wrestling / Video Reviews
Georgia Championship Wrestling (8.15.1981) Review
Image Credit: Georgia Championship Wrestling
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-There’s a gap coming up in the timeline of my Memphis reviews again, and that gap coincides with an incredibly rich vein of Georgia Championship Wrestling from this period that’s made it out into the wild. Let’s head on over to Techwood Studios for a bit!
-Originally aired August 15, 1981.
-Your host is Gordon Solie, who has a fancy trophy at his lectern for the Most Popular Wrestler contest. Cast your votes today to decide which of the good guys gets to make Pikachu Face while the trophy gets smashed!
-Tommy Rich is here, having just recaptured the Georgia Heavyweight Championship from Ken Patera, who got beaten like a red-headed step…son in the title change.
BRUNO SAMMARTINO JR. & GEORGE WELLS vs. BILL WHITE & DON GILBERT
-So on the face side, that’s David Sammartino changing his name for as much help getting over as he can possibly get. Surprisingly, Nick Patrick is officiating this one, pre-dating his time as a job guy in other territories. I would have guessed that wrestling came first for him.
-George Wells applies a full nelson right away, but since he’s still Novice G at this point, White makes the ropes. Sammartino, who looks shockingly slim here compared to the stocky build he had in his WWF run, tags in and slams Gilbert down. Legdrop gets two, because he forgot to do the big boot first.
-Everybody tags and George Wells wins a chop duel. White tags back in and tries a front facelock. Punches and forearms by Wells. Jobbers give some more offense, which I can live with. The later-era Crockett squashes in the TBS studio drove me crazy because they’d run this long with the heels giving no offense. Here, they’re putting up a fight, so it feels like a match and not just an extended murder.
-Brunvid tags back in and bodyslams White, following with a legdrop. So he definitely knows how to do those things. White tries an atomic drop but misses a tag to Wells behind his back, and Wells beats down both jobbers. Football tackle gets the win. Wells looked like the bigger future star here.
-Breaking news: The baseball strike is over, which means the Braves double-header next week is back on and wrestling starts at 3:30 pm instead of 6:05.
-Oh, this is relevant to my interest, tickets are now on sale for GCW action in Huntington, West Virginia at Veterans’ Fieldhouse. That would be where I waited for Lewis Black’s autograph after a stand-up show, and the guy in front of me realized after 15 minutes in line that he had nothing for Lewis Black to autograph, so he pulled a pizza box out of the trash can in full view of Lewis and then asked him to sign it, and Lewis just wrote “Fuck you” on the box. So it’s a historical landmark, is what I’m saying.
-Michael P.S. Hayes is here to announce he has a new tag team partner. This is an angle I remember from seeing it in a tape trade years back and I’ve since lost that tape, but just to get everyone up to speed, this was a period where the Freebirds had split up and were now feuding, which was an extraordinarily bad idea; Bill Watts has since pointed out that you HAD to keep those two together because each one was strong in an area where the other one was weak, so if you broke them up, it would ruin both guys. So Hayes is the babyface in this split, while Terry Gordy is teaming up with heel Jimmy Snuka, who is also a heel in kayfabe.
-So with Gordy and Snuka now targeting him, Hayes needs a tag team partner for his upcoming matches. He made a list of everyone who hates the Freebirds, and then whittled it down to people who also have an issue with Snuka, because if they hate Snuka AND the Freebirds, yeah, it means that person hates Hayes, but he’ll be standing across the ring from TWO people that he also hates. So Michael P.S. Hayes tells the director to roll some videotape, and we’ll see his big surprise.
-And it’s a videotape of…VINCE MCMAHON. Okay, well, yeah, Michael got me there, that’s a surprise, all right. But wait, there’s more to it than that, it’s Vince McMahon interviewing Andre the Giant. It’s the interview that you’ve seen a zillion Andre the Giant montages, the one in the empty arena where Andre is just towering over Vince and it’s clear that Vince is kneeling or Andre is standing on something.
