The Furious Flashbacks – UWF Wrestling Wars

The Furious Flashbacks – UWF Wrestling Wars

The worst UWF match to date and Lou Albano buries the company live on TV. Does Herb Abrams notice? Click to find out!

Bear with me while I plaster on a fake smile and plough through this shit one more time.

Actually it’s technically two more times because I still have the ominously entitled “Main Event” DVD to come. Although I suspect it’ll be the main event of but two things; jack and shit. And Jack is saddling up. Oh Herb, why’d your company have to suck so bad?

Yep, it’s another fucking pathetic episode of the Fury Hour and yes, it still states that it’s the Thunder Hour on the voice over. Hosts are Craig DeGeorge & Bruno Sammartino. They have another mystery wrestler in tonight’s main event. Last time it was Louie Spicolli so I’m not holding my breath. We seem to have moved forwards a few years, or perhaps only months, here.

Mike Lauria/The Nightmare v The Keeper Paul Samson/The Animal

Yeah, so now instead of washed up wrestlers they have shitty ones with worse names. The Nightmare looks to have a career of such as he’s a guy who can’t even take an Irish whip. He’s been masked up to hide his shame. Bruno talks about Nightmare wrestling last week and it’s the kind of thing where Herb would hire someone, they’d stink up the joint, and he’d bring them back anyway. Lauria tags in and he’s almost as bad. He moonlights as a radio personality. Animal decides to wake up the crowd by throwing candy into the audience and that finally establishes the heel/face alignments in this one. Nightmare comes back in to start bumping before Animal hits him. This isn’t the Fury Hour this is the fucking amateur hour. If this was Japan they’d be pissing themselves at this. “Hahaha, very funny joke. Hahaha.” Etc. The “faces” run a double clothesline spot and wouldn’t you know it Nightmare bumps that before they hit. He then tries to flip bump an X-Factor and lands on his head. Animal with a bulldog and Nightmare tries to flip bump that as well. He’s fucking lucky he didn’t break his own neck on that. Animal hits the Tombstone. Oh come on, just fucking pin him! End the misery. Keeper comes in for the cocky pin and the crowd boo? So the faces were the heels? -****. Incredibly bad on every possible level.

POST MATCH Lauria berates and attacks Nightmare, deservedly, and Animal makes the save. What? How much crack was Herb on? None of this makes any sense AT ALL.

David Perry v JR James

James has a manager called Bobby Rogers who claims to be Buddy Rogers grandson. Its clear Herb has become a complete cheapskate by this point. Sammartino talks about him giving shots to new guys but it’s just he can’t afford to pay the name guys anymore. James is definitely heel in this one. That’s a step up on the last clusterfuck. Rogers helps him with additional cheating on top of his existing cheating. The ring looks rough. There’s one patch with a blood stain on it. These guys are both pretty raw. Their timing isn’t very good and nothing they do in terms of moves is smooth. The timing issues continue as Perry just stops and looks around for the manager. It takes Rogers a while to figure out he’s meant to be on the apron. When he finally gets up he gets laid out and Perry superkicks James for the win. ½*.

POST MATCH James pulls out a bull whip and levels Perry with a nice clothesline with the whip. That was the best spot they did. Perry fights back but in come the jobber brigade to break it up.

CAPTAIN LOU’S CORNER – Oh, he can still afford Lou Albano…no he can’t. This is a taped interview with Mister Red from a while ago. Lou actually runs the gimmick in the ring this time. Herb gets in the ring for no apparent reason. Albano calls Red a “fat, repulsive halfwit”. That’s not impartial journalism! Red merely wants a handshake from Albano because Red bought out the Captain’s Corner. Herb is in there to tell Red that Lou still has a contract and Albano punks Red out and rips up Red’s contract. Hey, an opportunity for Lou to put himself over on live TV taken? Surely not.

Mad Man Pondo v Super Ninja w/Mr Red

Albano is on commentary and Red calls him out again. I get the feeling this version of Super Ninja isn’t Keiji Mutoh. This place is too low rent for him. So it’s probably just some jobber in a mask. Crowd shouts boring at them as they work through some pretty weak stuff. Albano buries both wrestlers on commentary. Sammartino then rags on Pondo for a “very poor armdrag”. Their own commentators are burying the product! Albano thinks they suck so bad that Jim Herd should come and hire them for WCW. HAHAHAHA. BURN! Sure, it’s totally unprofessional but it’s making me laugh. Red interferes by covering Pondo’s eyes for about 10 seconds. You dastard! “This is going down in the wrestling hall of fame as one of the greatest matches of all time” – Albano. HAHAHA. Herb panics and jumps in to join the commentary to say he’ll suspend Mr Red if he keeps interfering. While the four commentators are arguing Ninja gets the pin. DUD. But the commentary was hilarious. Great to see a company just self destruct right in front of your eyes. And somehow this got released as a DVD? They must have been out of their minds.

