wrestling / Video Reviews

USWA Championship Wrestling (3.23.1991) Review

July 18, 2020 | Posted by Adam Nedeff
USWA Championship Wrestling 3-23-1991 Jerry Lawler Image Credit: USWA
7.4
The 411 Rating
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USWA Championship Wrestling (3.23.1991) Review  

-So from this point forward, Amazon Prime has USWA Wrestling but it gets really, really spotty and there’s not a chance in hell we’ll be able to follow any storyline long-term, unless Dirty White Girl is still teasing that she might get naked in Evansville next week.

-Originally aired March 23, 1991.

-New opening titles, and they spent some MONEY on this, right up until we get to the Times New Roman logo.

-Your hosts are Dave Brown and Michael St. John.

-Nightmare Danny Davis is on his way to the ring when Tom Prichard & Eric Embry, who I absolutely could not recognize clean shaven. They demand that we roll some tape from a recent house show where Jackie Fargo came out of retirement to team up with Jerry Lawler in a “Tennessee vs. Texas” match and Tennessee won, and then the ring just completely fills up with Texas wrestlers and they carry out a hit job on both men. Dave Brown is so disgusted that he cuts off both men’s promos and demands that we just start this squash match already.

NIGHTMARE DANNY DAVIS vs. THE SCORPION

-And the Texans are so disgusted about being cut off that they charge the ring and attack BOTH wrestlers, and they’re still keeping the beating going as Dave Brown fumes about this week’s schedule being completely thrown off by the Texans showing up uninvited.

-We get a promo via telephone by Jackie Fargo as they roll a slideshow of career highlights. Jackie Fargo threatens that he has a friend coming to Memphis to help him: Fabulous Steve Keirn. Well, there’s a career path that took an off turn in 1991.

EDDIE GILBERT vs. SGT. O’REILLY

-O’Reilly is a jobber who’s figured out that military gimmicks are the most cost effective gimmicks in wrestling because any surplus store on earth sells everything you need.

-Gilbert throws O’Reilly over the top rope, and O’Reilly gets his arm tangled in the ropes on the way out so he doesn’t exactly land. Suplex by Gilbert and it’s hard to judge it from the crowd reaction but it sounds like Gilbert’s turned face by now. DDT by Gilbert, and he asked the crowd for approval to do it, so definitely a face. Gilbert keeps dishing it out when Prichard and Embry show up AGAIN and attack both men. O’reilly was already pretty softened up so it turns into a double-team attack on Gilbert, but Fabulous Steve Keirn hits the ring and unleashes a beating on both men, and they run away for a retreat. Really funny, as they get in Sgt. O’Reilly’s way, and the jobber just shoves Prichard out of the way to get to the locker room, after Prichard kicked the shit out of him.

-Keirn, who honest to god is wearing a t-shirt that says “Gator” in a crazy bit of foreshadowing, says that he loves Jackie Fargo, and when Jackie Fargo calls at 1:00 a.m. and says some boys tried to make a reputation off him, and Keirn left his beautiful home in Florida, which he could afford because of what Fargo did for him, and he came right back to Tennessee to help take care of the problem.

-And right on cue, we have a Fabulous Ones music package. What’s crazy to me is that Keirn pretty clearly mastered the art of the convincing combover and must have been told not to do it when he when to the WWF because he appears to have a full head of hair here and he was going bald when he became Skinner a few months later. I want to see an Inside the Actors Studio with Keirn where he explains that his interpretation of the Skinner character was that he was a man who was losing his hair, and that he had to capture that essence.

-We go to the increasingly empty Sportatorium for clips of Jeff Jarrett vs. Tom Prichard. Ref gets bumped, Pricard loads his boot, accidentally boots his own manager, Tojo Yamomoto, and then Jeff steals the load from the boot and wraps it around his fist and knocks Prichard out with it. Embry runs to the ring with a loaded boot of his own and knocks Jarrett out right before the referee recovers, and it’s a tainted three-count to give Tom Prichard the win and the Southern Heavyweight Title. Jarrett blames the loss on a crooked Texas referee, which is ridiculous considering what we just watched, and he warns Prichard that he’s going to be all over his stinking rear end. Wow, Jeff, children are watching, let’s cool it.

