Found Footage Friday: LAWLER~! WILDCAT~! BUCHANAN~! MORTON vs. EATON~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Bull Buchanan NWA Worldwide 1999

MD: I get that he had Lawler in here, but my initial thought was that Buchanan looked very good hitting his stuff. I went back through the archives to see if we've said much about him and I think I've found Eric twice over the years saying he looked better than he remembered, so maybe there's something to that. Granted, it helps when, during the comeback, a guy has Lawler wildly slamming his own head back into the turnbuckle to sell punches. Likewise early on when he really went up for Bull's slams and then stooged by being unable to slam Bull himself. Regardless, Bull came off looking like a big deal here and like someone who could really be molded as a dynamic monster. Even when Lawler was in charge, it was mostly by having Stacey choke him on the bottom rope or by using an object. Bull actually hitting stuff was a bit more dubious but the money was just in how fluidly he hit a whip into the corner or moved around the ring. Overall just a very giving performance by Lawler, though I'd say that the fans were more anti-Lawler than they were pro-Bull and they never quite got behind him despite it all. If I saw this in 99, I'd think Bull would be WWF champion in 2003 maybe. I guess he was tag team champion for a cup of coffee. His AJPW run doesn't hold up, right?

ER: I'm forever curious about checking out and re-establishing opinions on guys like Bull Buchanan. Following my nose has lead to some pretty great wrestler re-evaluations for me personally. I wouldn't have known just how great the Berzerker was had I not followed it. Bull Buchanan isn't a guy I've thought about re-evaluating, which makes him a perfect kind of guy to look back into. It's just fun to check back on certain things the older you get. You never know which music or director or wrestler your current self is into if you never dip your toe back in. Let's find those great Truth Commission matches someday! This Bull Buchanan was much different than the Recon that has last appeared in WWE 18 months prior. The main difference? Buchanan is so jacked in this match that I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to recognize him if I hadn't known who we were watching. You can tell he'd been putting in a lot of time in OVW, as he now had the biggest biceps and the stupidest haircut of his life. 

Honestly Buchanan looked more like a rookie a couple months in, than a guy who had been all over WWF TV and PPV for a few months the prior year. He looked like the kind of lummox that Lawler had been pulling great matches out of for over two decades. This was basically Lawler vs. Snitsky, and Lawler is really good at working that. I love when Lawler is a heel in Tennessee. Lawler as the controlling cheating heel is a much more interesting match than babyface Lawler selling the entire match for Bull Buchanan holds. This was a great Lawler performance, peaking with him putting on a master class of punches before immediately reminding every viewer that not only does he have the best punches in wrestling history, but he also sells punches better than anyone else. Buchanan's three corner punches are his highlight of the match, with Lawler whipping his body among ropes, turnbuckle, and fist. Lawler sells a punch to the body by running on his tippy toes and falling to his seat. Lawler added a lot of color to a minimalist Buchanan performance, taking high bumps on hiptosses and screaming in the corner when he was about to be socked. Kat choking Bull over the bottom rope was almost surely some kind of sex play between the three of them. Lawler wins with a perfect right hand, with what looked like a wadded up receipt as the weapon. Perfect. Somebody sell me on Bull Buchanan in NOAH. 

Ricky Morton vs. Bobby Eaton ASW 2002

MD: The bane of my pro wrestling footage existence are those silent 8mm footage clips. Those, and when we get 3 minutes of a match from Florida. There's something to watching two absolute masters without sound, however. We have a moral obligation to watch this, sound or no. It's fun here to just watch Morton and Eaton and imagine how the crowd would react. You end up focusing more on how Morton puts on a headlock or Eaton's body language as he's about to try to pull something tricky while pressed back into the corner. This one really doesn't have any high spots, but it doesn't need them. They were fairly deep into their 40s at this point, with plenty of bumps punched on the card, but they also knew what to do when and how. Eaton was slow to enter and threw a cheapshot punch when they finally made contact. When Morton came at him, he went to the apron to avoid contact. He tried it again, this time in the corner, but Morton blocked, fired back, and hit a stunner that Eaton sold like a mare. Always keeping up with the times was Ricky Morton. That opening exchange was probably the highlight of the match, as it's probably more fun to watch Morton's shine without sound than him fighting from underneath without it, but you could still see the mastery at every point in the remaining six minutes or so. Turner, when he uploaded it, said that this crowd had no idea how lucky they were. Without the audio, we probably don't know if that's true or not, but it's good to see how these two would put together a match in front of a crowd this size in a venue like this in 2002.

