Memphis Wrestling (6.27.1981) Review

-Originally aired June 27, 1981.

-Your hosts are Lance Russell & Dave Brown.

-Superstar Bill Dundee is back with his neck totally rehabilitated after that lethal injury. Lance Russell says that in the past, Memphis has asked fans to write in with the matches they want to see. Lance says he now wants to start asking wrestlers what their dream matches would be. So he poses that question to Dundee, and Dundee answers that he wants a no-holds-barred match with Bo Derek. But seriously folks, he’d have himself & Jerry Lawler in a match against Wayne Ferris & Kevin Sullivan for the tag team belts.

-And with that, we go to a prerecorded interview where Lance asks the same question to Jerry Lawler. Lawler wants a lumberjack match against Jimmy Hart, with Bill Dundee, Dutch Mantell, Dream Machine, and Steve Keirn surrounding the ring.

-Next, we go to Dutch Mantell, who unsurprisingly wants Kevin Sullivan in a TV Title match with all seconds banned from ringside.

-We go to Dream Machine, who rambles about how he “takes all kinds of pills that give him all kinds of thrills” before focusing on the question at hand. He’ll let Jerry Lawler have Jimmy Hart. Dream Machine will take the Nightmare to show us “what 275 pounds of blue-eyed soul can do.” It says something that he has to go as far as to rip off the lisp, too, when you can just as easily copy off Dusty Rhodes without doing a straight impression of him.

-And now here’s Steve Keirn as this segment continues way beyond where I thought this was going. Steve Keirn wants a Texas Death Match with Kevin Sullivan. Also, he apologizes to Lance because he’s “buzzing from taking too many vitamins.” Pro wrestling is officially in the 1980s.

-And now Lance Russell is at a backyard party with Jimmy Hart’s First Family, and they all bully him and taunt him, yanking his jacket off and tussling his hair while he tries to make his point. He asks them for their dream matches. Wayne Ferris would want a dream match with Roy Rogers just so he can injure that young dumb punk badly enough that he gets the hint and quits the wrestling business. Kevin Sullivan, wearing a top hat and looking like a roided up Dr. Demento, wants a battle royal with himself, Dutch Mantell, and all of the guys in the First Family. Nightmare #1 wants a handicap match against the Dream Machine with Machine’s mask on the line. Nightmare #2 has no dream of his own. Jimmy Hart wants a boxing match against Jerry Lawler, with Kevin Sullivan and Wayne Ferris as special guest co-referees, with the Southern Heavyweight Title on the line.

-And now, your payoff to all of this: TUESDAY NIGHT in the Louisville Gardens, it’s going to be Jerry Lawler, Bill Dundee, Dream Machine, Steve Keirn, & Dutch Mantell vs. Jimmy Hart and the entire First Family in a ten-man tag team match. Immediately following the ten-man tag, the participant who scores the winning pinfall will receive their dream match. That took a solid 24 minutes to set up, giving birth to the Attitude era format for RAW. It’s a pretty fun premise for a house show card, though.

THE NIGHTMARES (with Jimmy Hart) vs. PAT HUTCHINSON & DAVID PRICE
-#1 and Jimmy have an extended conversation about what an easy match this is going to be, and Hutchinson just walks over and armdrags #1 while he’s not paying attention. #1 shakes it off quickly and beats on Hutchinson, getting aggressive in retaliation for being embarrassed. Powerslam by #1. Everybody tags and Price gets slammed down. Elbow gets three.

-Plowboy Frazier is here. Jimmy Hart cut a rambly promo recently where he claimed that he held a victory against Frazier in Nashville, and he’s back to formally deny that. He agrees to wrestle a match against Jimmy to let him prove himself, and he’ll even put up a fancy gold watch and diamond ring that he bought a few years ago as collateral…but not Sylvester, his rooster that won the blue ribbon at the county fair a few years ago.

EXPIRATION OF TIME, SOUTHERN TAG TEAM TITLE: WAYNE FERRIS & KEVIN SULLIVAN (Champions, with Jimmy Hart) vs. STEVE KEIRN & ROY ROGERS
-Well, this is an odd type of a title match, isn’t it? Roy Rogers is happy to say that he’s been cleared to wrestle after his injury last week. Okay, so Roy Rogers was a guy that I dismissed as “some jobber” when he first appeared and I never bothered looking into who he is. But the more he stays around, and the more they talk him up and clearly have plans for him, the fact that he got promo time today made me finally pause the show to look it up on Cagematch and see who the hell he is. And oh, it turns out, this is Johnny Rich. Okay, so he’s going to be around for a while.

FALL ONE: So right away, Sullivan gets a hard forearm to the mouth and ends up on the floor. Ferris tags in and gets a forearm to the face, and he’s dazed. So young up-and-comer Roy Rogers tags in and he whips Sullivan hard into the corner. Keirn comes in and monkeyflips Sullivan for a two-count, and Jimmy Hart is in a snit.

-Rogers tags in and the champs overwhelm him with experience, and Lance says the obvious strategy here is to cut off all tags because the easy win is in keeping the rookie in there. And indeed that’s what the champions do, and it works until the referee catches the champs in an attempted double-team and reprimands Kevin Sullivan, and with the referee’s back turned, Keirn just wallops Ferris in the back of the head, and Rogers cradles him for the three-count.

FALL TWO: So the champs have about five minutes of TV time left to tie the match or else we have new champions, which makes this the best use ever of the Expiration of Time concept. Keirn works Ferris’ arm. Rogers tags in and this is the most anticlimactic thing they could have done. Backbreaker, clean pin, champs tie to retain the belts. That’s IT, they couldn’t do some totally shitty heinous deed with 30 seconds to go, they just beat the rookie and go home. I rescind the

5.4

The final score: review Not So Good

The 411

The house show set-up was fun just because it was something different. In particular, the stuff in Jimmy Hart's backyard is highly recommended if you're a Jimmy fan. Nothing else to recommend this week, though.