8 hours Ago By AdamNedeff
-So we have another one-month stretch where full episodes are hard to come by, but two hours’ worth of highlights proved easy to find, so here we go...
-We’re starting with October 2, 1982. -Your hosts are Lance Russell & Dave Brown. -We get a videotaped promo from Jerry Lawler, who gives Dutch Mantell his due.
..he’s the toughest man in wrestling, and Lawler’s even willing to acknowledge that yeah, Dutch holds a victory over him.
And they’ve gotten along recently, being tag team partners for matches, and Dutch even rescued him from a beating a few weeks ago, but Jerry wants to make it clear that they aren’t FRIENDS. Dutch wants his Southern Heavyweight Title and has issued a challenge, and Jerry admits that he’s kind of clinging to that belt right now because it’s his ticket to a match against Ric Flair. -So Jerry is offering him a deal–if Dutch will be his partner for just ONE match against the two clowns who attacked him a few weeks ago, he’ll give Dutch a Southern Heavyweight Title match.
He wishes Dutch luck and hopes that it can just be a wrestling match and not a fight, because he doesn’t have any ax to grind with Dutch right now. -Live in the studio, Dutch comes out wearing a cowboy hat with a brim about the width of the sheriff’s hat in Scary Movie 3 . Dutch says Jerry is full of shit because we’ve seen him win matches by throwing fire, using chairs, etc.
Dutch says he’s not stupid enough to think Jerry is going to fight fairly if he cares that much about getting a match against Ric Flair. The difference between Jerry and Dutch is Jerry tells the people what they want to hear, and Dutch tells the truth–Jerry is going to turn into a conniving piece of shit in the ring to hang onto his belt, and Dutch says no, they aren’t going to have a wrestling match, they’re going to have a FIGHT. This is the kind of “shades of gray” stuff that we were promised in the Attitude Era but never quite got–neither of these guys is good or bad.
The whole build here is based on the fact that both of them see the same thing in very different lights. -Jacques Rougeau is here alone and apologizes to the people who were expecting to see he and his brother Phillip in tag team action. His brother got injured up north and is laid up with a broken leg.
Jimmy Hart, Bobby Eaton, and Sweet Brown Sugar come out to taunt Jacques because he’s all alone and welching on his title shot. Jacques pledges that he’s going to honor the contract for the match as soon as his brother is back, but the Tag Team Champs keep taunting “Jacques Cousteau” until he gets fed up and challenges Eaton one-on-one. -They get in there with Jacques in street clothes and no referee present, so it’s more of a fight than an actual match.
Jacques handily wins a fist fight, and then connects with a missile dropkick. Sugar and Hart have seen enough and decide to go in there, and Jacques manages to hold his own for a bit until he’s overwhelmed by the 3-on-1 fight, at which point, Stan Lane, Terry Taylor, and Guy #3 hit the ring to rescue Jacques. -We go to the local house show promo, and Jacques Rougeau does a magnificently awful babyface promo where he seems to be trying to mimic a Tennessee accent, and he warns Bobby Eaton and Sweet Brown Sugar that he likes to pamper big boys.
Well, now. -Jim Cornette is here, wearing a yachting cap to crank up the douche knob a little bit. He announces that he’s signed the next Southern Heavyweight Champion, Dutch Mantell, and he promises a very large bonus for Dutch upon his title win, because he’ll be a champion, AND he’ll have done it by humiliating Jerry Lawler.
Dutch is conspicuously not here while Jim announces all of this. -Jimmy Hart struts out here with the new WWA Tag Team Champions, the New York Dolls. The champs came down from Indianapolis to Jimmy Hart’s backyard, and there’s no way the Dolls were losing in Jimmy’s backyard.
And he doesn’t think there’s a chance that there’s enough money in Indiana for the Dolls to come back up there and offer a rematch to the ex-champs. NON-TITLE, EXPIRATION OF TIME: STAN LANE & TERRY TAYLOR vs. NEW YORK DOLLS (WWA Tag Team Champions, with Jimmy Hart) -FALL ONE: Stan Lane starts with Dream Machine.
