wrestling / Video Reviews
The Name on the Marquee: SMW Night of the Legends (8.5.1994)
Loading...-This is a spiffy little treat, courtesy of the Wrestling Gold DVD series released in the early 2000s.
-It’s August 5, 1994.
-We’re in Knoxville, TN and the arena is impressively packed with 5,000 fans in attendance.
-Your hosts are Les Thatcher and, making his SMW debut, Jim Ross. Also debuting, a really creepy computer-generated version of the logo that would last through the end of the company’s existence.
DOUG FURNAS vs KILLER KYLE
-Lock-ups go nowhere. Kyle demands a test of strength. Furnas gets the literal upper hand on that one. Kyle boots his way out and slams him down, but Furnas shocks him by getting right back up and powerslamming him. Three-point stance takes Kyle out of the ring, and Kyle’s so mad that he goes shirtless for the first time in his career.
-Furnas applies the side headlock as JR goes on a weird run about wrestlers who are famous for their side headlock. Apparently, wrestlers who needed a few extra seconds to describe a spot to their opponent are an elite group. Kyle counters the side headlock with a back suplex, but Furnas doesn’t release the hold on impact, so Kyle is still caught.
-Kyle finally punches free and stun guns him. Kyle goes into the dirty tricks handbook with biting and punching. But Furnas hulks up and gives him an overhead belly-to-belly. Powerslam gets two. Frankensteiner finally does the trick for three. 1 for 1. Decent little match to open it.
-Cowboy Bob Orton & Dick Slater predict they have a huge advantage in their tag team match because they have years of tag team experience under their belts, but Ron Garvin and the Stomper have never teamed up in their lives.
-Ron Garvin and Stomper predict that their opponents will be picking their teeth up off the mat and splinters out of their skulls.
MONGOLIAN STOMPER & RONNIE GARVIN vs COWBOY BOB ORTON & DICK SLATER
-Garvin with brown hair is a startling visual. Donnybrook to start, and Garvin & Stomper clear the ring. Orton and Slater goad them out their and we have a brawl on the floor. Things finally get squared away and we get Orton vs. Garvin in the ring. Orton tries a fake-out move and crashes face-first on the mat He bumps into the Stomper and does a super-elaborate sell that sends him all over the ring and tumbling out to concrete floor on the back of his head. And he’s FINE after that bump, good lord.
-Slater tries his luck with Garvin. Garvin atomic-drops him into Stomper, and Stomper snaps his neck over the top rope. Stomper tags in for the first time and whips Orton, who almost launches himself into space on the impact with the turnbuckles. Babyfaces have a miscommunication spot, and Orton & Slater gleefully egg them on and try to get their opponents to fight. Garvin and Stomper have a shoving match but decide they’re better off taking out their frustrations on their opponents and they hammer Orton & Slater. Slater and Orton are hilarious, doing the usual heel begging in perfect synchronization.
-Garvin applies the sleeper on Orton, but Orton stuns his way to freedom. Slater & Orton gang up on Garvin while Stomper protests to the referee. Neckbreaker by Slater gets two. Slater takes a cheap shot at Stomper to by himself some extra time, and Orton tags in to help with some double-teaming. Front facelock by Slater slows it down quiiiiiiiiiite a bit. Garvin finally BARELY makes the hot tag and we have another brawl. Stomper goes crazy and cleans house with his boot, and it’s that weird wrestling logic where taking the boot off turns it into a foreign object, and it’s a double-DQ. 2 for 2. REALLY ran out of gas right at the end, but everybody came with their working boots, especially Orton, who just busted his ass in there and made it a great match when he was involved.
-Jim Ross interviews Da Gangstas. JR addresses complaints from local TV station managers and the Knoxville NAACP, so going forward, all Gangstas interviews will air with a disclaimer and are subject to censoring. New Jack goes on the craziest tirade ever about Medger Evars and doing a Stepin Fetchit voice when talking about the NAACP representatives and calling them “trained Negros.” I’d praise New Jack for his badass heel act if he didn’t turn out to be legit batshit insane. In closing, the NAACP can kiss his black ass.