ER: I love watching wrestling with the sound off, and I'm surprised more don't take advantage of it. If you really want to focus on a guy, I always notice things I don't know if I would have otherwise with sound. It's a skill that I had to learn sometime around 2003-04 WWE, and it's a skill that I continued to use almost exclusively when watching guys I like in WWE. Remember when everyone was complaining about how awful Heel Michael Cole, and how much he was dominating broadcasts? Well guess which guy still managed to watch his favorite WWE workers without experiencing Michael Cole? Everyone has this power, and too many are afraid to wield it. A match like this forces our hand, but honestly, what could we have missed out on from this little venue in a short match? I thought Eaton looked so good here. I loved what a pill he was being about starting the match, and how he popped Ricky and even used a couple of sick thumbs to the throat. Eaton throwing one punch in one corner, and then casually walking to the opposite corner to lean through the ropes was some classic small town asshole heel business. Eaton's bump into the middle rope is one of my favorite punch sells (not sure I've seen anyone do it better than Eaton other than maybe Big Boss Man), and it looks even cooler in a dingy little building. We might need a tiebreaker on this one, as I'm pretty sure Ricky was indeed going for a flying mare, not a Stunner. I don't think Ricky really got the grip and he definitely didn't get the jump, but seeing how Morton landed I'm confident Eaton made the right bump. This didn't really feel like a full match, but Morton did take a decent bump to the floor, and I loved when he flustered Bobby with a flurry of punches. You already know if you're the kind of person who gets excited by a broken audio incomplete Eaton/Morton match, you don't need us. But you're probably here because you are the kind of person excited by this kind of match. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Chris Harris USA Wrestling 2005

MD: Fun for the whole family in this one, as Eugene was in Harris' corner, mimicking everything happening in the ring and having someone for both wrestlers to play against. Let me put it this way: the finish has Lawler getting pinballed from one to the next and the crowd couldn't be happier. The early going here is so minimalist, with Lawler losing an exchange and then milking it for two minutes, but I kind of live for that stuff. It's so effective and so artful so I'm not going to complain. He takes over with an object that may or may not exist and Eugene makes for an excellent cheerleader; there was a dodgy moment where the crowd was chanting for Eugene to do something instead of Harris but what Eugene did was start clapping and hitting the mat so that everyone would create a more neutral rallying reaction which Harris could play into. It was a smart moment by Dinsmore. The potential ceiling on this was relatively low if you compare it to all time Lawler performances but it was a huge amount of fun. 

ER: Lawler is so good at this. You couldn't call this a no bump or even low bump appearance, but this was 15 minutes of Lawler making the most out of the least, another match where Lawler's selling is at the forefront. Early on he takes a big swing and miss at Harris in the corner, and Harris hits him with an awesome left hand that Lawler sells immaculately. All of his selling here is great, all of his stalling is great, and the man even takes a big ass backdrop bump, and gets run into the turnbuckles a lot. He finally demands the ref do something about Eugene, and when Eugene is being dealt with he reaches into his tights to actualize a weapon that hadn't been there a second before. With a loaded fist he finally gets in his first offense of the match, peppering Harris with left jabs and right hand payoffs, dancing a little Lawler shuffle in between punches. I loved his backdrop bump, but his missed middle rope fistdrop bump is so damn good. Sometimes he sticks it knees to mat, but here he hit with knees and fist and immediately rolled forward, like Low Ki rolling through a missed double stomp, only here Lawler comes up holding his hand. Chris Harris throws punches a lot better than I remember (and he's also against the best punch seller here so that has to help), and there were a couple good nearfalls where Lawler got his foot on the ropes at the last minute. That was all paid off by Eugene shoving his foot off when he tries it again. It's nothing but punches, a couple of big bumps from a guy in his mid 50s, and bullshit. That's Segunda Caida, baby.  

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New Footage Friday: Last SMW Show Ever!

Smokey Mountain Wrestling 11/26/95. This is a HH of the final SMW show and it is great to see Jim Cornette go out on his sword.

