Memphis Wrestling 100 (4/2/2005)

Commissions return again, this one coming from Ko-fi contributor Cery. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

 

 

 

Independent of the content of the wrestling show, as requested, there are also so many wonderful commercials, including, but not limited to:

• as seen above, the finest 2005 UPN programming, ranging from things I remember (Charmed, Girlfriends, Half and Half, One on One) to complete mysteries (Steve Harvey’s Big Time Challenge, Cuts)
• a rap for an auto salvage store
• Krystal ads, a true novelty to the Midwestern mind
• multiple people from Keras Car Central talking about deals, who is all very uncomfortable on camera, and another who does a boxing bit about how they’re the undisputed champions
• a R&B adjacent jingle for a local rent-a-center style store
• a TV spot for SAHARA (2005)
• a music festival in Memphis featuring Gavin DeGraw, Switchfoot, American Hi Fi, Bowling For Soup, Seether, Jack Johnson, Chevelle, KC & The Sunshine Band, Three Days Grace, and the Spin Doctors.
• an advertisement for a truly insane local news segment where a woman chases down minor traffic offenders with a microphone and camera man to seemingly yell at them for not using a turn signal

 

 

To begin, Brian and Bert welcome us to the show, promising a U.S. Title match as well as talking up the big 100th episode tonight, including a lie detector test, but the real news here is that camo sweater vest (#1) on Bert Prentice. My god.

Prentice himself is also a true marvel, playing a super unique kind of heel announcer, one who, yes, hates all the people you like, but also goes through the ad reads and promotional material with the grimace of someone who has been called into work on a day off. The most customer service ass face I have ever seen from a wrestling announcer.

Keras Car Central in Memphis will be giving away two (2) cars on April 16th at the Mid South Coliseum also, if you can make the trip.

 

JERRY LAWLER/PRIVATE PRECIOUS W/ JIMMY HART VS. BRIAN CHRISTOPHER/SHOCK

Jerry Lawler is working a military fatigue bit now, which probably explains the vest on Prentice. The previous week, he went to induct Private Vicious into his army, only for him to reveal pink camouflage, and that his name was actually Precious, and he then tried to kiss Jerry Lawler, which greatly upset him. Still, they are teaming up,  making Jerry Lawler more progressive than the actual U.S. army at this point. 

The match, for what it is, is pretty solid.

Brian Christopher is, again, a delight, hitting commentary on the way out and saying he didn’t know they would be wrestling a gay guy, “and some guy in a pink wig too”, before getting the studio crowd to sing “The Roof Is On Fire”. Precious takes a few real hellacious back drop bumps, the punch exchange with Christopher is good, and what Lawler does, he does extremely well. Shock is a big lug who can barely move around, but all this match really asks him to do is one body slam, on account of how short and to the point these studio TV matches are. Lawler is a terribly ally and abandons Precious to get his by his son’s weird little superkick for the win. 

*3/4

 

After the break, Brian brings out “U.S. Champion” (it is actually the USACW Heavyweight Title) Cassidy Riley, of TNA job guy/The Hot Shots fame, to talk, before Lawler’s Army comes back out, now with a much larger and meaner man. Lawler big leagues him, says he must have won the title on some fluke, and says he’ll fight Private Fine of his army today. He might as well let him hold the title during the match so he can hand it to Fine later, and they banter a little bit, with the kid being totally out his depth, before heading to the ring.

 

CASSIDY RILEY [C] VS. PRIVATE REGGIE FINE W/ JERRY LAWLER & JIMMY HART [USACW HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE]

Listen, this is not great, but you are not here to read about the wrestling matches. Fine is not especially good, but the point is building Riley vs. Lawler for the title for that big Mid South Coliseum show, and between the offense Riley can control himself and Lawler’s shit talking on commentary, it succeeds. Relatively.

1/2*

 

An insane pretape follows that of Jerry Lawler’s new young girlfriend from the Northeast yelling at, seemingly, one of Jerry’s 30 ex wives, Paula.