BILLY JOE TRAVIS & JEFF JARRETT vs. MICKEY JAY & KEITH ROBESON

-Commentators are playing up that they weren’t expecting Robeson to be part of this match and apparently things have changed for some reason. Mickey Jay–and yes, it’s THAT Mickey Jay, the WCW referee–gets his arm worked over. Robeson tags in and gets elbowed down by both opponents. He goes to Travis’ eyes as the commentators play up Robeson’s issues in the ring and why his career isn’t getting going the way he’d like. Mickey Jay tags in and takes another beating, but he hangs in there and keeps kicking out at two. Mickey Jay as a wrestler bears an uncanny resemblance to jobber Tony Zane, minus the bruises that spread like mold.

-Dropkick by Jarrett, and Travis drops an elbow from the Vader bomb position to get the three-count.

-Jerry Lawler comes out all smiles as they promote that tomorrow’s local Jerry Lawler Show is airing its 400th episode, and Jerry brags that he’s now done more episodes than I Love Lucy and now he’s coming after Ed Sullivan’s record. And hey, Ed Sullivan (allegedly) had trouble keeping it in his own pants too, so maybe he has another record of Sullivan’s to go for. A super fan in the studio today has actually shaved “Lawler 400” in his head.

STUNNING STEVE AUSTIN (with JC Ice Baby) vs. CHRIS FRAZIER

-JC Ice Baby is the man formerly known as Bill Dundee’s son Jamie, who, during the past four months when we weren’t looking, fell in with a bad crowd because of Dirty White Boy, and now he’s hanging out with Stunning Steve.

-Austin slams and suplexes Frazier around, and a top rope splash by Austin puts him away quickly.

SUPERSTAR BILL DUNDEE vs. DEUCE MASON

-Arm wringers are exchanged, and Dundee just puts a stop to it with a hard right hand. Commentators note that watching his son turn to the dark side has ignited an old spark and he’s rededicated himself to wrestling in a way that he hasn’t in a few years.

-Dundee applies a hammerlock, and then wraps it up with a sleeper.

-We go to house show action, where JC Ice passes a weapon to Stunning Steve, allowing Austin to defeat his JC’s own father, Bill Dundee. In the studio, Bill just sounds like a disappointed dad, saying 19-year-olds always think they’re smarter than their parents.

TEXAS HANGMEN vs. “U.S. Male” CURTIS THOMPSON & T.D. STEELE

-Hangmen actually have a great look to them; a quick description would be that they’re a Texas version of Demolition. And actually they work a really similar style, pounding down their opponents. Thompson suddenly gets a fire lit under him and just explodes with a double clothesline. TD Steele comes in and gets headbutted right down. Powerslam and Austin-style mudhold sto,mping. The Hangmen’s names are Killer and Psycho but oddly enough the commentators aren’t sure which is which.

-Thompson makes the save before a three-count, which you never see jobbers do. Hangmen work the back over with moves from the Midnight Express playbook. Neckbreaker/axehandle combo, and the Hangmen just refuse to end the match and the commentators are concerned that they might just be trying to injure the man. But Steel suddenly escapes and makes a tag, and Thompson is a house of fire until the Hangmen go after the neck, and they actually hit a variation on the Decapitator that they call the Texas Whirlwind. They shove the referee down after doing that, getting themselves disqualified, but they just don’t care.

-So the Hangmen keep attacking the jobber until Billy Joe Travis has had enough and comes to the ring to make the save, but he gets overwhelmed by the Hangmen and they tie a noose around Travis’ neck and then basically crack him like he’s a human whip, injuring his neck, and Jeff Jarrett saves the day about 20 seconds too late, and things look grim for Billy Joe.

-Jerry Lawler and Steve Keirn come out here and Lawler talks about fans’ perceptions of tag teams. As an example, he says that even though he and Bill Dundee are tag team partners, they really aren’t best buddies. They just team up because they work well together. On the other hand, Steve Keirn and Stan Lane were best buddies until Jim Cornette got intertwined with Lane and gave him bad career advice, and it screwed over Steve Keirn. This promo just goes on FOREVER, but Lawler’s point here is that he’s not buddies with Steve Keirn, but they have common enemies now, so they’re teaming up on Monday night to shut up Tom Prichard and Eric Embry.

7.4
The final score: review Good
The 411
I dug the interstate feud and the disruption to the normal format this week and I'm suddenly excited for a house show in Memphis on Monday night that I'll never see. Great hour!
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