Wolfman vs. Sgt. Rock

PAS: Sgt. Rock is Miss Jackie/Miss Texas, and she is always going to be worth watching. Wolfman is a big hairy guy who kind of looks like a Moondog. Compact fun scrap, with Cornette talking shit to the Wolfman, thus giving Rock a chance to potato the shit out of Wolfman with some nasty forearms to the back of the head. We get a Wolfman comeback including a spanking spot (because this is 90s indy wrestling), but another bit of Cornette interference leads to some powder in the eye, a  Rock low blow (and she really puts some mustard on it) and a DDT for the win. Very formula match, but Miss Texas always brought a bit of shocking violence to everything she did.

MD: What stands out immediately is just how credible Jackie with a drill sergeant gimmick was here. She came off as way more dangerous than Wolfman, being a vaguely sympathetic poor man's Valiant. Honestly, if your promotion is saddled with a bottom-of-the-card guy due to your sponsor, you could do worse than a moderately charismatic fake Valiant. Everything she did (even if it was mostly maring Wolfman by the hair/beard) looked crisp and sharp, including a nice back elbow. Even so, she was full on heel, geting advantages due to powder and a low blow due to Cornette's distractions, missing en elbow drop and then begging off, etc. It's 1995 in Tennessee so while Jackie could be presented as dangerous, she was still going to get spanked. The match didn't need it, but the crowd sure expected it. In general, I thought this was effective and was the sort of thing that would have gone a long way in making Sgt. Rock into an effective part of Cornette's militia if SMW had continued.


General Jim Cornette vs. Butch Cassidy

PAS: This is pretty much everything you would want from a Cornette vs. Midget match. I loved the spot with Cornette challenge Cassidy to a pushup contest and Cornette doing knee pushups, great bit of wussy heel stuff. I am also a fan of the running the ropes until you pass out. Cornette had some pretty good looking offense, and took some fun bumps, including taking a midget suplex (although to be fair Cassidy isn't super short, he is probably Adam Cole's height). Sgt. Rock runs in to kick Cassidy's ass, and she is an amazing second, always ready to beat the shit out anyone.

MD: A lot like the Jackie match, this would have been better if they went 20% away from what was expected and leaned into what they had in front of them. Cassidy's body type wasn't the same as a Lord Littlebrook or Cowboy Lang or whoever. He was leaner and looked stronger and had his kneeling pose down. It meant that the logical comeuppance for Cornette was for him to get overpowered and they gave us that, to good effect, but only after doing the hand-biting first. Again, the crowd expected what it expected and you probably had to give it to them, but there was a better, tighter match in here. This also went twenty minutes, more with the pre-match talking and intros, and I think the opening comedy, as fun as it is to see Cornette do his thing, outwore its welcome. The heat was about the right length but they should have cut that first bit in half. Cornette is a great bully when he gets the chance to be, but I think the crowd had moved on by the time the comeback came. The big suplex spot at the end was hit to near-silence.


Wildfire Tommy Rich/The Punisher vs. Bullet Bob Armstrong/Buddy Landel

ER: I love a 10 minute tag with 5 minute announcements about the 60 minute time limit. I wouldn't have put it past Cornette to run a broadway match on the last SMW show, and this one features my favorite black wrestler, The Bullet! You know Bullet has the sweetest damn moves as he glides across the floor during his entrance, finishing it by tossing a casual as can be looping high 5 to Landel. The Bullet was obviously going to be the heroic hot tag at the finish, meaning this was going to be the Wildfire show the rest of the runtime. Tommy Rich works the entire ring with shtick, circling Landel and refusing to lock up, backing Mark Curtis into a corner, "accidentally" cheating from the apron whenever possible (really getting the crowd riled as he executes a corner choke while Punisher is the legal man), and the moments of Wildfire and Nature Boy throwing punches in the middle are the kind of moments that make me love SMW. Punisher also looks good, better than I remember Bull Buchanan looking several years later (although the camera keeps going unfocused whenever he gets in the ring, so maybe the cameraman was just giving us Punisher's fairest angles), and we get a great spot where Cornette is banging on the apron directing Tommy, and Bullet comes in and stomps Cornette's hands. This was all super simple, low bump count stuff, and with the personalities involved it didn't need to be anything else.