 

The lie detector test is next, with Maclin there, along with the aforementioned Paula. Lawler’s Army comes back out and they bring some kids out. The test says he has committed adultery and that he lies when he says these aren’t his kids. Corey says the lie detector guy is phony and gets up to threaten Lawler. He breaks the machine and chases the technician off, so Lawler threatens to sue him. Lawler flees, but Maclin makes the most of the TV still being on and dives over the desk to grab and swing on Prentice.

Corey Maclin and Paula come back out to the set after the break, and challenges Lawler to name a time and place. Corey then cuts a motherfucker of a little promo about how he ain’t no trick or buster.

 

KOKO B. WARE/DERRICK KING/BIG BULLY DOUGLAS/JON MICHAEL VS. BILL DUNDEE/MID-SOUTH IDOL/KEVIN WHITE/CHRISTIAN JACOBS

Like four minutes tops, but genuinely pretty fun. King feels like the standout of the match, with everything on both sides of the match looking really good and smooth, but Idol, White, and Michael were all alright too. They try to get everyone in on the action so it’s hard to stand out unless like King, every single piece of the act is so tight, but just real functional ass studio wrestling. Idol beats Douglas with a Frog Splash.

**1/4

 

Corey Maclin returns to cut another promo on Lawler, this one with I THINK the instrumental to “The Way I Am” by Eminem over the back of it? He goes into all of Lawler’s ex-wives and says he was gonna lay him up in that bed and prove that fat meat is greasy. He was proud to be from the South unlike his new yankee girl from Rhode Island. “YEAH I’M A SOUTHERN BOY. I WALK AROUND BAREFOOTED. I EAT WATERMELON. I EAT TOMATOES, YEAH. I EAT BLACK EYED PEAS. I EAT CORNBREAD.”

I wish way more of this show was just Corey Maclin yelling about food he likes.

Corey also vows to get tested and prove that Lawler concocted this whole story.

 

TOO COOL 2 [c] (TIM GRIND/FLEX) VS. THE HOT BOYS (KORY WILLIAMS/JASON BRISBANE) [USACW TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP]

I really appreciate the naming convention of just slapping a 2 on there. Zero pretense, total honesty about basically what this all is. The match sort of fits that idea too, pure formula, and it is super okay. Nobody stands out as especially great at anything, but it’s short and light and breezy as hell. I had a nice little time watching this wrestling match. Williams brains one of them (the announcers nor the graphics actually identify which of the champions is which, or even actually name them, I had to go exploring on this one) with a chair, before Brisbane weirdly puts on a sleeper to win instead of just covering.

*3/4

 

As all wrestling programs ought to, this file ends with TV spots for BEWITCHED (2005) and NBA Street V3.

 

 

 

You pay your money and all that, but frankly, there are better uses of it than stuff like this. Reviewing TV wrestling on here is not really my favorite thing to do. I have done it in shorter formats a lot, as long-time pre-blog readers may know, but this is sort of the place for longer form exploration. Sometimes things can be weird or bad enough to make it interesting and break clear through, but frankly, I have seen a whole lot of wrestling, and this was not all that weird or all that bad.

It was fine local ass wrestling TV, man, I don’t know.

I had a nice time watching it, it was often entertaining, and never so bad that I hated myself, but it is not something I have a lot of real thoughts on, you know? This is the sort of show that sort of defies being written about, but yeah man, shit, I don’t know. Watch it yourself. 

Jerry Lawler/Bill Dundee vs. The Blonde Bombers (Larry Latham/Wayne Farris), CWA (6/15/1979)

Another commission review, this time from YB. You too can be like them and pay me to write about anything you’d like. Most people tend to pay for reviews of wrestling matches, but I am happy to talk about real fights, movie fight scenes, movies in general, make a list, or whatever. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that, just make sure I haven’t already written about it first. The going rate is $5/match, or with regards to other media, $5 for every started thirty minute chunk. If you have a more elaborate thing in mind, hit the DMs, and we can talk about that too. 

This was for Lawler and Dundee’s AWA Southern Tag Team Titles.

a.k.a. The Original Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl ’79.

