamoring for Lawler, Jarrett, and (probably) Dundee against Idol, Eddie, and Funk and are instead getting Lawler, Bill, and Jamie against three of Tojo Yamamoto's midcarders. I know that Terry and Idol came back later, but they needed to have that big six-man or a Lawler/Idol rematch the following week in order to capitalize on the angle while it was still fresh in the fans' minds.

 

Turning to what we saw, Idol was tremendous pulling the doublecross, and Lawler didn't really come across as someone who bought what Idol was saying as much as someone who'd taken a dreadful beating and wanted to avoid another, which is understandable. But he still got suckered and beaten down again, and except for one flurry of punches from out of nowhere, was held without any offense for the second match in a row while absorbing another inhuman dose of punishment from three men who wanted to kill him. Somehow he lucked into the win, and paid for it just like Joe predicted. Now we know why he was at home the following week when Dundee called him. Come to think of it, where was another babyface who could have aided Lawler and Jeff? I know Dundee was long, long gone, but what about Dick Murdoch, who'd just lost in the quarterfinals to Funk?

 

Craig and Joe had enough left to provide a memorable call, and Craig has grown by leaps and bounds since May when he took over for Marc Lowrance. I'll go so far as to say that he might be the second-best big-match announcer in North America behind JR at this point, and the gap's closing. His grasp of history was surprisingly good, not just in this match, but earlier in the tournament, when he referenced the Lawler/Funk empty arena bout from nine years before. Unfortunately, he'll be on the sidelines for the rest of the year, and we'll be stuck with Michael St. John at the MSC.

 

I'll go along with Soup's assertion that this was the best supercard in 1990 from top to bottom. Most of the others had bigger main events, but each and every match meant something here, and even with the beatdown at the end, we still had the happy ending of Lawler overcoming three-on-one odds to win his belt back. Problems with the aftermath aside (and they may have been unavoidable due to prior commitments on Idol and Funk's parts), this tournament delivered in every possible way, and I'm glad that the best of it was on this set.

[drew wardlaw]

This and the Lawler/Funk semi-final combined might be my favorite segments of the entire year. I don't know how many times I've said "Jerry Lawler is a genius in these threads, but man is it true. Just about the best comeback I've ever seen, starting with the multiple kickouts. And him just lying dead in the ring while Austin Idol steps on his neck. The crowd was going crazy too. This was an unexpectedly awesome tournament.

[dawho5]

Best comeback ever? I'm still going with the HUGE comeback against Bock or the LLT match (the one after the one-eyed Lawler) with Dundee. Even so, this one was very close to that level. Idol did his part with the double cross that I don't think anyone was surprised by. But this was 90% Lawler being incredible.