USWA Championship Wrestling (3.10.1990) Review

-Amazon Prime does an odd thing here, as it appears to skip from March 3 to March 17, but then the episode after March 17 is marked as March 10, so the episodes are there, they’re just in the wrong order. But this would appear to be for certain the March 10th episode.

-Your host is Michael St. John.

-We open with a Southern Rockers music video set to “Nothing but a Good Time.” Great song choice.

-We go to Memphis, where Jerry Lawler, still heel, has a waiter tending to him at the commentary table and offers to buy Dave Brown a burger. The waiter dutifully runs to his car to go to McDonald’s as the Stud Stable walks out here, looking down in the dumps about their bad luck streak lately. Robert Fuller is disgusted at the sight of the Southern Rockers wearing those belts after all the money he spent making sure it stayed around the Stud Stable’s waists. And then Brian Lee shocks everyone by saying the Southern Rockers are a great tag team and they deserved their victory, and honestly, the blame is on Robert for all of their problems. OOOOOOOh, trouble in paradise. Brian blames it on Sylvia and says Robert Fuller hasn’t had his head in the game since he got dumped. It turns into a shoving match and Brian knocks Robert right on his ass.

-Now if they had left it at that it would have been a perfectly fine face turn for Brian Lee…but Robert Fuller gets up and says that, gosh, he has a point, so he wants to extend an apology to Brian Lee, and Brian Lee is the dumbest SOB alive, so he returns to accept his apology and shake Robert Fuller’s hand, and surprise, surprise, Fuller DDTs him on the concrete. It’s wrong to blame the victim but Brian deserves that. Lee’s bleeding but Fuller’s not content to leave it at that, so he sends Lee into the post, then into the commentary table.

-So Eddie Marlin heads out to break it up, and Fuller is so fired up that he shoves Marlin on his ass, and the crowd freaks out at that, and Fuller starts dishing out threats if Fuller tries even one more thing on either himself or Brian Lee. And Fuller suddenly realizes that, yeah, he went too far, so he walks off.

-Jeff Jarrett and Bill Dundee are here with words for Billy Joe Travis & “Fruitcake” Garvin. They’re still talking about the challenge to Buster Douglas like there’s ever going to be a payoff for that.

-And we’re back to Memphis and Ronnie P. Gossett. If you’re not familiar with Ronnie P. Gossett, imagine Todd Chrisley if Todd Chrisley had ZERO metabolism. So Gossett is here with his snapdragon snappin’ about how he’s now the manager of the Dirty White Boys and they’re coming after those female impersonators, the Southern Rockers.

“Simply Irresistible” JEFF JARRETT & SUPERSTAR BILL DUNDEE vs. “Medicine Man” CHRIS YOUNGBLOOD & ALEX PORTEAU
-From the Sportatorium. Youngblood’s in-ring gear consists of, like, three different racisms, plus face paint. Jarrett tosses him around so Porteau tags in and promptly misses an attempted elbow. Dundee tags in and they trade arm wringers. They criss-cross and Dundee tricks Porteau into running after he’s put on the brakes, and the faces double-backdrop Porteau.

-Youngblood tags in and gets out of the way of a corner charge, and Dundee takes a nice bump, crotching himself on the top turnbuckle and landing on his back. Hot tag to Jarrett saves the day, though, and Jarrett finishes with a missile dropkick.

-We’re back to Memphis, where Kerry Von Erich struts over to the commentary table to tell Jerry Lawler that he has a message from Jimmy Valiant. Oh god, he’s going to kiss Jerry Lawler. So Kerry has a big gift-wrapped package and tells Lawler “Happy birthday.” He turns the “package” upside down and it turns out it’s just an enormous open keg of ice water, and Lawler is drenched. Dave Brown offers to call Valiant on the phone. Valiant answers and asks if Lawler is feeling cool. Lawler grabs the phone and tears into him. As Lawler is dishing out the threats, we get video of a Valiant/Lawler altercation. Lawler is convincingly pissed off and is just putting on the performance of a lifetime as a furious heel (“If the word HATE was written on every grain of sand in the desert, it wouldn’t equal how I feel about you!”) And suddenly, Lawler’s waiter from earlier in the show returns with Dave Brown’s lunch order, and Lawler is so mad, he just mashes it in the guy’s face. Knowing Jerry Jarrett, the guy probably had to pay for it too.

JERRY “The King” LAWLER vs. BEN JORDAN
-Lawler is unsurprisingly not in a pleasant mood now, so he heaves Jordan out to the concrete and slams him. Back in, Lawler backdrops him, then sends him out to the floor for a funny visual where Lawler just walks the jobber around the ring while beating on him so everybody can get an up close view of the ass-kicking…

-And then Chris Champion shows up, concerned that this is more than Ben Jordan can take. He tells Lawler that it’s wrong to take his problems out on a young rookie like this, and Lawler agrees…so he attacks Champion instead, busting him open. Lawler then commits a mild breach of heel beatdown etiquette by giving Champion a DDT on the floor. Lawler then grabs the commentary table, lays it on Champion’s face, and stands on the table, shifting his weight down over and over again to mash it repeatedly into the skull. Eddie Marlin has had enough and comes out here to stop the attack, and when that’s not enough, the face locker room finally clears out, and Lawler takes off, ordering all the “garbagemen” in attendance to get the garbage out of that ring, because it’s obvious looking around the building how many of these stinking people must be garbagemen. It fascinates me as a kid how “garbageman” was a point of reference for the lowest-of-low occupations, and then when you go out in the real world and learn about hourly wages and benefit packages and suddenly you look at garbagemen and you’re forced to admit, “All right, I’m the problem here, I’m not willing to get out of bed that early and do heavy lifting.” I have the highest respect for garbagemen now.

-The Southern Rockers cut a promo for “all the little rockers out there” and it’s immediately apparent why Vince slapped bowties on then and said “No, you’re Well Dunn now.”

-Billy Joe Travis and Terrance Garvin are here to assure us they aren’t joking about the challenge to Buster Douglas. This just gets dumber by the second. Travis wants to prove to Douglas’ lawyers that he’s serious about the challenge, so he promises that going forward, he’s going to be a more serious Billy Joe Travis, and that means no more bringing a guitar to the ring.

BILLY JOE TRAVIS & TERRANCE GARVIN vs. RAY EVANS & AL CLIFTON
-Travis knocks Evans around but gets caught in a hiptoss. Garvin tags in, takes one shot to the stomach, and tags out immediately. Al Clifton, who’s an ENORMOUS jobber, tags in as we actually pause for a commercial. We return Clifton getting whipped into the corner by Travis. Travis goes for a slam but legit can only get Clifton about halfway up for it before dropping him down into position. Vader bomb into an elbow by Travis looks to finish, but Garvin insists on tagging in so he can get the three-count. Travis looks a little annoyed by that but obliges, and Garvin gets the three-count.

7.3

The final score: review Good

The 411

Angle-tastic week!