-Tammy Fytch is trying not to cry because she has to be handcuffed to Robert Gibson’s genetic defect brother.
-Rock & Roll Express is so ready for their match that Ricky whips out the word “ass” it issue a threat. He brings in Robert’s brother Ricky Gibson, and it’s a funny visual because the man looks like a genetic experiment where Ricky & Robert were fused together.
SMW TAG TEAM TITLE: BRIAN LEE & CHRIS CANDIDO (Champions, with Tammy Fytch) vs ROCK & ROLL EXPRESS (with Ricky Gibson)
-Tammy is indeed handcuffed to Ricky Gibson despite Brian Lee’s best efforts. Candido tries to be a hero but Ricky Gibson waves his cane around to ward him off.
-Robert Gibson starts with Candido. Candido elbows and slams him and bolts straight up to the top rope. Gibson bounces up and dropkicks Candido off the top and onto the concrete in a crazy spot. Back in, Gibson knocks Brian Lee off the apron, then slingshots Candido over the top so he crashes on his opponent. Lee goes over to a cop at ringside to get a key for the handcuffs, and the cop gives him a hard shove to damn near the biggest pop of the show so far. For good measure moments later, Ricky Gibson just drills Lee in the back of the head with his cane.
-Morton is so full of fire that he clears the ring of both opponents by himself, and this time, Candido takes the cane to the back of his head, and Tammy is SOBBING. Oh my god, the asskicking Ricky takes in this match will take at least 40 minutes now.
-Lee slams Morton down but misses a kneedrop, and the Express goes to work on the leg with a series of wishbones. Lee finally turns this match around with a face-first press slam. And he spits on Robert Gibson to create a referee diversion, so you know bad stuff’s about to happen. Double-team maneuver is apparently badly bungled judging from the sweeping shot of the crowd for no reason. Candido powerslams Morton. They attempt the double-team move again, but Gibson saves his partner by knocking Brian Lee off the apron, and Morton just slumps over near him and almost gets the three-count by accident.
-Awesome moment follows where Gibson runs in the ring right past the referee and hiptosses his own partner across the ring, hangs onto his arm, and steps out to the apron so THAT’s your hot tag. You just laugh watching this spot because it makes so much sense you wonder why tag teams don’t do that more often.
-Gibson cleans house while Ricky Gibson stops Tammy from using her hairspray. Meanwhile, Candido goes up to the top rope, but the Express rocket launches him onto his own partner and Gibson rolls up Candido for three, and the Rock & Roll Express has the belts again. 3 for 3. FANTASTIC and fun bout.
-Express promises that tomorrow night at Fire on the Mountain, they’re taking Tammy’s hair in the hair vs. hair match. This would actually backfire on them in a big way, as neither party was willing to lose their hair, so Cornette booked it as Tammy’s men winning the match, and Ricky cutting a super-duper babyface promo to get out of the haircut. The crowd ending up booing them out of the building for welching on the stipulation.
KNOXVILLE WRESTLING HALL OF FAME INDUCTION CEREMONY
-And now, the reason everyone came to Knoxville tonight, the Knoxville Wrestling Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Your inductees: Sandy Scott, Billy Wick, Sarah Lee, Ronnie West, Mac McMurray, Bob Polk, Corsica Joe, Jack Donovan, Jim White, Joe Cazana, Frank Morell, Jody Bass, Ricky Gibson, Doug Furnas, Cowboy Bob Orton, Dick Slater, Bob Armstrong, Nelson Royal, Mongolian Stomper, Ron Garvin, Don & Al Greene, and Ron & Don Wright. Thatcher announces that Ron Wright has been voted the Greatest Wrestler in Knoxville History, and Ron Wright presents a special award to the family of Whitey Caldwell. Orton and Slater refuse to come out and accept their awards because they got cheated out of their rightful victory tonight. 4 for 4. I’m giving it a point just because I’m proud of that commitment to character.
