Mid-South Wrestling (4.27.1985) Review

-Originally aired April 27, 1985.

-Your hosts are Boyd Pierce and Bill Watts.

-On April 16 in New Orleans at the Municipal Auditorium, there was a Ugandan Death Match, Terry Taylor defending the North American Title against Kamala. A Ugandan Death Match means the match ends when one man concedes by leaving ringside entirely, meaning he crosses the barricaded area.

-So we join the match with Taylor putting Kamala in a sleeper hold. Kamala flails his arms and knocks the referee out to the floor, and Skandar Akbar hurries in there to KO Taylor with a riding crop. Taylor is out, there’s no referee, and Kamala heads to the top rope to kill him off for good, until Hacksaw Jim Duggan storms to the ring and cleans house with a 2×4. Hacksaw beats on Kamala so much that he runs back to the locker room to get away from the assault, so when the referee wakes up, all he sees is Terry Taylor and no trace of Kamala, so Taylor retains the title. Unfortunately, retaining the title means Taylor still has the title belt, which means he’ll be forfeiting the title tomorrow before he goes into the hospital for hernia surgery.

TV TITLE TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL: HACKSAW JIM DUGGAN vs. TOMMY PRICHARD
-Tom has bedazzled his ring jacket and stopped shaving to give himself a glow-up for his newly-found heeldom. Dutch Mantell struts to ringside to watch the match, and Hacksaw immediately knows something is up.

-They lock up and can’t really get anywhere. Duggan goes to power moves, getting a shoulderbreaker and setting up for the spear to finish, but Pritchard gets out of the ring rather than take the move…and he just stays outside of the ring and stares at the referee and tells him to finish the count, so it’s a mysterious and anticlimactic finish, as the referee counts out Tom Pritchard, who basically just forfeited the match.

-So Bill Watts brings him over to the commentary table and Prichard explains that he’s changing his approach to wrestling now. Rather than wrestle hard, he’s going to wrestle smart, and there’s a smarter way to advance up the ladder and win titles than wrestling Jim Duggan. Hmmm…

KAMALA (with Skandar Akbar) vs. THOR
-Heel vs. Heel. Hmmm…. again.

-Kamala chops Thor around and rams him into the turnbuckle. Kamala chokes as I have to point out an impressive testament to how Mid-South survived in the wake of the WWF taking over the world. They’ve actually ADDED seating to one side of the Irish McNeil Boys Club because they were still that much in demand, and good for them because this promotion absolutely worked their asses off to keep afloat.

-OH! Speaking of which…We get a tangent from Bill Watts. Putting movie stars in the main event is bullshit, Tuesday Night Titans sucks, and three never-was failures on 20/20 made the business look like shit just because they couldn’t hack it in the wrestling business. We go to video of Butch Reed cutting a promo right after a match in Tulsa with his left eye legit swollen shut, and he demands that anybody who laughs at professional wrestling step up and take a shot at him if they see him in public.

-To summarize, Bill Watts says that promo is a testament to the fact that Butch Reed is a real athlete, and not “an overweight pachyderm like you find in Titan Sports.”

JAKE “The Snake” ROBERTS & THE BARBARIAN vs. RICHARD DYE & PAUL BROWN
-Jake smacks Brown around, with Bill Watts being quick to point out that you can hear the contact being made on these bumps. Roberts works his shoulder, and Brown’s selling is the best part of this match. He looks terrified for his very life.

-Dye tags in as Bill Watts just decides to mention that some wrestlers have issues with blood in their urine and prostate issues. Barbarian applies a full nelson to get the submission, but if that causes prostate issues for Dye, then I think he did the move wrong.

-Oh, and just for the hell of it, Bill Watts decides we should watch a 1983 match between Steve Williams and King Kong Bundy. Bundy talks tough about what a big star he is when he wrestles in Madison Square Garden, but how tough can he be if Steve Williams just hoisted him up in an Oklahoma Stampede and pinned him like nothing? Clearly, the wrestlers in the WWF can’t hang with Mid-South guys.

BRICKHOUSE BROWN vs. THE WRESTLER
-Now that’s as meta as a jobber gimmick can get.

-Brown squashes The Wrestler as Dutch suddenly returns to ringside to watch. Armdrag into an armbar by Brickhouse as Bill says that the reason Brickhouse is so much better in the ring now than he was in his first Mid-South run is because he trained with “somebody, but Brickhouse won’t say who,” so I’m hoping that’s leading somewhere. Brickhouse keeps up the fight with “ghetto-style” tactics. Brickhouse comes off the second rope with a double-axehandle, much like one does in the ‘hood, to get the three-count.

-Eddie Gilbert sits in for commentary for the next match, since fans at home have so many questions about The Nightmare.

THE NIGHTMARE vs. PRIVATE TERRY DANIELS
-Pretty funny how they still bill him as “Terry Daniels of the Cobra Corps” even when it’s plainly obvious that Sgt. Slaughter is never going to show up here.

-Chinlock by Nightmare as Gilbert does some FANTASTIC heel commentary, switching to a Gomer Pyle voice whenever Terry Daniels does anything. Nightmare sends Daniels out to the floor and Eddie is inspired to switch over to a Dusty Rhodes impression.

-Nightmare suplexes Daniels back in and Gilbert continues to shine on commentary until Nightmare ends the match with a piledriver. Gilbert goes into his own backstory, admitting he used to be a jobber who got his face rubbed into the mat, and now it’s time for stars like Jim Duggan to learn what it feels like to be treated the way that Eddie Gilbert has been treated.

SUPERSTAR BILL DUNDEE vs. JACK VICTORY
-Dutch is still at ringside.

-Dundee dodges a charge and monkey flips Victory. Wristlock applied by Dundee. Victory rams Dundee against the ropes to fight out as Bill Watts uses the phrase “gives no quarter” for a record-breaking seventh time during this single episode. Sleeper by Dundee gets the victory over Victory.

TERRY TAYLOR (North American Champion) vs. EDCAR “BOO” THOMAS
-….and Dutch is still here.

-Taylor hiptosses Thomas and follows with a backbreaker as Bill Watts announces that Taylor is planning on adding the figure four to his repartee, which could have a major impact on all of wrestling.

-Five-arm by Taylor, and the figure four gets the submission. I feel like there’s a story here with Watts souring on Thomas really fast, because they aligned him with Steve Williams and seemed to be building a story with him, and in an instant, he’s just some jobber.

-We close the show with a Ted DiBiase music video, and it’s loaded with clips of DiBiase beating up Andre the Giant, Junkyard Dog, Tito Santana, and Magnum TA, and Bill Watts makes it a point to call our attention to every one of those guys after the video.

7.6

The final score: review Good

The 411

The wrath of Bill Watts was the best angle on the entire show.