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The Name on the Marquee: Smoky Mountain Wrestling (9.3.1994)

May 31, 2017 | Posted by Adam Nedeff
5.1
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The Name on the Marquee: Smoky Mountain Wrestling (9.3.1994)  

-Originally aired September 3, 1994.

-Your hosts are Bob Caudle & Les Thatcher. Chris Hamrick gets the draw for Beat the Champ, so Lance Storm is already planning his drive to the bank.

“Wild Eyed Southern Boy” TRACY SMOTHERS vs BRIAN LOGAN
-Mat wrestling to start, but Logan makes it to the ropes and stalls. Smothers shoulderblocks him and works the arm. Jawjacker OUTTA NOWHERE gets the three-count.

-Les welcomes John, a fan who, courtesy of Starlight Foundation, got to spend a week following SMW. Nice segment and a good cause.

BEAT THE CHAMP TV TITLE: LANCE STORM (Champion, with Chris Jericho) vs CHRIS HAMRICK
-They trade arm wringers until Hamrick goes to the eyes. Monkeyflip, but Storm lands on his feet. Hamrick tries to fight back and goes to the second rope, but Storm meets him with a dropkick, and a jackhammer for three. LAAAAAAAANCE STORM….LAAAAAAAANCE STORM….

-We oddly flash back to how Storm won the title with an assist from Brian Lee. Probably should have aired that BEFORE the match, but okeeday…Tammy Fytch and her boys are here. Candido vows revenge on everybody he’s ever crossed paths with.

-We flash back some more to FITE assaulting Dirty White Boy last week. Bob Caudle is with DWB. Bruiser Bedlam may be the toughest man in Detroit, but we ain’t in Detroit, we’re in the south, and DWB ain’t gonna lose to no YANKEE!

-Night of the Legends, now available on VHS!

BRUISER BEDLAM (with Jim Cornette) vs DOUG DALTON
-Dalton is wearing a dead-on rip-off of Bret Hart’s tights and boots from around this time and deserves an asskicking just for that. Bruiser hammers away at Dalton and suplexes him. Dalton gets choked over the ropes while Cornette helpfully wipes the snot off his nose. Stomach claw (or “the fat grab” as a friend in high school called it) gets the submission.

-Pre-taped shenanigans with Jim Cornette wearing a Sherlock Holmes costume as he tries to figure out who the new commissioner of SMW is. He’s received a hot tip about a specific address, and he’s about to knock on the door to learn who it is.

-We have a long recap of all the hot potatoing that they’ve been doing with the Tag Team Title during the past month. TL;DR, the Rock & Roll Express are the current champions and Da Gangstas don’t like them.

TAG TEAM TITLE: ROCK & ROLL EXPRESS (Champions) vs DA GANGSTAS
-New Jack starts with Robert Gibson. Gibson frustrates him by dodging him like a bull to start. Gibson applies a full nelson. New Jack scales the ropes to break it and Gibson just lets go to drop him on his back. Armdrags all around and Morton comes in to stop Mustafa from making trouble. I’m sorry, but the sight of Mustafa backing off from either one of these guys stretches credibility like Stu Hart with a first-timer.

-Morton throws jabs at New Jack. Saed tags in and finally takes control, ripping at Morton’s face and choking him over the ropes. Morton turns it into a fistfight and gets the upper hand (oh, come on…) and Saed gets out while he can. New Jack punishes Morton with a chokehold.

-Hot tag Gibson and he cleans house. Sunset flip is attempted. Saed looks like he’ll power out until Morton dropkicks Saed down, and Gibson rolls him up for three. Post-match, Gangstas and their posse bring out the nightsticks and just murder Ricky Morton with them, clobbering his back and ribcage so hard that it causes Morton’s forehead to bleed, and Les Thatcher stops just short of beating the TV audience over the head with a nightstick as he ponders “what a familiar scene this is.”

-Da Gangstas say that the Rock & Roll Express might be good wrestlers, but they ain’t nothin’ in a street fight, and Da Gangstas are about to send a lot of white people to the hospital. New Jack whips out the N-word to wrap things up.

5.1
The final score: review Not So Good
The 411
Weird week...I get what they're going for with the big tag team angle, but there's a lot of little things about it that I don't buy into. I just did not buy into the teams as evenly matched, and the commentary absolutely hammering home "LOL, Rodney King, get it?" sort of deflated me too. FITE is starting to flounder, as the "faction" is still stuck at two guys and only one is consistently portrayed as a star. There's a lot that isn't working right now, which is frustrating because they built up so much momentum the previous month.
legend