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Memphis Wrestling (12.13.1980) Review

October 3, 2022 | Posted by Adam Nedeff
Memphis Wrestling 12-13-80 Jerry Lawler Image Credit: Memphis Wrestling
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Memphis Wrestling (12.13.1980) Review  

-Originally aired December 13, 1980.

-Your hosts are Lance Russell & Dave Brown.

-Jerry Lawler is returning to active competition soon. More details to come, but it will be against an opponent of Jimmy Hart’s choosing, with Lawler getting a match immediately after against Jimmy Hart if he wins.

-Jimmy Hart is out here with the Angel, and he says he’s giving Jerry Lawler ONE chance to shake his hand and patch things up, but if Lawler doesn’t take that offer, Jimmy will see to it that Lawler never wrestles one more match.

THE ANGEL (with Jimmy Hart) vs. CARL FERGIE

-The Angel is billed from Portland, Oregon. I love that, they’re ripping off a classic old gimmick, but he’s not the French Angel or the Swedish Angel. He’s the Pacific Northwest Angel.

-Angel clobbers Fergie with a gloved hand and applies a claw hold. Fergie punches out of the claw, making him the smartest jobber who ever lived. Angel takes him down again and applies the claw again but Fergie makes it to the ropes. Referee demands a clean break, but Angel shoves the referee on his ass instead, and that’s a DQ. Angel refuses to release the hold after the bell. Lucas & Morton rush into the ring, and Angel takes off without further incident.

-Lance Russell has house show promo words with the Tag Team Champs, Roger Kirby & Guy Mitchell, who are doing the full-blown Valiant Brothers look and act; basically, Guy/Jerry just picked out a new brother, Roger.

-Back in the studio, Lance has Jerry Lawler with him. The doctor has cleared him to wrestle any time after Christmas, and Jerry doesn’t want to wait one second longer, so his first match will be December 26. Lawler recaps his entire relationship with Hart, who was singing in clubs when Jerry gave him a break by entering a more lucrative business, pro wrestling. But then he broke his leg in a freak accident during a friendly football game, and Jerry Lawler never got a phone call from Jimmy Hart. But almost immediately after, Jimmy Hart went on TV, with Lawler’s own crown, and says that you have to man up and shoot the prize thoroughbred when it has a broken leg. He proclaims Lawler’s career over right then and there.

-Before Lawler can finish what he has to say, Jimmy Hart suddenly shows up, disrobes, and demands Lawler get in the ring and fight him right now. Lawler is smart enough to know where that’s going, so he stays in constant motion, beating up Jimmy while ALSO throwing punches at every protege who comes to the rescue to try to help Jimmy. Bobby Eaton, Angel, Kirby & Mitchell each manage to hook a limb to tie Lawler down in the corner, and a mysterious masked man hits the ring and kneecaps Lawler like an outdated pop culture reference from 1994. Lawler’s cousin, Carl Fergie, hits the ring with a chair to clean house.

-And this angle immediately gets a million times better, as we get the mysterious masked wrestler’s first promo ever, and it turns out he’s Troy Graham/Troy T. Tyler under a mask, doing his Dusty Rhodes impression as a sinister masked villain, who promises that “275 pounds of brown-eyed sweet loving soul” is the reason that Jerry Lawler will never wrestle again.

2 OUT OF 3 FALLS, NO DISQUALIFICATION: KEN LUCAS & RICK MORTON vs. HANDSOME JIMMY VALIANT & TOJO YAMAMOTO

-Return match from last week with a stipulation added. I promise to keep calm and not get on my soapbox about why I hate tag matches with no-DQ stipulations.

-FALL ONE: Lucas and Tojo start, while their partners just stand on the apron and wait to be tagged in WHICH IS FINE AND DOESN’T ANGER ME. Lucas pops Tojo with punches. Valiant tags in and gets punched down too, and Lucas clears the ring. Faces double-team Valiant, and Valiant gets fed up quickly and tags Tojo back in. Faces just keep hammering, so Valiant tags back in. Morton works his arm. Tojo produces a foreign object to finally get something going with Rick Morton, but does it behind the referee’s back in this no-DQ match. Tojo chops Morton, but Morton comes off the ropes with a bodypress for the three-count to take the first fall.

-FALL TWO: Heels regroup and start the fall by reiterating “NO RULES!” Tojo teases pulling out a weapon, and Morton demands he be searched for weapons, which makes Morton seem like a wuss since IT’S A NO-DQ MATCH. See, normally I complain about guys standing on the apron in a no-DQ tag match, but this match is changing up the formula by also having the guys be sneaky and stealth with their weapons in a no-DQ match.

-Morton is blinded by something and Valiant tags in to capitalize, clotheslining him for two. Chops by Tojo. He chokes Rick out, and another big chop gets the three-count to tie the match.

-FALL THREE: Ricky gets his second wind and tries stick-and-move technique with Tojo before tagging in Lucas, which is a pretty anticlimactic tag-out by Ricky Morton standards. He waited until he was back in control of the match and THEN got out. Valiant tags in and chokes out Lucas, and Tojo goes to the eyes again to blind Lucas. Tojo locks on a fat grab while Morton urges the crowd to chant instead of coming in to break the hold which is a bit of logic that I find absolutely nothing wrong with. Valiant goes back to the choke. Big chop by Tojo gets two.

-Everyone finally has enough and just brawls in the ring at this point. Piledriver by Valiant, and suddenly Mitchell & Kirby hit the ring and attack the faces, so the referee…calls for the bell. COOL.

5.0
The final score: review Not So Good
The 411
This was certainly a tale of two halves.
legend

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Memphis Wrestling, Adam Nedeff