Hey, This Happened: Smothers/Savio vs. JBL/Dutch

Freddie Joe Floyd & Savio Vega  vs. Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw & Zebekiah (WWF Superstars 7/23/96, Aired 8/17/96)

ER: You look at that lineup, and there's no way you think "Of course that happened on WWF TV at some point". No, you think "That looks really terrific". And you'd be right. Smothers had just debuted in WWF a couple weeks before and was treated as a somewhat fresh faced babyface upstart, Dutch had barely been used as a worker, Bradshaw wasn't an unprofessional company man yet, it was a weird time. Smothers works this as a great fired up babyface, throwing wild fists to the back of Bradshaw's head, hitting high dropkicks and his cool whipping heel kick, taking a huge bump off the apron into the guardrail on a Hawk big boot (that the cameras almost miss) and eventually making a MASSIVE hot tag to Savio, literally leaping most of the way across the ring to make the tag. 

The real revelation was Dutch, already nearing 50, looking like the best guy in the match. Vince and Hennig dump all over him on commentary, with Hennig talking about how he's not a wrestler and Vince talking about how his best days are long behind him. Then Dutch tags in and clearly looks like the best guy in the match, tearing into Smothers with nasty punches, big lariat and an incredibly cool stomp/boot scrape on Smothers' face. Before that he was great at running distraction from the apron and floor, total killer hidden gem performance. I love that things like this match are still out there, ripe for rediscovery. Bless those two weeks where Tracy Smothers was treated by WWF as someone to watch, and bless Dutch for making the most of his infrequent WWF ring time, and bless Bradshaw for letting Smothers take a ton of their sequences, and bless Savio for his stretchy tough skins jeans. 

PAS: This was really fun, kind of makes me want to see what other weirdo matches were floating around WWF Superstars from that period. Bradshaw was great in this, just laying into Floyd and Savio with big boots, slams and an awesome senton. I loved Smothers as a hot tag, his crazy dive for the tag was great, but I also loved him crawling across the bottom rope like he was on a corporate team building ropes course. Dutch is one of the all time greats, and his short clotheslines, punches and boot rakes show what a waste he was as a manager. Zeb should have been feuding with Austin.