So, the thing here is that, as a match, we really only have three minutes of the thing. It’s the frustration with a lot of old territory television stuff. Seeing as this was not on a TV taping itself nor one of those lucky situations where we’ve lucked into the footage being available in full through other sources, what we have is simply what we have, as CWA just aired the closing of the match itself and then the far more important and interesting post-match festivities.

It just so happens that those three minutes are awesome, and suggest that the match in full is probably genuinely great.

Dundee is the legal man for all of it, bloody and desperately fighting back. Lawler can never get in legally (an unfamiliar situation, to be sure) and is a prisoner to his hot-headed nature, arguably doing more harm than good in the end. Latham and Farris are not lighting the world on fire on offense or especially impressive, but both take some real good bumps and sell both dramatically and believably for all of the babyfaces’ punches. Dundee especially puts on a great display of sympathetic selling while also still kicking a ton of ass, the perfect complement to Lawler’s all-fire ass beating approach. It’s only three minutes, but it feels like enough to say that I know this was a great match but lack the material to prove it, and that it stands up as yet another example of how it doesn’t matter what happens in a match, so much as how it happens. This is ninety percent punching, at minimum, and not only does it all rule because of the skill on both ends of all those fists, but because they all come in different settings, circumstances, and are thrown in different ways every time. A masterclass in three minutes.

The bad guys steal the titles when one of them breaks up a Dundee pin with an elbow drop to the forehead, and they do a twin switch spot to sneak away with the pin.

It is not to say that’s not important, but that is not why we are here — you and I as writer and reader, or the contributor and I in a business exchange — nor is it why this footage has survived, closer and closer to a half century after the fact.

Following the highway robbery, Lawler and Dundee keep fighting. After some stunningly old-fashioned belt shots that also bust Jerry open, the fight moves through the building, and away, before Lance Russell directs a camera to find them down in the concession stand, throwing everything around and spraying mustard out there.

As someone who worked concessions for a few plays and basketball games in high school, it is less nightmarish than the more famous Concession Stand Brawl. As much of the area is thrown around and disturbed, but there is less spillage. Only a little mustard, but most of it seems to get on Farris and Latham, so the real heroes of this thing (arena workers) don’t have it nearly as bad as they would two years later.

However as a wrestling fan, it is perfect.

I think I prefer this to the more famous one, actually, if just by a hair. While that one is more spread out and maybe longer and higher activity and definitely sees them bring more modern weapons into it like a stick and a steel trash can, there’s a more violent feeling and simple charm to this. The fact that it is filmed almost in secret, losing the fight and then finding it again rather than the camera staying with them, helps it feel so much more genuine, making it a little more than just a really awesome wrestling angle, like the 1981 Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl. It is almost entirely the protagonists whipping ass in anger over a screwy loss, and has a more guttural feeling to it. The punches — coming from Lawler and Dundee rather than Morton and Gilbert (no disrespect to Morton and Gilbert, but come on) — are better here and the weapons are endearingly simple, clunky wooden shelves and tables and a food service style kitchen stool and a broom and some small utensil Lawler jabs into the face of one of the Bombers and feel like they are not supposed to be used like this as opposed to the ones in the later match.

(INTERLUDE: As for the kitchen utensil in question?

I feel like maybe a whisk or a potato masher is the safe bet. Maybe the wide end of a cheese grater, but it looked smaller and thinner than that. If I had to hit somebody with a handheld utensil in the old catering kitchen or sparser prep area at the event space where I managed specifically, I would go with potato masher (ideally like this, but the circle ones are probably fine too, I just have never used one of those). You could whip somebody with a spoon or ice scream scoop or a ladle, but the potato masher covers more surface area and you can bring it down on somebody with an overhand motion easier because of the thick handle.

Think they would have said if it was a fork or a knife and as much joy as DO NOT THROW KNIVES having roots way back in the 1970s would bring me, Lawler doesn’t strike me as the type. Given some of his relationship preferences, he has much more in common with someone who owns a restaurant than anyone actually working in one.

Bill Dundee, on the other hand, absolutely would throw a knife, but simply did not get the chance to here.)

Lawler and Dundee eventually walk away, after Dundee has choked one Bomber out with a broom on the floor next to the ice machine, and Lawler has thoroughly beaten the other to bits with a stool, unknown utensil, and about a hundred punches to the face.

