Memphis Wrestling (3.17.1984) Review

-Originally aired May 17, 1984.

-Your hosts are Lance Russell & Dave Brown.

-BREAKING: JJ Dillon is actually in the building!

-But first, it’s Harley Davidson, Dirty Rhodes, and their new friend Bugsy McGraw. They pass the mic around, and Harley is just clearly the biggest star of the trio, pulling a kid from the crowd and asking him to “Go to school, don’t be no fool, put hope in your brains and no dope in your veins.”

-And JJ Dillon is finally, finally, finally here with the Zambuie Express. Oddly, he’s wearing a leather sportcoat and a polo shirt instead of his usual tuxedo, so it just looks like this is his day off. JJ makes no apology for leaving his men to do the work without him. The Zambuie Express can feed themselves and they know how to operate a door; he doesn’t have to come to the arenas with them. Meanwhile, look at their opposition: Jerry Lawler denies being managed by Jimmy Hart, and Joe LeDuc seems genuinely unsure if he’s managed by Jimmy. And they have to come to the arena in separate cars because they hate each other. Are they seriously a team?!

ZAMBUIE EXPRESS (with JJ Dillon) vs. DAVID JOHNSON & THEN THE TAPE CUTS OFF
-Zambuies get the pin over the non-David Johnson opponent.

-Jerry Lawler, Joe LeDuc, and Jimmy Hart are here, and the Southern Tag Team Title belts are in their possession. The studio audience is chanting “Hart is a wimp” and Jimmy cheerfully tells us that they’re chanting “smart as a whip.”

JERRY “The King” LAWLER & JOE LEDUC (Southern Tag Team Champions) vs. …WELL…
-Jerry and Joe are actually smiling amiably at each other, but they’re the only ones in the ring, wondering where their opponents are. Somebody runs over to Lawler, shows him a clipboard, then hurries off. Lance rings the bell to try to signal the opponents to come out. Finally, Pat Hutchinson emerges along with Kenya Condori…okay.

-LeDuc gives a forearm and a chop to Hutchinson. Atomic drop by LeDuc; Lawler tags in and dismantles him as Condori just watches. Backbreaker/fistdrop combo by the champs gets the three. Condori finally charges into the ring, and LeDuc gives him a forearm and walks away. I love this. That minute or so when Lawler & LeDuc were in the ring alone felt like it was building to something. And then the jobbers show up and Kenya hasn’t been there for a while and stayed on the apron the entire match but it still felt like it MIGHT be building to something…and then it was just a squash. I think they straight-up had some no-shows and they were legit trying to figure out who the opponents would be while Lawler & LeDuc were in the ring.

-Randy Savage is out here, gloating about his $5,000 cash that he won last week.

RANDY “Macho Man” SAVAGE (NWA Mid-American Champion, with Jimmy Hart & Angelo Poffo) vs. KEN RAPER
-Savage squashes Raper and piledrives him just to put a period on it, but suddenly here’s Dutch Mantell with his whip, and Savage takes off running.

-Scott Shannon is here, and he’s ready to take on all the top competition “in the Mid-South area.” Okay, he has the spirit at least.

-Dutch shows us that he’s carved the name “Randall A. Savage” into the handle of the whip.

-We have another videotaped promo from Rick Rude, who’s developing a bit of a Horshack perm. He sounds like he’s trying not to cry as he says Angel promised that nothing like last week will ever happen again.

-In the studio, Austin Idol just laughs it off as Angel comes out, wearing a black veil covering her entire face (uh-oh) and hands Idol another apology letter for him to sign. Austin puts it aside and says he’s going to give Angel another big kiss, but when he pulls the veil off, she has a massive black eye and a welt, and Idol is horrified, promising the beating of a lifetime for Rude and sending her off to see a doctor and get some help.

AUSTIN IDOL (International Champion) vs. JESSE OWENS
-Idol works the legs as we switch to the overhead camera that they were tinkering with last week. It’s a nice shot but having a handheld camera up there is an odd choice. It just looks like a fan cam instead of professional broadcasting. Las Vegas leglock finishes, but here’s Rick Rude for the surprise attack, KOing Idol with a wooden crate, then cutting off a pretty good amount of hair with some concealed scissors.

-Rude strenuously denies putting his hands on Angel, and that’s about it. I strongly prefer the twist that Continental Wrestling did with this angle a few years later, where there’s no actual victim because she’s in on it.

-We get a music video set to “Footloose” with highlights of the New Fabulous Ones, Tommy Rich & Eddie Gilbert. So the warning that the Moondogs were back in the territory appears to have just been a one-shot thing, where they basically just brought back some opponents of the old Fabs just so the new Fabs could have a highlight-reel match with them and make a music video out of it.

-Tommy Rich has the gall to use “often imitated but never duplicated” to put himself over when the whole point of this is that they’re imitating a team. Eddie Gilbert pledges that he’s going to earn the Fabulous name and he knows it’s going to take a lot of work.

-Jimmy, Jerry, and Joe are out here again. Jerry wants to make it very, very clear that he is not managed by Jimmy Hart, and he also wants to make it clear that the Tag Team Champions are not collectively managed by Jimmy either. Jimmy calls BS, saying that they got the win because of him, while Jerry vehemently denies that.

-The only thing we can do now is go to the videotape. It’s a pier-sixer with Jerry, Joe, and the Zambuies in the ring. Jimmy Hart runs to the ring, and there’s some well-timed “damage” to the tape at a key moment, but Jimmy throws a handful of powder and blinds one of the Zambuies, and Jerry Lawler gets the pin with a roll-up. The lingering doubt: it’s not clear who Jimmy was aiming for when he threw the powder, and the damage to the tape makes it hard to judge. That is a GREAT angle! Jerry is outraged that Jimmy tampered with the videotape, Jimmy denies it, and Joe can’t decide who to believe.

-JJ Dillon is here again. He’s signed a six-man match with himself and the Zambuies against Jerry, Joe, & Jimmy, and since they hate each other so much that they’ll be fighting with each other at some point, he figures it’ll be an easy win.

-Jimmy Hart is back out here with HIS Fabulous Ones. They hate imitators, and it works when Jimmy Hart says that because he’s a HEEL, he’s supposed to be a hypocrite.

-Austin Idol is out here, and because of the haircut, he now has a hilarious He-Man mushroom cut. He’s vowing to carve Rude up.

7.5

The final score: review Good

The 411

As much as I wasn't impressed by Joe LeDuc's first promo when he came back to the area, I have to say, this whole story has been a major breath of fresh air after the stale Lawler/Dundee drama.