wrestling / Video Reviews
Memphis Wrestling (1.28.1984) Review
Image Credit: CWA
Loading...-Originally aired January 28, 1984.
-Your hosts are Lance Russell & Dave Brown.
-Joe LeDuc is here after living in Japan and Singapore for a while. He warns us that “I’m the kind of man that you should warn your children about,” so I guess he’s doing a Buck Zumhofe gimmick instead of the lumberjack act now. Then he refers to the Fabulous Ones with a term that Jerry Lawler had to apologize for using five years earlier. Next up, he sets the table for the Ultimate Warrior and Bob Backlund’s heel run by telling us that the Memphis territory has become a “corridor of mendacity.”
-…Okay, you know how LeDuc worked ONE television taping for the WWF in 1988 and then disappeared immediately? Unless somebody points me to a shoot interview or podcast saying otherwise, my theory right this second is that his first go at Event Center promos was a disaster.
-Joe LeDuc also says that while these fans might take the day off for birthdays and Christmas, LeDuc uses those days to train and drink beer.
JOE LEDUC & KING KONGA vs. JIM JAMISON & KEN RAPER
-Okay, first of all, it’s not just me. The studio audience wasn’t that receptive to the promo. But now it’s time for Joe LeDuc to enter the ring, and it’s Memphis, where a wooden stepstool was too pricey, so they use metal folding chairs for the guys to step on so they can climb into the ring, and the chair slides out from under LeDuc’s foot and he falls flat on his ass on the apron, and this audience is just completely unimpressed with him now.
-Interesting pair of guys to start the match, with the guy named Raper starting against “the kind of man that you should warn your children about.” They should probably be partners instead of opponents. Konga tags in with a big clothesline and a stungun.
-Jamison tags in to take his beating from both opponents. Backbreaker by LeDuc finishes. Konga looked like the bigger star here.
ROCK & ROLL EXPRESS vs. THE PINK PANTHER & BIG LOU WINSTON
-If you’re keeping track, 6’1″ is how tall you have to be to get the nickname “Big” in this territory.
-Express works the leg to neutralize Winston the Giant’s immense size. Panther gets a beatdown here. Commentators are working real hard to rebuild the Express here because they definitely got “written out” with the loss to Ken Patera & Crusher Blackwell and I get the feeling that they weren’t supposed to be back here so fast.
-Winston tags in and Ricky works the ankle. Panther tags back in and runs right into a double-dropkick for a big win by the Express.
-Lance Russell is here with some mail for Jimmy Hart. James J. Dillon mailed him a cassette tape player, so we get some audio from Dillon, saying that, for now, he’s just dispatching the men he manages to wrestle matches and leave them to win on their own…but if Jimmy Hart EVER interferes in their matches, Dillon is flying up from Florida to take care of Jimmy personally.
-Jimmy says he has scars and broken bones that prove he’s in the trenches with his men every night for every match, while Dillon sponges money off his men and relaxes on the beach. What kind of manager doesn’t even travel with his men for their matches?
-Rick Rude and Angel come out here, and they’re refining the gimmick a little bit, with “male stripper” being spelled out a little more clearly as Jimmy Hart tells Rick to dance for the fans, and Rude does an absolutely arrhythmic crotch-thrusting “dance” that looks like he’s a long-lost member of the Bluth family calling somebody a chicken. But more importantly, he’s entering to the Fabulous Ones’ music, apparently to make a statement. Jimmy points out that it’s a pop song. The Fabulous Ones don’t OWN it, so Rick Rude has every right to use the same tune for his entrance.
RICK RUDE (with Angel & Jimmy Hart) vs. DAVID JOHNSON
-Another bit of refining here, as Rude is now wearing regular long black spandex tights instead of tight pants. Rude stomps and slams Johnson, stopping to pose for the audience after each bump. Early Rick Rude is interesting. I get the impression that he’s following instructions to the letter (“Dance when you come out, and remember to pose for the fans sometimes, show off the muscles”) but not really injecting any of his own ideas or his own self here. Neckbreaker finishes, with Rude quickly whipping around and doing the same pose again after the three-count.