The cherry on top, for me personally, is that once Lawler and Dundee have clearly won the fight and the referee and promoter (although not in Tupelo itself) Jerry Jarrett get them to stop wailing on the new champions, Dundee opts to crawl/slide over the counter back into the arena to leave, rather than take the few extra steps to walk around. I have never been in a concession stand brawl myself, but there is something about it that feels correct for an insane man to do while all hopped up on adrenaline. Sliding or rolling or hopping over a counter is a very fun thing to do. Hopping on top of a bar counter and swinging your legs around and hopping off the other side after a closing shift is one of the perks of tending bar, and Bill Dundee very much feels like he could have been a bartender. Some skills just translate. The masculine urge to slide/roll over a concession counter is second only to the masculine urge to look at any building, either inside or outside of it, and most trees, and figure out how you would climb up or down it respectively, or something like that. After a wonderfully silly, violent, and fun sort of a thing, it is the perfect ending.

Another wonderful piece of Wrestling TV where, somewhere in the background, there is also a really good looking (and potentially great, in this case) match that happens too.

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee, CWA (8/22/1977)

Another piece of commission work here, this time from Ko-fi contributor AndoCommando. You can be like them and pay me to watch and write about all sorts of things, wrestling matches or otherwise. First, you ought to do that due diligence and make sure I haven’t written about your choice here already, and then you can head to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The market price is currently $5 per match and if you have an aim more complex than multiplying a number by five, hit the DMs, and I’m sure we can work something out. 

(The actual Youtube version of this is full of inaccuracies. It claims the date of the Hair vs. Car match, which it claims to be, is August 15th, although a Cagematch search will reveal otherwise. The Hair vs. Car Texas Death Match was on August 29th, and the Dundee’s Hair vs. Lawler’s Manager’s Hair match, which this is, was on August 22nd. So this upload of the match is incorrect not only about the date, but also about which match is actually being presented. These are very easy things to research given that this was uploaded in 2019, don’t ever be like this.)

This was for Lawler’s AWA Southern Heavyweight Title, with the hair of Lawler’s manager Mickey Poole also wagered against the hair of Dundee. It is one of the great wagers in the history of professional wrestling, up there with Hair vs. Boot Hair in 2003 IWA-MS and the wager of Lawler’s wife’s hair against Dundee’s title in a later meeting between these two (and the Lawler Leaves Ton vs. Dundee’s Hair/Dundee’s Wife’s Hair match that came a week and a half after that). The prize, I think goes to their match a week later, featuring Hair vs. Car, but that’s not available.

As always with these two, the match is fantastic.

There are some minor issues with the footage, as is often the case with the old Memphis stuff. The video quality, as one can see in the header probably or on the image in the link on Twitter, is definitely not great. Grainy and a little blurry, and full of some weird production quirks like zoom ins that don’t quite hit where it seems like they’re supposed to, generally feeling like the camera operator was learning how to do this on the fly. It also isn’t complete, with some bits missing here and there in the way it often was on old footage, trimming out chunks of “non-action” here and there to fit as much onto a tape as possible.

Again though, the end result I think is that it kind of self-selects out. You’re not sticking it out with this unless you really want to see it, and the match exists as a reward for anyone who isn’t a baby about footage from forty-five years ago not being of the greatest quality.

The major weirdness of the match, as someone who’d only ever seen their 1980s work, is seeing the roles reversed like this. Talent is talent, and this is an exceptional match in spite of them being the opposite of the way in which this works best, but it was deeply strange to see Lawler working as the antagonist in Memphis, and Dundee as the hero opposite Lawler.

Otherwise, Lawler and Dundee deliver the exact sort of title and stipulation epic you’d expect from them, even if it’s not quite as refined or as major feeling as those mid 1980s clashes. There’s some leg work early on that while Lance Russell tells us is a thread from an earlier match in this series, and that is certainly handled well and works as this thing to put antagonist Lawler on the backfoot early on, is not the best stuff they can do. Mostly though, it retains the general form you’d probably recognize. A slow build into a frantic and desperate final half, bringing pro wrestling down to the most guttural elements, two men who hate each other punching each other as hard as possible.