THRILLSEEKERS vs. HEAVENLY BODIES (with Jim Cornette)
-So the behind-the-scenes tale of this match is one of the all-time great stories from Jim Cornette’s career as a wrestling promoter. The morning of the show, the Thrillseekers dropped by Jim Cornette’s house because Corny had a swimming pool and Chris Jericho wanted to practice a new move to add to his repertoire, the shooting star press. Corny told him, “Go ahead, just don’t go out there and break your arm or anything.” And by god, that’s EXACTLY what Jericho did. Shattered his arm with HOURS to go before showtime. And here’s what he went out and managed to get done anyway.
-Thrillseekers manage to sneak up on the Bodies and clear the ring with clotheslines. Bodypress by Lance Storm off the top and onto both Bodies to start. Jim Cornette is trying the Bobby Heenan look tonight and it looks so weird on him. Jim Ross explains that Jericho was injured in a motorcycle accident but refused the plaster cast because he would have had to forfeit the match.
-Jericho reverses a whip by Tom Pritchard and backdrops him. Series of chops sends both of the Bodies out to the floor again. Storm & Jimmy Del Ray tag in and trade waistlocks. Storm hiptosses Del Ray and clears the ring AGAIN with crescent kicks. Corny looks like his head is going to explode while the Bodies argue and recuperate outside.
-Back in, hammerlock on Pritchard and Del Ray comes in to try to double-team Storm, but Storm reverses, counters, and clotheslines them both down. Jericho blocks Storm’s landing on a double suplex and the Thrillseekers clear the ring one more time with double crescent kicks.
-Storm with inverted atomic drops on both Bodies, but the Bodies finally get a solid piece of offense with a drop-toehold into a bulldog. Pritchard tosses Storm to the floor and Del Ray puts the boots to him. Back inside, Del Ray tags in and gets two. Waistlock into an overhead suplex, and in comes Pritchard with a legdrop for two. Axehandle by Del Ray and he gyrates a bit to celebrate.
-Crescent kick by Del Ray gets two. Standing decapitator by the Bodies gets two. Pritchard suplexes Storm and heads to the top for a Ted DiBiase elbow. That works as well for him as it usually did for DiBiase, and Chris Jericho tags in. he throws rapid-fire kick after kick after kick and slams Del Ray with one arm. He bounces off the ropes, but Pritchard yanks him to the floor by the foot and rams him into the barricade, and Jericho blades so intensely that there is IMMEDIATELY a big puddle of blood on the floor.
-Back in the ring and Jericho’s face is already totally covered while Del Ray works away at the wound. Series of punches while Corny screams “Now you’ll know what it’s like to pay the price!” Pritchard tags in and throws punches, and Jericho just takes it, indicating to Ross that he can’t defend himself. Pritchard uses a taped fist to keep working over Jericho, then distracts the referee for a moment while Corny slaps him around.
-The mat is now covered with stains and Pritchard drops the knee a few times to keep working over the wound and JR is screaming to stop the match. Pritchard rams him into the turnbuckles, and Jericho’s face is almost literally a crimson mask. You can’t even see his face under the blood at this point, honest to god. Mark Curtis has had enough and calls for the bell.
-The Bodies celebrate, and Jericho literally begs the referee to restart the match. The referee changes his mind, the bell sounds, the match restarts, Storm crescent kicks Del Ray, and Jericho immediately schoolboys him to get the three count and take the match. 5 for 5. Finish seemed a little abrupt. I mean, call me a masochist, but I would have appreciated Jericho dying just a wee bit longer before the pin. Still, though, he put on a hell of a performance under some excruciating circumstances, and my hat’s off to him.
-Worth noting that the hell of a performance wasn’t quite enough to save the Thrillseekers, as Jericho needed extended time off and major surgery to deal with the injury, and after months of dealing with the heartthrob tag team that didn’t quite get how to be a heartthrob tag team, Cornette just wrote off the Thrillseekers as a failed experiment and shut down the team. This was Jericho’s last match in SMW.
