[1990-11-17-USWA-Nashville, TN] Eddie Gilbert vs Jeff Jarrett (Texas Death)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This is the first mention of the GWF scouters at ringside -- all the way from Barcelona, Spain. More on that in 1991. We join this in progress. Eddie Marlin is in Jarrett's corner, and Doug is in Eddie's corner. It's no DQ, so Jarrett swings a chair at Gilbert's knee and does some interesting work on his leg, even loosening his boot. Gilbert turns the tide by hitting Jeff Jarrett with "knuckle dusters", as Craig Johnson calls them, and it makes absolutely no sense why Gilbert is hiding his cheating when the match is no DQ and Jarrett is swinging a chair in plain sight of the referee.

 

Doug waves the flag when Gilbert is stuck in the figure four, but the referee never sees this. Sam Bass comes out and lays out Eddie Marlin and raises the flag out of sight to make it look like Eddie Marlin was doing it and give Gilbert the match. The finish to this is pretty botched, but they did some good stuff.

 

The two had a match in Louisville the next day as well. WCW escapee Jim Cornette was in Jarrett's corner. That got lost in the shuffle when mailing things back and forth between goodhelmet and I, but we'll include it on an Errata for sure.

[shoe]

I really liked the work a lot in this. I can understand Losses gripes with it, but they didn't bother me as much . Though that finish had horrible timing.

[PeteF3]

A clever screwjob finish really, really badly executed by Morrell, but everything else was golden. Jarrett working as an awesome aggressive babyface brutalizing Eddie Gilbert's knee, and Doug refusing Eddie's request to wave the flag because...hey, it's not his knee getting destroyed. Gilbert's work on top is pretty good, too. Morrell DID make every effort to get the chair away from Jarrett even as he was using it, so he was at least attempting to enforce the rules even in an apparent no-DQ setting. It also establishes that Morrell needs to be in the ring to get bumped.

[soup23]

Morell was really dazed and botched the finish but I might rank this match because I loved the work on the leg. Probably best glimpse from this feud we have seen so far in 1990.

[Kevin Ridge]

From the flag match. Jeff uses a chair to Gilbert’s leg. Doug checking with Eddie to see if he gives. Eddie asks Doug to waive the flag but his brother won’t. Figure four and Doug is waiving the flag but referee is down. Doug takes out Eddie Marlin and Sam Bass waives the flag pretending to be Marlin. Eddie just laying there in the figure four waiting for the finish to happen. Timing of all this was off. Dumb that Jeff had the figure four on but he loses. Heels being heels though.

[ajtroma]

Coward Waves the Flag matches have never done it for me. Plus, its always the same finish.

[garretta]

This is a case where a poorly thought out finish ruins a great match. Like most of you, I was very impressed by Jeff's work on Eddie's leg; it's a kind of aggressiveness we've never seen out of him before. Doug refusing to wave the flag for Eddie calls back to Eddie's interviews saying that Doug would never wave it even if Eddie was crippled. I loved Joe telling us how much wrestling boots support the legs, which really made Jeff removing Eddie's boot into a major offensive move. I also loved Joe screaming "GOAL!" after one of Jeff's kicks, considering Craig's background as a soccer announcer.

 

Then it all went to hell. Not only was the finish asinine in and of itself (you're telling me that Morrell was too dumb to look outside and see which of the seconds was waving the flag? I don't buy that even if he was knocked silly), but it took so long to execute that Eddie visibly stopped selling the figure four and looked outside as if to say "What's going on here?" Craig and Joe tried to cover for this by reminding us that Morrell wasn't fully conscious, but looking at this on TV, you can tell that he's too slow, period. I know that they wanted to keep Eddie hot and not have him known as a "coward" (note the quotes), but they could have had another ref run down and reverse the decision in order to create controversy and keep the feud going. Eddie could claim that Sam wasn't a legal second in the match anyway so he never quit, while Jeff could counter that Sam works for Eddie, so if he was waving the flag, it must have been for Eddie.

 

It's not really like Memphis to have two stinkers in a row so close together (counting the Lawler/Eddie barbed wire match at the MSC), but every promotion's entitled to a bad stretch once in a while. Let's see how they recover from this one.

[dawho5]

Finish irritated me as well. Good match until then though.