POST MATCH everyone keeps fighting until Pondo gets carried out of there, Super Ninja punks out the referee and in comes Herb Abrams. He suspends Mr Red for 30 days so Mr Red beats him up. Is this a shoot? Herb attacks Mr Red again and this is so embarrassing. It’s how I imagine wrestling would be if children booked it for themselves. This is how a match would be booked if it happened in a playground fantasy wrestling company.

Babyface Nellie v Tina Moretti

Babyface is a heel, which makes sense I guess. Moretti is better known to the world as Ivory from her time in the WWE. She’s also the first person to appear on this show who doesn’t suck. Also because she’s so young she has an unreasonably fit body. The graphic on this says WWOW, which doesn’t alter the commentary being Bruno & Craig. I’m guessing they decided to buy in some decent footage rather than pay the actual wrestlers. As far as chicks wrestling goes this is passable. I’m more interested in checking out how young Ivory is. They run a criss-cross and Moretti just stops leaving Nellie to run a few more laps. She doesn’t get tired doing so it’s not great comedy but it’s smirkworthy. Moretti finishes her off with a giant swing. ¼*.

Ariel Dee v Malia Hosaka

Another match from WWOW (Wild Women of Wrestling if you were interested). Hosaka isn’t from Japan as billed here but rather Hawaii. She was trained by Killer Kowalski and almost got a shot at the WWE. She was meant to do a fan becomes wrestler angle against Ivory but as she’d wrestled for WCW before she got recognised and it queered the deal. The gig ended up going to Tori (otherwise known as Terri Powers). Hosaka has been made up to look more Japanese. Dee by comparison is a very poor and inexperienced competitor. Hosaka picks off the leg but Dee doesn’t seem to know what to do. She doesn’t really struggle to get out nor sell the injury. Hosaka chops her down for 2. Spin kick in slow motion, like Great Khali’s, gets 2. Hosaka busts out a handspring back elbow. She may have taught Molly Holly that move. She tries for an Enzuigiri but Dee just takes a faceplant off it before it arrives. This has gone on a little too long already. Hosaka promptly takes it with a slingshot sunset flip. ¼*. I can’t believe they had to buy in footage of two matches to make up the hour of time. That is so sad.

Midnight Star v Bob Orton

Great. Another jobber match. DeGeorge addresses the lack of Steve Williams. Apparently he “didn’t fulfil his TV requirements” so was stripped of the TV belt. Or he quit in other words. He announces a tournament will take place for the vacant belt. Or the company will go broke before they have the chance to do it. One or the other. Star gets the chance to do some offence, which Orton rather generously sells because it all looks shit. Orton looks to be going through the motions when he’s on top. DeGeorge suggests Orton will chop Star back to parts unknown. Star tries to go up top but Orton cuts him off and hits a terrible running uppercut. Superplex finishes. ¼*.

POST MATCH Herb interviews Bob Orton who coasts through the interview just like he coasted through the match.

The Blackhearts w/Luna Vachon v The Firecat/Mystery Partner

Crowd wants “Sting” as Firecat’s partner but that’s never going to happen. Before he announces his partner the Blackhearts attack Firecat and the partner is STEVE RAY. The Blackhearts are just a bland heel team with Luna as the only colour. Steve Ray gets the crowd pumped by attacking the one guy with the timekeepers table and we get a crazy brawl into the crowd. Alison Royale is out here to fight with Luna so now we have three crazy brawls going on. Firecat uses the ring steps and the ref has lost all control of this and it hasn’t even started. This is a crazy brawl for UWF. It’s more like watching ECW. Eventually the ref has seen enough and calls for the DQ. The faces end up alone in the ring celebrating. The crowd isn’t totally biting on this but it was really quite a surprise fun match. *1/2.

The 411: It evens out here because the main event was quite entertaining but the opening match was a real shocker. The lack of money in the product was REALLY obvious though. The guys involved weren’t trying hard to get themselves noticed. They hadn’t forced their way onto TV. They were on TV because Herb couldn’t afford real talent. The fact they borrowed two matches from another company is quite a painful one to cope with. It just screams “we can’t even put on an hour’s worth of matches good enough to be on TV”. It’s telling me I don’t want to go to UWF’s shows because they’ll stink something fierce. One more DVD to go and we shall never speak of this again.

Final Score:  2.0   [ Very Bad ]