SMW HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: DIRTY WHITE BOY vs TERRY GORDY
-Crazy visual here, as SMW has one referee, and that one referee owns just one shirt, so he’s COVERED in Chris Jericho’s blood for the rest of the show. For those morbid enough to wonder, this would be post-coma for Gordy, who is sadly one of the more visible cases of a guy who’s wrestling ability had a definite line of demarcation.
-DWB shoulderblocks Gordy down and applies a side headlock. And applies it. And applies it. And applies it. Gordy finally gets free with a handful of hair. DWB snapmares him down and locks it back on, and we stay with that side headlock. Funny, as the commentators led off the match with the “We’re not gonna see a lot of scientific wrestling” spiel and this match is 100% side headlock so far.
-Gordy breaks it with a handful of hair and slams DWB to the mat. They have a really awkward issue with a suplex, as Gordy apparently wanted to do a slingshot suplex but totally misjudged his position in the ring, and he basically just puts DWB down instead of doing any kind of actual move.
-DWB rams Gordy into the turnbuckle a few times, trying to get something going, but Gordy no-sells everything while JR marvels about his trance-like state. Gordy throws DWB out to the floor, and both guys are doing the “55-minute mark” style selling and movement to everything. DWB fights back with boots. Gordy fights back with elbows and boots. Gordy’s offense is so terrible and weird-looking. Just nothing he does has any semblance of impact to it.
-Referee gets bumped, and “Conan” Chris Walker (a super-roided up blonde who got a tryout match in just about every wrestling promotion ever, but nobody could find a spot for him) comes in and attacks DWB for reasons, until the Rock & Roll Express makes the save, and DWB retains by DQ. I’d call this match pure ass, but the problem is, I’ve encountered asses that I’ve enjoyed in my life. 5 for 6.
-And now, because this DVD is a collector’s edition, we recap the ENTIRE JIM CORNETTE/BOB ARMSTRONG FEUD. And if you’ve been reading these recaps since I started and you can’t imagine how long a montage recapping that feud would take…57 minutes.
COWARD WAVES THE FLAG: BOB ARMSTRONG, TRACY SMOTHERS, & ROAD WARRIOR HAWK (with Ron Wright) vs BRUISER BEDLAM & FUNK BROTHERS (with Jim Cornette)
-Each cornerman has a white flag, the only way the match ends is when a cornerman waves his flag, which gives the win to the opposing team. Terry throws a bunch of folding chairs in the ring to start, but then decides he can out-crazy that and dismantles the ringside barricade and throws a piece of that into the ring. All six men brawl all over the floor, and it’s hard to call anything that’s going on. Terry gets crotched on the top rope and Smothers grabs an ankle and bounces him repeatedly until Bob Armstrong puts him out of his misery with a clothesline.
-Smothers ends up in the heel corner and everybody goes to town on him until he’s bleeding. Piledriver by Dory, piledriver by Terry. Worth noting that my least favorite thing about these matches is officially happening now, everybody is standing on the apron and making it a point to obey tag rules.
-The Funks take Smothers out to the floor and give him a spike piledriver. Back in the ring, Dory suplexes him all over the place. Funks collide on a double team, and we have the unnecessary hot tag to Animal. Hawk press slams the Funks out of there and tackles Bruiser Bedlam. Clothesline off the top rope on Bruiser. He strangles Bruiser as Cornette sneaks up on Ron Wright and throws powder in his face, blinding him. Cornette steals Wright’s flag, crouches down, and waves the flag, trying to fool the referee into thinking he’s Ron Wright, but the referee is distracted.
-Wright recovers and gives Cornette a hard right. Cornette tries to defend himself by using the flag as a weapon, swinging it back and forth at Wright…and that’s when the referee turns around and looks at him. And, well, Cornette is waving that flag all right, so the referee calls for the bell. Cute finish to a decent (but pretty unmemorable) brawl. 6 for 7.