Machine elbows him down. Lane gets up and elbows him back. Rick McGraw tags in and gets caught in a side headlock.
He manages to tag Taylor while holding onto Rick, and Terry switches it from a side headlock to a hammerlock, and then a wristlock. Jimmy Hart is over at the commentary table annoying everybody as Dream Machine tags back in and finally gets things going for the Dolls, only for Taylor to backdrop and armdrag him. -Jimmy Hart leaves commentary and storms over to the ring demanding that the referee wake the hell up because Lane & Taylor keep double-teaming.
McGraw tags back in and gives a few shots to Taylor’s throat. Legdrop by McGraw gets two. McGraw keeps the ring cut in half and tags the Machine back in.
Aggressive chinlock by the Machine. Legdrop misses. Taylor makes the hot tag and whips the Dolls into each other.
It turns into a donnybrook, and then Spike Huber & Steve Regal hit the ring and the match just ends there. Classic expiration of time action from this group. -Onto October 9, 1982.
-Jim Cornette is here and this time he DOES have Dutch with him. He has a huge autographed photo of himself with Dutch and presents it as a gift to his new charge. Dutch says that a lot of fans have come up to him confused because he and Jim Cornette seem incompatible.
Dutch says we just don’t know the two of them that well. Also, Dutch points out that he doesn’t REALLY have a contract with Jim yet because they agreed to sign the contract on TV so people could see there’s nothing shady going on. Dutch also makes a remark about how they look like “John Wayne and Ted Turner” and throws what sounds like an inside baseball about how he doesn’t really like Ted Turner very much.
But he’d like to ask Jim a few questions to let the fans get to know him. -“Do you drink?” No, Jim does not. -“Do you go out late at night?” No, he likes he get home around 10 pm.
-“Do you do cocaine like those NFL guys?” Cornette seems appalled by that question and insists he doesn’t. -“Do you chew tobacco?” No, because Jim thinks that’s a filthy habit. -“Do you watch early morning cartoons on TV?” No, Jim watches Richard Simmons! -Dutch says he’s heard all he needs to hear, so he asks for a pen and a contract.
He breaks the pen and rips up the contract and the photo, and reveals that “the only difference between me and Lawler” is that Dutch was smart enough to drag this out to get some money out of Cornette before saying no to him. Man, in the wrong hands, this whole thing could have worked out poorly for the territory because even if Cornette is a bumbler, it’s beginning to come across as the babyfaces just bullying him. -The Sheepherders walk in and react to this, saying it’s proof that Yanks are just backstabbers who can’t even trust each other.
-We go off to the Mid-South Coliseum, where the New York Dolls are defending the WWA World Tag Team Titles against Spike Huber & Steve Regal, and in an odd move for the Memphis TV show, it looks like we’re getting the WHOLE match, including Lance Russell’s ring introductions. Well..
.okay then..
. WWA TAG TEAM TITLES: NEW YORK DOLLS (Champions, with Jimmy Hart) vs. SPIKE HUBER & STEVE REGAL -The champs do a little time-wasting parade around ringside, and the ex-champs chase them up the aisle because they’re tired of waiting for the action to start.
Regal gets blinded with something by Jimmy Hart, which leaves Huber all alone to take a beating from both opponents early on. Regal tags in, which seems like a bad idea because he’s still blinded, and indeed the Dolls just tee off on him with Regal unable to mount any offense because he’s blind. 10 points for courage and minus a hundred for stupidity.
-McGraw with a neckbreaker and a hard elbow while Lance “Glass-is-Half-Full” Russell says that the longer Regal lasts, the more time he’ll have to try to clear the mystery substance from his eyes. Dolls just keep dishing out a beating on Regal as we hit the five-minute mark. Dropkick by McGraw and an axehandle by Dream Machine as this rapidly turns into a Georgia TV match.
