[1991-04-05-USWA Texas] Jerry Lawler vs Eric Embry (Cage)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This would have been really good if they would have stopped cutting promos and actually wrestled. I can't tell you how much I hate that. It doesn't have the violence you'd want from a cage match, but it also seems a little random since they didn't work a series that led to this first or anything. Lawler's pre-match interview talking about how he's supposed to take time off feels a little whiny - since when do babyfaces complain about their injuries? I had high hopes for this, but it didn't deliver. Lawler's stock has dropped for me since watching 1990 and 1991. I still think he's a great wrestler and is better at certain aspects of his game than all but a few in wrestling history. But I really hate that he takes so many nights off when he's capable of so much more. I don't see that desire to steal the show every night that I wish he had. Even Hogan has worked harder this year.

[goodhelmet]

I know Phil loved this match enou8gh to want to put it on a future edition of a Schneider comp.

[shoe]

I liked this match and thought the work was smart. With that said we really didn't need the cage since we didn't get blood or a bunch of cage bumps. So I agree with Loss in a sense that the match lacked the violence you really need here. The promos didn't bother me because they were talking smack, and were more sound bites than actual promos. Though Lawler did try to start an Erica chant.

 

Both guys were throwing nice punches. Embry's piledriver was a thing of beauty. This lead to Embry just attacking the neck with a variety of stuff. Lawler's strap down was pretty dramatic. Overall, their were flaws in the match that didn't take the match down in my eyes because the work was excellent.

[Childs]

I didn't mind the promo cutting. In-match shit talking was part of the style down there -- just as it is in many intense athletic contests. The punch exchanges were as good as expected. Embry's attack on Lawler's neck looked great. I was primed for Lawler's comeback. That said, I agree with Loss that the cage was superfluous and ultimately distracting because it reminded me of the violence I wasn't seeing.

[PeteF3]

There were probably a few too many Embry mic spots and I would have preferred to see one or two microphone shots to the face, but overall I thought this was absolutely tremendous--a contender along with Jarrett/Gilbert and a few others for the #1 USWA-Texas match ever, in fact. And definitely Embry's best singles match. We had some good-looking offense from both guys after a real fun start, and a nice swerve false finish where Embry takes advantage of a ref bump but bumped him too hard to get the win.

[Kevin Ridge]

Before match Lawler brings up having to take time off due to neck injury. So they are playing that up in USWA-TX too but Lawler seems to be keeping regular schedule. Embry and Lawler take turns getting on the mic to run down each other. Embry also spends much time going after the fans letting them know he doesn’t care about them anymore. The mic stuff doesn’t fit a steel catch match. I kept waiting for things to get more violent. I wasn’t sure why there was even a cage involved as barely used until end of match.

[soup23]

Good match and while the mic stuff usually doesn't bother me if it is a small thing, I did think they did go to excessive lengths here. The cage also felt like a tacked on stipulation and you didn't feel the heat or necessity of it especially since we had interference at the finish.

[ajtroma]

Michael St. John is a complete bumbling fool. Have I made that clear enough?

 

Paul Neighbors (Jerry Jarrett's unintelligent, untelligable cousin/ring truck driver/Jarrett ranch hand/personal slave) keeps doing those damn annoying "Milking an Invisible Cow" hand gestures.

 

There's no point to a Cage if the seconds can pass things UNDERNEATH or scale the cage easily enough to interfere.

[Smack2k]

Holy shit Lawler, shut the fuck up....we get it, you have a chain in your pants and you hide it....its old and its fuckin dumb how many times you do it...

 

I never understood why Lawler was thought as one of the best EVER as this was the Lawler I first saw when I became a fan...the Memphis 80's stuff has changed my opinion, but FUCK he was dull as shit and boring as fuck in Texas....

[garretta]

There were a lot of reasons that this match unfolded the way it did, but even though I knew those reasons, it still fell flat. I knew there wouldn't be blood since they were taping for ESPN, but Lawler and Embry still did enough cage spots that I was reminded of it, which was a mistake. The talking spots may be a staple, but nothing of what Embry in particular said meant much to the match; it was just killing time, as if they had fifteen minutes of airtime to fill with a ten-minute bout. Even if they were protecting a legit neck injury of Lawler's (which I doubt), there were better ways to do it than that.

 

I wasn't a fan of both belts being on the line; even though taking the Texas title was part of Lawler's plan for humiliating Embry, the question remains: What could he possibly want with it beyond that? He barely even works in Dallas. (Indeed, he vacated the title the next week, which led to the Embry/Dundee matches.) It might have been better to let Embry win the Unified title to send Lawler off on vacation beltless; everyone knows he's going to win it back eventually, and we could have had guys like Dundee, Jeff, and even Gilbert challenging for it.

 

Finally, I could see Tojo's attempted interference coming a mile away, mostly because the nimrod who put the cage up left enough room between the cage and the ring for Tojo to slide a chain to Embry. Was it a mistake, or was it done that way deliberately since Tojo wasn't well and they wanted to make sure he could do it? Either way, it was a terrible thing to do if kayfabe was still important in Dallas. If Tojo was unable to perform properly, use Prichard as Embry's second, or go with another manager from the start, as I've suggested before.

 

The one good thing was Embry's work on Lawler's neck, which was vicious and well-executed. Lawler sold it well too, which helped. Of course, we eventually got the patented Lawler comeback, but that was expected. This was one of the few sequences since Embry's turn where he looked like a badass without any outside interference or numbers advantage, and it was nice to see.

 

Overall, I'm glad to be stepping away from the USWA for a while. Hopefully things will return to normal a bit more once Lawler returns. There's nothing wrong with this promotion that a new booker and some decent announcing won't fix; it already has the workers in place to be a real treat for the rest of this year.

[dawho5]

Embry attacking Lawler's neck after the DDT was absolute gold. As was Lawler's comeback. I have to agree that the cage was all kinds of wrong and distracting.