Some of the greatest punching in wrestling history is on display for much of this match. Lawler gets most of the credit for that, he throws way more, but Dundee’s leave little to be desired themselves. Beyond just the form, it’s the sequences of punches they rack up here, between Lawler’s angrier right and left combos late in the match when the Superstar won’t stay down, jab flurries, and the back and forth exchanges. The way these moments are reacted too also matters a whole lot, not just in terms of the myriad of different ways they sell these shots, from Lawler taking huge bumps off of Dundee’s comebacks to Dundee’s sympathetic slumps and collapses late in the match, but the cumulative damage and exhaustion selling late in the match.

The booking of the thing is also tremendous, these classic conventions like a hidden weapon leading to a near stoppage by blood loss before the valiant hero waves it off, insists on continuing the match, and just barely succeeds, but performed with such skill and executed with such a commitment that it elevates the entire thing.

Following a collision on a double down, Lawler misses a rare flying elbow off the middle rope, and the near knocked out Dundee gets an arm on top to win the title.

A fascinating historical document and a look at a different version of an iconic match up in wrestling history, if not the best they can do. 

***1/2

CM Punk vs. Jerry Lawler, WWE Raw (8/27/2012)

This was a steel cage match.

Before the match, we should probably talk about the booking of CM Punk around this point, or at least prior to this point. Since we last discussed CM Punk, he’s turned heel. There was a phenomenal and fairly famous angle at the 1000th episode of Raw where he got vocal about a lack of respect for the first time when The Rock came back and wanted a title shot at the Royal Rumble, and later attacked The Rock to end the broadcast, before getting into it with announcers and authority figures about a lack of respect despite being champion for nine months. Like every great thing WWE’s done in the last decade and like so many things in the career of CM Punk, it stood out because it felt real, and it’s the start of one of the more frustrating periods of WWE television in recent memory, where they do just about everything possible to put heat on CM Punk, despite a significant portion of the audience refusing to do so because he was correct. 

The decision to turn is perhaps even more fascinating. Based on everything that came out on a famous podcast, the decision was made to do TWICE IN A LIFETIME for the title, with The Rock winning it at the Royal Rumble. Punk was presented the option to either turn heel and be the one against The Rock on pay per view, or to stay a face and presumably have Daniel Bryan in that role instead. Since he not only wasn’t a fucking mark but was in fact a remarkable politician in his own right, Punk obviously chose the former and the heel run was the start of a year and a half span in the WWE that led to some of the most interesting, perhaps accidentally honest, and real feeling main event booking in company history.

This came about because CM Punk had about enough of what was real easy to perceive as Lawler disrespecting him on commentary, which multiplied itself after an angle about a month earlier where Punk confronted him about saying that he had turned his back on the people, and grew from there. The week prior, CM Punk finally knocked Jerry Lawler out for talking shit about the completely legal way CM Punk had retained the title in a triple threat match at SummerSlam. There’s no real reason for it to be a cage match, except that it’s WWE and in the early days of three hour Raws, they just threw shit out there because three hours is a huge ask and they used to have (barely) enough decency to make some of these shows interesting by putting a great match on television. A novel concept, I know.

This sure is a great match though. Should have been about twice as long, should have had the kinds of shortcuts that The Miz vs. Jerry Lawler got to have in a similar circumstance nearly two years prior, but it’s CM Punk. He’s rarely been allowed the types of shortcuts that other top level guys in the WWE have had, and once again, he makes due without.

It’s all very simple stuff, but it’s executed SO earnestly from both guys that it’s just barely great. When they’re given so little and keep it so bare, that’s the sort of thing that stands out.

Obviously, Jerry Lawler is very good, even when he’s asked to do so little. Unlike the Miz matches, where he was allowed these big comebacks and nearfall runs, Lawler is almost entirely eaten up here, save the big punch early on and maybe thirty to sixty seconds of hope near the end. I don’t know how to feel about that. On some level, it’s nice that someone somewhere recognized that if a fraud like The Miz gave Lawler that much, it would both make sense and benefit CM Punk to just smother him. It does. It’s nice. Lawler’s selling is terrific, both on a raw mechanical level and also on an emotional level, as someone who kind of knows he’s in over his head and unlike last time, he is not in there with someone who is in any way fraudulent.

