wrestling / Video Reviews
Mid-South Wrestling (6.8.1985) Review
Image Credit: WWE/Peacock
Loading...-Originally aired June 8, 1985.
-Your hosts are Jim Ross and Joel Watts.
-And Mid-South is looking to drum up more house show business, so we open up with a promo touting Mid-South Wrestling fundraising opportunities.
COWBOY BILL WATTS vs. THE BRUISER
-Watts slaps Bruiser, probably for leaving the arena only five minutes after the final match at a house show. He ties Bruiser in the ropes and slaps him around some more, and the Stampede finishes. With Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan headlining the competition, seeing pale, balding, burly Bill Watts was like watching a time traveler in the ring.
KAMALA (with Skandar Akbar) vs. FRANKIE LANE
-Hacksaw Jim Duggan shows up as Kamala’s entrance theme starts up, and with Duggan menacingly waving his 2×4 in the air, Kamala and Akbar won’t even leave the locker room, and it appears we won’t have a match.
-We take a look at footage of last weekend’s Superdome house show, and Muhammad Ali is in attendance to support his good friend, Snowman, who has Ali’s cornerman, Drew Bundini Brown, in his corner tonight. Snowman’s push reminds me a lot of Diesel’s WWF Title run, where they just desperately tried to will him into being a mainstream celebrity by pushing him onto red carpets and photographing him around famous people.
-Snowman’s opponent tonight is Jake “The Snake” Roberts, with Barbarian in his corner. Barbarian interferes at one point, and Ali hops the barricade the chase Barbarian while Jake tries to capitalize on the interference with the DDT, but Snowman kicks out of the DDT, because we’re gonna try that too.
-Jake goes after Bundini Brown, but Muhammad Ali isn’t having it and wallops Jake and Barbarian, and Snowman gets the three-count. JR declares TWICE that Snowman walked tall in the Superdome, so you might say things are getting pretty serious. See, with JYD, it was this very organic build where he started off as a comedy character (he literally lived in a junkyard and brought a wheelbarrow to the ring) but gradually, something special began to emerge and the fans connected to him, and the gimmick got reshaped in the process. They didn’t just start the Junkyard Dog off by declaring “this is your new superhero” and bam, that was it. But now that JYD is gone, Bill Watts keeps trying to introduce The Next Big Thing as a fully-formed mega-star out of the chute, and it doesn’t work that way.
-Skandar Akbar is out here, declaring that Kamala’s match isn’t happening as long as Hacksaw Jim Duggan is walking around the building with weapons.
NON-TITLE: TED DIBIASE & “Dr. Death” STEVE WILLIAMS (Tag Team Champions) vs. BRICKHOUSE BROWN & BRAD ARMSTRONG
-Brad backdrops DiBiase and follows with a series of dropkicks to clear the ring, and this crowd is fired up. Ted comes back with a stungun and tags in the Doc. Clothesline gets two.
-Tag to Brickhouse Brown, who is WALKING TALL until DiBiase catches him in mid-air and makes it a backbreaker. Williams tags back in, and he’s bleeding hardway from just under the eye. Corner charge by Williams misses and everybody tags. Pier sixer breaks out. Referee struggles to restore order, but Williams loads up the arm brace and knocks out Armstrong, and DiBiase locks on the figure four for a tainted victory over the unconscious Armstrong. Hot match, but another strange case of “Just say it’s a title match if you’re gonna do that anyway.”
HACKSAW JIM DUGGAN vs. LARRY CLARKE
-And Duggan is WALKING TALL to the ring. Duggan attacks right away because “he doesn’t get paid by the hour,” so mark that one on your Mid-South Bingo card, too. DiBiase and Williams storm the ring with a surprise attack, with Akbar supervising and ominously smoking a cigar. With Duggan weakened, they hold him down so Akbar can burn him with the cigar, but Bill Watts hits the ring and unloads a folding chair on everybody, and Bill Watts is WALKING TALL.
-We flash back to The Nightmare’s big victory over Terry Taylor last week to become the new North American Champion. The match and the angle were awesome, but this is another problem–EDDIE GILBERT is over; I’m not sure the Nightmare is. JR reports that after the title win, Nightmare, Gilbert, and Flair went to celebrate at a local Chinese restaurant, because they were WOKKING TALL.
THE NIGHTMARE (North American Champion, with Eddie Gilbert) vs. MIKE NICHOLS
-Eddie Gilbert declares that going forward, his man is to be billed as The Champion, not The Nightmare. Champion stomps and stomps at Mike Nichols, all while yelling “THAT’s for Postcards on the Edge! And THAT’s for making Harrison Ford look like such a wimp in Regarding Henry!”
-Champion slams Nichols into place for a second-rope splash, and the piledriver gets the win. Eddie Gilbert taunts the jeering crowd by dancing on the staircase in the Irish McNeil Boys’ Club, a la The Joker. He’s JOAQUIN TALL!
-We flash back to last week, when Snowman stole the whip from Dutch Mantell and then forgot when slavery ended. But the important thing is he was WALKING TALL.
DUTCH MANTELL vs. ALLAN MARTIN
-Dutch has the whip back, which kinda takes the piss out of the angle we just watched. Like Snowman cut his impassioned promo and then a referee awkwardly approached him afterwards and was like, “Hey…so, you have to give the whip back. It doesn’t belong to you.” And then Snowman was okay with it, apologized, and returned it. And no, Dutch didn’t go to the whip store and buy a new one, JR explicitly referred to it as Shoobaby, so it’s the same one.
-Mantell elbows Martin down, then hits the MX to get a quick three-count. Dutch then heelishly conspires to get Oswald Cobblepot elected mayor of Gotham City so he can build a chemical plant. Dutch Mantell is WALKEN TALL!
THE FANTASTICS vs. DIRTY WHITE BOYS
-And this is the start of a big big push, because the Fantastics’ entrance eats up a solid three minutes, as every woman, lady, and girl in the building gets a hug and a kiss. Fulton has taped ribs for some reason and the Dirty White Boys go after that target, but an elbow by Anthony misses. Tommy Rogers tags in with 20 seconds remaining in the TV hour, and we close the show with the match unsettled.