IRON MIKE SHARPE & DAVE SIERRA vs. KEN TIMBS & CHUCK AUSTIN
-Sharpe is a babyface, which might be the oddest thing to see in the territory days for me. Timbs tries a front facelock and Sharpe just presses and heaves him across the ring. Sierra, the future Cuban Assassin, tags in to get his stuff in. Everybody tags. Austin gets knocked around and has a distinct air of “I don’t know what I’m doing” about him through all of it.
-Sharpe misses a corner charge and Austin tags Timbs back in to let him do the heavy lifting. Side headlock by Timbs, but Iron Mike turns it into an atomic drop. Austin tags back in and backdrops Sharpe! Wow, okay, maybe he just had a case of the jitters to start, but suddenly he looks a little smoother in there.
-Neck vice by the Iron one. Sierra tags in and drops a knee for three.
-Jimmy Snuka & Terry Gordy, the reigning Georgia Tag Team Champions, are here. Snuka’s heel promo is about the same as his face promo, where you…pretty much get the gist of what he’s saying.
KEVIN VON ERICH vs. FOSTER
-I’m guessing at some point, Foster had a first name, but then Vince McMahon decided to start pushing him and they just started billing him as Foster.
-Side headlock by Kevin, but Foster turns it into a top wristlock. Kevin, still wearing boots at this point in his career, throws a dropkick to break it. Foster resorts to chicanery, and Gordon Solie is so outraged that he almost considers telling us Foster’s first name.
-Another dropkick by Kevin. More dropkicks by Kevin. Kevin tries a bodyscissors into a roll-up but Foster is NOT built for that so Kevin gives up on that and just knocks him down and splashes him for three.
-Tommy Rich is here. He’s gonna rip the Masked Superstar’s mask off if he gets the chance on August 29th at the Omni!
MISTER WRESTLING II & STEVE O vs. JOSE MEDINA & ALEX REINOFF
-II takes down Medina and boogies to celebrate it. Everybody tags and Reinoff gets his leg worked over. By the way, Reinoff apparently decided that being billed “From Germany” wasn’t quite enough, so he went the extra mile and straight-up put swastikas on his boots.
-Everybody tags again and II backdrops Medina. O tags in and elbows him down. Reinoff tags in and takes his licks. Backdrop by II, and the kneelift finishes things.
-Mr. Wrestling II cuts a weird promo, vowing to get “all the votes he needs” to win Most Popular Wrestler and making it sound like a threat.
-Tommy Rich is here AGAIN. He explains that Superstar is fighting dirtier than he used to. We go to house show action between the two. Tommy is lacerated by a series of headbutts and Tommy says the headbutts felt suspiciously hard, which is the reason for his resolve to rip the mask off the next time they’re in the ring, because he suspects that Superstar has a concealed weapon in it.
-After the commercial, Masked Superstar is here to categorically deny the accusations of concealed weapons.
MASKED SUPERSTAR vs. MIKE DAVIS
-Davis surprises Superstar with a bodypress immediately for a two-count. Superstar rallies and throws a headbutt and suddenly Davis is loopy. As if he was headbutted. Slam by Superstar gets two.
-Davis rallies but gets headbutted to the floor. Superstar slams him on the freshly waxed and painted studio floor. Back in, neckbreaker by Superstar, but he won’t allow that to finish. Russian legsweep, but Superstar is still mad about being shown up by the rookie earlier. Cobra hold locked on, and Davis passes out to end this.
-Michael P.S. Hayes comes out here to sell a few tickets to the Omni.
SUPERFLY JIMMY SNUKA & TERRY GORDY (Tag Team Champions) vs. JERRY MAHONEY & BRUCE REED
-One of the jobbers went on to become a bigger star, and it’s not the one named after a famous ventriloquist’s dummy.
-Suplay by Gordy, and then he slams Mahoney into position, and Superfly comes off the top rope with a splash. But he won’t let that he the end of it, he applies a claw hold to the neck and gets the win that way. Bruce Reed never tags in, which is too bad, because he looks like a Natural for this sport.
-Kevin Von Erich says a few words, but Terry Gordy & Jimmy Snuka interrupt him to rant and rave as the show fades away.