On that note, CM Punk, god damn. Beyond the physical element, which is all perfect, this is a character work tour de force. I won’t go so far as to say that CM Punk never worked out the way they wanted in this late 2012 through early 2013 run, but more often than not, it was too big a hill to climb. He was too real and too correct to ever feel like he wasn’t still fighting something so much larger than himself, and that’s next to impossible to boo. He maybe got it done against John Cena, but here in this match, it works perfectly. He’s such a shithead, between offering Lawler the first punch to then eating him alive, and doing it while SINGING about it, and how he’s the new King of Memphis. In a political sense, I’m not sure CM Punk didn’t tone it down against guys like Cena, Ryback, or Sheamus during this run, and I’m absolutely certain he turned it up past where the dial stops here. A complete and absolute shitheel. Up there with some of his greatest heel work ever. Even more admirable is his insistence on doing the thing correctly, getting the blade, and adding an extra touch to Lawler’s comeback that really does elevate the entire thing.

In the end, Punk stops the miracle comeback just short when Lawler tries to leave instead of winning the fight in his own little cowardly move, unable to not be correct for even ten minutes. Punk drops Lawler down into the Anaconda Vice, and makes him tap his assent while shouting and asking who the best in the world is.

Another masterclass from CM Punk in how to wring the absolute most out of the forced austerity so much of his title run was hindered by.

***

The Miz vs. Jerry Lawler, WWE Elimination Chamber 2011 (2/20/2011)

This was for The Miz’s WWE Title.

The Miz sort of led me to a little bit of a collapse with the match up against Daniel Bryan six days before, but this gets to be a little more than that, and Jerry Lawler is maybe a little better equipped to have a match like this with The Miz. Daniel Bryan could never go into a boring punch-and-stomp style Miz singles match and be great, because he was too powerful not to simply plug Miz into his own sort of match. Lawler’s skillset is much more in line with the things Miz does, except that Jerry Lawler is an all time great, and he’s actually great at those things.

The comparison winds up hurting The Miz even more though, as seeing someone work such a simplistic style and be SO great at it just winds up emphasizing what a fraud and a phony this thin lipped pervert really is. Lawler constantly struggles to do things, but still accomplishes them. He’s always in pain, and very much in the moment. Jerry Lawler is simulating a fight. The Miz is simulating the simulation of a fight. The match works because of Lawler, and what a performance it was. The shame of the year might be that this Lawler revitalization wound up with the major Michael Cole matches and not anything with actual substance, because he’s just terrific in this. The booking winds up letting the match down in a very predictable way. Once again, instead of embracing what worked about The Miz (shameless and cowardly cheap shot artist) on his ascent up the card, they again grasp for legitimization again and fail, because there is no legitimizing him. Alex Riley is ejected, and then after they go through the effort of having Lawler throw The Miz into Michael Cole to set up an easy “pull the ref out” screwjob to lead into this accursed WrestleMania concept, The Miz winds up simply winning clean instead with his move. The Miz works when you let him be a cowardly little goddamned weasel, a true affront to wrestling, not when we’re pretending he’s also Tough and Resourceful or whatever. The natural inclination is to want to see somebody beat his ass. Trying to sell him as an ass beater too just doesn’t work. There’s some things you just can’t sell, but they’re especially hard to sell when you market the wrong features of the product and pretend it’s something else instead. 

Usually “thank you” wins are bad and devalue the title, but THE MIZ WAS THE WWE CHAMPION. No reason not to just give Lawler a day with the thing. He just buried a parent the week before, and who doesn’t deserve a forty ninth major singles title? Should haves aren’t something I try to dwell on too much in these things, but this match is worse for Jerry Lawler not winning, because of course The Miz beating him doesn’t feel legitimate. Nothing The Miz does has ever felt legitimate, he’s the ultimate industry plant. His children aren’t even real. 

Jerry Lawler is real as hell though, so watch this match for how good he was in it.

***