The Name on the Marquee: Mid-South Wrestling (3.13.1982)

-Another cool one where they’ve left in the local station promo at the beginning of the tape.

-Originally aired March 13, 1982. Fun fact: According to the Pregnancy Conception Calculator, this is probably the date that my parents made me. Hopefully not while watching Mid-South Wrestling.

-Your hosts are Boyd Pierce and Ted DiBiase.

BUDDY LANDELL & JESSE BARR vs. JESSE TANNER & BILL ASH
-Jumping straight to the stand-by matches, I guess. Amateur exhibition by Buddy and Bill to start. Buddy hackdrops him and follows with a drpkick. Jesse & Jesse do battle before Ash heads back in and sticks a thumb in the eye to take over. All four men end up in the ring and Buddy hits a high belly-to-belly on Tanner to get the win. Pretty disjointed match.

DUSTY RHODES vs. ED WISKOWSKI
-Rerun of a match from a few weeks ago. Dusty takes Wiskowski down to the mat and works the leg with a toehold. Wiskowski tries to take control but misses a corner charge and Dusty goes back to the leg. Wiskowski escapes and goes to the second rope, but he meets knees to the guts, and the big ol’ elbow finishes.

THE GRAPPLER vs. FRANK MONTE
-Monte counters a waistlock takedown by flipping the Grappler over. Grappler tries to work the arm, but Monte kicks out, and Grappler’s already frustrated and resorts to the loaded boot to take control. Elbow by the grappler gets two. Knee to the head, as Grappler has done literally everything except grapple at this point. He cracks Monte across the head with some punches that land with audible smacks. Monte comes back with an elbow off the ropes. He puts his head down for a backdrop and Grappler turns it into a shoulderbreaker. Neat finisher by the Grappler, who bulldogs Monte but holds the shoulder instead of the head.

KILLER KARL KOX vs. DON SERRANO
-Kox attacks during the intro and throws Serrano to the floor. Brainbuster finishes right away.

IRON MIKE SHARPE vs. BOB ORTON, JR.
-Not only is Sharpe a babyface, but Orton is pretty much a jobber to the stars in this territory. Bearhug by Iron Mike right away. Orton escapes and connects with a nice dropkick. Orton always had a really distinctive look to his dropkicks. It looked like he was floating, almost. Sharpe fights back with a slam and Orton retreats to the floor. Sharpe slingshots him back in and whips him Heenan-style into the corner, and Orton is dangling upside-down. Orton begs for mercy and Iron Mike rams him stomach-first into the turnbuckles, and the backbreaker finishes. Good lord, Orton got MAULED here.

-Ted DiBiase will defend his North American Title next week, but we don’t know against whom. Reeser Bowden is in the ring with bearded Paul Orndorff and Bob Roop. They know for sure that ONE of them is the number-one contender, but Mid-South Wrestling won’t tell them who. Even more insulting is that without evening announcing who the number-one contender is, Mid-South has already issued an edict that the one who doesn’t get selected will be barred from the building for next week’s show. Bob Roop makes fun of Bill Watts, who was marching around last week in the locker room saying that the logical thing to do would be to have Orndorff and Roop wrestle each other, but Orndorff and Roop are best friends and they aren’t falling for that! It’s just Watts trying to create dissention because he knows how much trouble Orndorff and Roop cause for Watts’ favorites, JYD and DiBiase.

PAUL ORNDORFF vs. TONY TORRES
-Orndorff takes Torres down with a front facelock. Torres slips free but Orndorff gets to work on the arm, applying a hammerlock and snapping it repeatedly. Orndorff slams Torres and stomps away on him, but the kneedrop misses. Torres tries to capitalize by working the leg, but Orndorff catches him with an enziguiri(!) and finishes with a powerslam.

NON-TITLE: MR. OLYMPIA (Mississippi Champion) vs. BOB ROOP
-Sweet sequence early on where Roop applies the Boston crab but Olympia flips him over. Backslide by Olympia gets two. Roop takes him down and goes for the Boston crab again, but Olympia kicks out of it and frustration is setting in for Roop. Olympia gets a half-crab locked on and Roop is trapped in it. Paul Orndorff shows up at ringside and Olympia does that stupid thing wrestlers do where he releases the hold for no reason just from seeing a guy walk to ringside. Killer Karl Kox shows up, shovel in hand, and tells Orndorff to take his ass back to the locker room, and Orndorff gets out of there, infuriating Roop.

-Kox stays at ringside as a preventative measure, further irritating Roop. Olympia stays in control and Roop is desperately trying to stall while he thinks of a new game plan. Olympia pounces and Roop misses a corner charge. He tries to escape the ring to stall but Kox threatens him with the shovel and Roop is forced to stay in the ring, with Olympia working the arm over. Bodypress by Olympia gets two. Dropkick by Olympia gets two. Forearm by Olympia gets two. Sunset flip by Olympia gets two. Snapmare by Olympia gets two…and the TV time runs out, which means this match is a draw! Wow, not only did this match tell a story, but the story had chapters.

-So the show ends on a cliff hanger of sorts, as we were promised a decision about who got the title match by the end of the hour. Now time is up but Boyd Pierce promises that next week, the decision will be made, the match will happen during the same hour, and the wrestler who isn’t picked must leave the building before the bout can start. TO BE CONTINUED!

6.6

The final score: review Average

The 411

Most of the show was quite a grab bag, but man, that last 15 minutes were intriguing as hell.