wrestling / Video Reviews
The Name on the Marquee: Smoky Mountain Wrestling (10.8.1994)
Loading...-Originally aired October 8, 1994.
-Your hosts are Bob Caudle & Les Thatcher. We open the show with the somber announcement that the Rock & Roll Express has been stripped of the Tag Team Titles and the belts have been awarded to Da Gangstas.
DIRTY WHITE BOY (SMW Heavyweight Champion) vs STEVE SKYFIRE
-DWB is pissed about last week’s whipping and just takes it out on Skyfire, punching and choking him and not even bothering taking off his shirt. Meanwhile, Les Thatcher reports that Ricky Morton, who was scheduled for this week’s show, isn’t in the building yet and nobody knows his whereabouts. Bucksnort blaster finishes.
-Dirty White Boy is going to pull Bruiser Bedlam’s guts out through his ears, and he’s gonna make sure Jim Cornette’s nekkid before his leather strap whippin’. And he’s so mad he won’t even charge Cornette for that.
BEAT THE CHAMP TV TITLE: BOO BRADLEY (Champion with Tammy Fytch) vs MIKE MORALTO
-Bradley comes to the ring with a paper plate clenched in his teeth and uses the plate as a weapon in a funny visual. Moralto gets some offense in but targets Bradley’s head, hurting himself, which is weird because Boo’s a white guy and the rules of headbutting in pro wrestling are sacrosanct. Top rope splash finishes with ease.
-Tammy Fytch brags that she figured out with Brian Lee that she needed a dumb guy, but Brian wasn’t quite dumb enough. Boo Bradley can’t think for himself, so he’s the perfect wrestler to manage, and Tammy’s making a fortune from him.
-Bob Armstrong (in an IcoPro t-shirt) is with the Rock & Roll Express to make an announcement that he says is “unprecedented and embarrassing.” We go back to the county fair match between the Express and Da Gangstas. To recap, New Jack clobbered Robert Gibson with a nightstick behind the referee’s back. Da Gangstas got the pin, Bob Armstrong stormed to the ring, tattled to the referee, and forced the match to re-start, at which point the Express got the immediate pin and retained the belts.
-So we go back to Bob Armstrong, who reveals that Da Gangstas hired “some civil rights lawyer in Atlanta” and threatened a racial discrimination lawsuit, and we get into uncomfortable territory as Bob Armstrong insists that even WHITE wrestlers are the victims of unfair decisions in wrestling sometimes. Hey, so, how about “Da Gangstas pointed out that I’m not the commissioner anymore so I didn’t have the right to restart the match” as the plot twist here? Could we do…Nah, we’re gonna go ahead and make this icky.
-We go to Da Gangstas on location in the hood. Cornette’s story about this is pretty funny. To save money, Cornette operated the camera himself for this bit, and Da Gangstas took him into an actual fucking ghetto, with the actual solid gold championship belts around their waists, to tape this promo. The guy smoking a huge joint and the little kid holding up a nightstick are pretty jarring images for a wrestling promo in 19…well, ever, actually. Here’s the thing, I actually rather like this segment because everybody in the ‘hood that they rounded up for this promo turned it up to 11 and made them look like irredeemable thugs from a fucked-up part of the world. But “civil rights lawyer fighting for injustice” is actually a noble pursuit…yes, one that is abused and misused for profit every now and then, but still, a pretty decent crusade just got dragged through the mud to make sure everybody cheered for the Rock & Roll Express, and that sorta bugged me.
ROBERT GIBSON vs BRIMSTONE
-Brimstone takes control with choking and eye gouging. Big clothesline as Brimstone just dominates things in this match. Ugly attempt at a boot to the gut and Gibson’s just immediately done with this and ends the match with a “Gibson-Lock,” Robert Fuller’s stepover toehold pinning combo.
-We get words from Bryan Anderson and his dad Ole. Bryan 100% sounds like his dad in this promo.
PERSONALITY PROFILE
-We go back to Bedlam and Cornette’s whipping of DWB from last week. Les is live in the ring with Jim Cornette and Bruiser Bedlam. Cornette calls “bullshit” once more on the mystery commissioner and says he’s going to produce proof that it really is Armstrong still calling the shots, and then a ton of litigation is going to hit SMW. Also, DWB is gonna get whipped one more time.
12-MAN BATTLE ROYAL
-Your participants: Bruiser Bedlam, Boo Bradley, The Infernos, Steve Skyfire, Killer Kyle, Da Gangstas, Dirty White Boy, Lance Storm, Mike Morato, Robert Gibson, and Brian Lee. Crunching some numbers real quick here, that would appear to be 13.
-DWB shows up with a belt and just whips Bedlam until he gets out of the ring and DWB chases him to the back. Everybody just picks a dance partner and brawls for a few minutes. Muralto gets tossed. Both Infernos get dumped. Robert Gibson gets some vengeance by tossing Mustafa. We must have had a go-home signal a bunch of bodies fly out within seconds of each other, and we’re down to Robert Gibson against Killer Kyle and New Jack.
-Gibson fends them off with clotheslines. New Jack surprises Gibson by helping him dump Killer Kyle. Gibson and New Jack slug it out and just have a straight up fight. Stupid finish sees referee call for the bell beause the fighting is just getting too intense, and your battle royal ends without a winner. Oh, come ON! We wrap up with everyone who was already eliminated running back to the ring to break this fight up. God that was stupid.
-Da Gangstas are gonna getcha, Rock & Roll Express.