Crowd starts stamping his feet to motivate Regal, and it seems to work long enough for him to throw a right hand. Huber makes the dumb face mistake of coming in to complain to the referee, which allows for some double-teaming and choking on his partner. -Bearhug by the Dream Machine.
Huber gets so frustrated that he comes in again and the Dolls capitalize with a spike piledriver. Huber starts throwing punches at the heels and knocks the referee aside for the DQ, and that’s it. Faces got the shit kicked out of them with no meaningful offense for nine minutes then got DQed.
Don’t everyone rush to the box office for tickets to the rematch all at once, now. Terry Taylor & Stan Lane hurry to the ring to break this up and take over. -We go to pre-taped words from Fabulous Jackie Fargo.
He’s enjoyed the past year of retirement a whole lot, and we get a bunch of photos of him golfing just to prove it. But a few weeks ago, he turned on wrestling and he saw the worst imitators he ever saw in his life, the New York Dolls..
.two geeks from off the street with a two-dollar bottle of hair dye! Jackie and Don were the TRUE New York-born fabulous blonde tag team. And Jimmy Hart stinks! So Jackie is laying down the law right now–if pro wrestling is going to have a tag team with blonde hair and top hats and tuxedos, it’s going to be two guys with CLASS that Jackie picks himself.
“You stink! Twenty-five-dollar tuxedos...
my SOCKS cost more than that, pally!” Jackie has said the word “stink” about 30 times in this promo so far. “You gotta have a heart as big as a watermelon, not a peanut!” And..
.he’s made his point. And.
..then he keeps talking.
We’re seven minutes deep as we continue expounding on the level to which Jimmy Hart stinks. Jackie gets around to telling us he’s just going to be an advisor, and not really a manager–you won’t see him at ringside with his new team. But he’s confident they’ll get the job done.
...
. -And at LAST, we get strobe lights and music and out first look at the tuxedoed, top hatted, blonde and muscular Steve Kiern and Stan Lane. Ladies and gentlemen, The Fabulous Ones.
-We get a local house show promo with Jimmy Hart taking a million-dollar dump on Jackie Fargo’s promo, “pally! PALLY!” He lets Fargo know that it’s 1982, not 1952, and the wrestling business doesn’t have a place for his ideas about what makes a great tag team. -Off to the Mid-South Coliseum for highlights of Jerry Lawler defending the Southern Heavyweight Title against Nick Bockwinkel. Ref gets bumped as Lawler is making the Superman comeback.
Lawler comes off the top rope with a legdrop that misses, and Bockwinkel sees his opening and piledrives Lawler. Referee wakes up and counts the pin, and Nick Bockwinkel is your new Southern Heavyweight Champion. -Thursday in Nashville, Jerry Lawler faces Crusher Broomfield, and Jim Cornette strolls in to announce that he will be in Crusher Broomfield’s corner as his new manager.
A house with a three-car garage is going to crash down on Jerry Lawler, and the fans in Nashville will never see him again. He proclaims that Crusher is the new king of Nashville. Jimmy Hart steps in with Sweet Brown Sugar, daring Jacques Rougeau to face Sweet Brown Sugar one-on-one, and if Rougeau gets the win, MAYBE Rougeau and his brother can have a title shot.
6.8 The final score: review Average The 411 Interesting grab bag of stuff from October. Some of it worked for me, some of it didn't.
Dutch is employee of the month for this territory, though. legend 0 - 0.9 Torture 1 - 1.
9 Extremely Horrendous 2 - 2.9 Very Bad 3 - 3.9 Bad 4 - 4.
9 Poor 5 - 5.9 Not So Good 6 - 6.9 Average 7 - 7.
9 Good 8 - 8.9 Very Good 9 - 9.9 Amazing 10 Virtually Perfect.
