wrestling / Video Reviews
The Name on the Marquee: NWA World Championship Wrestling (5.16.1987)
Loading...-I’m instantly intrigued by the fact that this episode is only 40 minutes long and there’s only one match marked for it.
-THIS WEEK: THE FINALS OF THE U.S. TAG TEAM TITLE TOURNAMENT: Ron Garvin & Barry Windham & The Midnight Express!
-Originally aired May 16, 1987.
-Your hosts are Tony Schiavone & David Crockett.
-We go to a pre-taped interview, with David interviewing Jim Cornette in the empty studio. He calls this week’s US Tag Team Title tournament final a belated Mother’s Day present. The Midnight Express were already the best in the world, and Cornette has gone ahead and evolved them into something greater.
-Coming soon to the NWA: The Fabulous Freebirds! We take a look at a highlight reel, complete with footage from Mid-South/UWF, which is the first inkling we’ve seen of anything happening between those two companies…technically those one companies, I guess. One of the clips they show is the Freebirds kicking the shit out of Bill Watts and leaving him bloody and unconscious, a weird bit of symbolism, all things considered.
-JJ Dillon dashes in to complain about how there’s, like, a million tag team titles in the NWA, and somehow the Four Horsemen haven’t had a shot at any of them. I think JJ could have made that point without randomly whipping out a slur against Asian people, but what do I know?
U.S. TAG TEAM TITLE TOURNAMENT FINAL: BARRY WINDHAM & RON GARVIN vs MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (with Jim Cornette)
-Garvin locks up with Beautiful Bobby while Tony is weirdly suspicious about a small detail: Jim Cornette has a different tennis racquet than he had in the pre-taped promo.
-Garvin ties up Eaton and Barry Windham comes off the top with a fist between the eyes. Stan Lane tags in and he goes to a stalemate with Windham on the lock-up. Windham ends up with a hammerlock on Lane and Cornette is visibly upset…well, always, but in this case, upset about how this match is going so far.
-Barry keeps working the arm, but that’s nothing a good old fashioned thumb to the eye can’t take care of, and Stan escapes. Eaton tags back in and gets armdragged, so Windham just goes to work on his arm too. Garvin just flings Stan Lane across the ring as we pause for a break.
-Back from commercial, all four men wind up fighting on the floor, which ends with Garvin backdropping Eaton on the concrete. Eaton gets up fast enough to tie up Garvin’s leg as he tries to get back into the ring and Stan Lane pounces, turning the tide in this bout. Eaton clamps on a side headlock and keeps Garvin on the mat with it. Tony helpfully explains that although it LOOKS like Garvin is just lying there doing nothing and catching his breath, he’s actually exerting quite a bit of energy trying to escape.
-Referee misses a tag behind his back and ends up arguing with Barry Windham while the Express gangs up on Garvin. Eaton goes to the top and connects with the legdrop. Midnight just keeps dishing out punishment until Garvin just slips over and tags his partner for a really anticlimactic hot tag. Windham goes to work on Eaton with rapid fire punches and an atomic drop. Eaton slumps over to his partner and tags him on the way down, and Lane clearly didn’t want to come in, so Windham forces him in and just goes nuts on him as we pause once again.
-Back from commercial, Eaton rakes the eyes and goes to the top rope, but Windham catches him up there and superplexes him. Windham goes back up to the top rope and Eaton gets out of the way, with Windham apparently hurting his leg on the way down. Savate kick by Stan Lane gets two, and now it’s Windham’s turn to desperately try to make the tag.
-Flying tackle by Eaton, and it looks so awesome that the crowd pops for it and then goes back to chanting for Windham. Midnights double team and we regrettably have to take ANOTHER break, but fans, the tape machines are rolling!
-Stan Lane has side headlock applied and they turn it into a double team, with Eaton connecting with a beautiful elbow off the top. Barry gets greedy and goes to the top again, but Barry moves this time and THAT’s a hot tag. Ron Garvin cleans house with headbutts. Cornette knocks out Windham on the floor and that seems to set something up, but instead Windham recovers right away and proves himself to be the dumbest babyface ever by attacking the referee for no reason.
-Windham takes out Cornette with a sleeper while the Midnights take out Ron Garvin with a chair and pin him, after Windham already earned a DQ, so the Midnights basically won this match twice, and the commentators are shocked as Teddy Long raises the arms and declares the Midnight Express champions.
-Okay, nothing against Ric Flair, but they seriously could have done multiple highlight reels instead of the single highlight reel that they’re about to completely wear out from overkill.
-Stan Lane celebrates the big victory, saying nobody can misjudge how hard the Midnights worked to win the title right here “On the SuperChannel, with 80 million people watching.” Stan Lane insists on a replay to show the world what “two Christian athletes” can accomplish in a fair competition. So we watch the entire crazy finish over again. Seriously, Windham completely earned this loss for his team. No sympathy at all for the faces this time around.
-An awesomely disheveled Jim Cornette cuts a promo gloating about the triumph, and we still have two minutes left in the broadcast, so the hell with it, here’s the finish AGAIN.