-Off to Mid-South Coliseum. Austin Idol & Jerry Lawler are teaming up against Jerry Blackwell & Ken Patera. Patera gets an illegal piledriver on Lawler behind the referee’s back. It turns into a pier-sixer, and the referee gets knocked around in the middle of it to cause a DQ.
-We head down to Georgia to watch the Road Warriors, who are headed up to Memphis. As long as we’re keeping track of the evolution of iconic gimmicks, they have the haircuts and the facepaint, but they’re in leather chaps.
NORVELL AUSTIN & THE BRUISE BROTHERS (with Jimmy Hart) vs. ART CREWS, ROBERT REED, & STAGGER LEE
-Well, we missed something somewhere in the past two months because Koko Ware is back under the mask as Stagger Lee.
-Crews shoulderblocks Dream Machine and then armdrags Porkchop Cash. Commentators mention that he was trained by Pat O’Connor, so it looks like they have plans for the up-and-comer. Robert Reed tags in takes forearms from Cash on absolutely every part of the body. Heels won’t let Reed out, cutting off all of his attempted tags and keeping him in the corner. Machine is finally just a bit too slow and Reed escapes. Weird spot where Stagger Lee tags in, and it would seem to be a hot tag, but he does NOTHING and just immediately tags Reed back in.
-Piledriver behind the referee’s back. Reed actually manages to tag after that and you’d think that would be our hot tag, but nah. ANOTHER illegal piledriver behind the referee’s back, and Stagger Lee starts complaining to the referee. Bruise Brothers just start beating on him and send him out to the floor. Chair shot on Stagger Lee, who blades through the mask. The Bruise Brothers rip the mask open instead of pulling it off of him, which is a new approach.
-But noticeably, Norvell Austin is now complaining to Jimmy Hart that this seems to be a bit much and he kind of stops participating in the melee. They start whipping Stagger Lee with a belt, which Norvell thinks is way over the line, so he tries to pull them away. Bruise Brothers shove Norvell and punch him down, and THAT’S ENOUGH. Norvell promptly starts kicking the Bruise Brothers’ asses and clears the ring by himself while Jimmy Hart freaks out.
-The Fabulous Ones are getting ready for a big Southern Tag Team Title tournament. Not entirely clear how the belts were vacated, but the Fabulous Ones have drawn Rick Rude & Terry Gibbs for the first round. The bracketing shows that the winner of that match will wrestle either the Road Warriors or Jerry Lawler & Austin Idol. They’re not even pretending here. They pretty much acknowledge “Yes, we will win in the first round” and promise to give 110% against either their friends or the Road Warriors.
-The Rock & Roll Express came back to the area to get those belts back for these great fans in Memphis. They’ll be battling Joe LeDuc and King Konga in the first round.
THE ZAMBUIE EXPRESS vs. PAT HUTCHINSON & JESSE OWENS
-Express attacks before the bell. Double diving headbutts make it an easy win for the Zambuies.
EXPIRATION OF TIME: DUTCH MANTELL & JERRY “The King” LAWLER vs. THE STREETWALKERS
-Streetwalkers are a total mystery to me. Their look is “European one-hit wonders whose video you vaguely remember being played a lot on MTV for a month.” They’re identified as #1 and #2 and Googling is giving me nothing here.
-Fall 1: Mantell & Lawler totally squash hem, with a fist drop finishing in seconds.
-We break away for a minute to watch Randy Savage vs. Dutch Mantell at the Mid-South Coliseum. They bring down the house lights so Dutch can do an uncharacteristically dramatic entrance. As he enters the ring, Savage pounces and just unloads on Mantell with all of his energy, but when the house lights come back up, the guy that Savage has been beating on obviously ISN’T Mantell, who charges the ring now that Savage has gassed himself with a rapid-fire beatdown. Savage runs for his life but he tired himself out, so Mantell chases him, catches him, and beats the hell out of the Macho Man.
-Savage cuts another great promo on videotape to hype the rematch, with Dutch jumping in afterward to point out that Savage named the wrong day for the card!
-Fall 2: We still have some time left, so let’s go ahead and have another fall after all that. And this is just totally time-killer stuff, as Lance says that they misjudged how much time was left in the show, and that seems to be a legit explanation for why the second fall is happening, because it’s just the Street Walkers getting knocked around again until Dutch gets the three-count off an elbow.