MD: Couple of things here. They set this up at the start of the show with the announcement that Le Duc wouldn't be there and Armstrong offering Landell his pick of partners. It almost felt like the world's best Raw-format as they got the promo section out of the way at the very start of the show. They just did it in a couple of minutes instead of half an hour. From the listing, I was expecting Bob Armstrong but I wasn't expecting the Bullet, so that was a nice surprise. I don't think they'd used the gimmick for a year and a half at this point and the fans popped big for the music cue. I don't have strong feelings about SMW in general but I do have a real soft spot for the Bullet gimmick and they worked the match with the Landell as FIP and the Bullet getting the hot tag. We lost clarity on some of this due to VQ but best as I can tell, this was a good paint-by-numbers short southern tag that hit the marks you'd want: you had a good punch or two in the shine, the heels cut off the ring well, the hot tag had a flourish. It was definitely a little surreal to witness a world where Tommy Rich was the heel and the fans were chanting Buddy, Buddy.

PAS: Fun basic southern tag match which built to the big Bullet hot tag well. They wrapped it up pretty quickly right after that, I would have liked to see the Bullet juke and jive a little more. The blurriness made it hard to see exactly what the heels were doing to Buddy, but there was a great moment where Tommy Rich just unloaded on him.


Heavenly Bodies/Robert Gibson vs. Tracy Smothers/Dirty White Boy/Ricky Morton

ER: You didn't come to this one for wild spots, you came for sustained southern heat, and that's what they delivered. This was all about opportunist Robert Gibson not wanting to tangle with Ricky, and Cornette at ringside keeping the crowd all worked up. It's a simple and effective match, not many highspots and yet 100% crowd pleasing. Ricky starts things off, Robert does a great head fake like he's going to join him no problem, but clearly he's not. And from there we get a fun affair, mostly punches, armdrags, cutting off the ring, Gibson finally coming in when Ricky is down, Smothers flying off the top with an axe handle to the arm using all of his best goofy Smothers arm movement, you know the stuff you'd expect. Heavenly Bodies always come off so scummy to me, just looking at them and the way they walk around with their chests and bellies out, they always ooze the perfect amount of undeserved arrogance. Cornette comes in and bashes Smothers in the ribs, part of a nice fun twist where Smothers spends just as much time cut off from his boys as Ricky did earlier. Naturally, Cornette eventually brains his own man with the tennis racket to give the good ol' boys the win, but that arguably sets up the most important part of the match. 

This being the very last SMW show, half the locker room comes out to beat the shit out of Jim Cornette. Landel is out taking shots, everybody in the match that just happened is taking shots, Mark Curtis is throwing punches (he also threw a punch in the breakdown of the match itself), Cornette is out here like drunk Christmas party Vince taking everyone's finishers, including a stuffed piledriver. When the ring is cleared the Heavenly Bodies spend a hilariously long amount of time milking a potential racket shot to a stationary Cornette, and Ricky gets on the mic like a devil on the Bodies' shoulder and starts urging them to KILL James E. Cornette! He even starts a chant over the house mic of "Kill him! Kill him!" Ricky Morton is out here actually getting a crowd hyped to witness a murder! This is the final SMW show, and I'm sure this was all inspired by the Kids in the Hall all being buried in a mass grave to end their show, so what better way to close up shop than by killing your main character!? The Bodies milk it for several more minutes, Pritchard threatening to decapitate and/or castrate Cornette with the racket, before finally helping him up (with Cornette amusingly falling right back down when they're no longer holding him up). On the way out of the building, Jimmy Del Ray shoves a security guy in the back and then laughs about it.

MD: I'm a fan of Morton vs. Gibson from GAB 91, so it's nice to see the roles reversed. This was exactly what you'd expect it to be, guys who can do one thing as well as anything, and that one thing just happens to be one of the best version of wrestling possible. The shine had lots of feeding and stooging and joyfully cheating babyfaces. The heat had the heels mocking the faces to draw them in for interference, hope spots based around pin attempts (which is one of my favorite ways because it's not about hitting offense, just about snatching opportunities). If you want to compare the Bodies and the (second) MX, maybe, just maybe, the Express were better at tandem offense and keeping things interesting and the Bodies were better at cutoffs. Maybe. The finish is perfect. Gibson pays for relying on Cornette. The post-match is the perfect way for SMW to end. Everyone decides that Cornette is the common enemy of the world and comes together to teach the world to sing a song of pain upon the odoriferous snake. Morton egging the Bodies on to finish him is a perfect pro wrestling temptation (salvation?) and they end it all by squeezing out the very last bit of heat. If a promotion had to die, it's not a bad way to go.

PAS: Morton had left the promotion due to a drunken fight between Morton's girlfriend and Smothers wife at a bar. So this weekend was his surprise return teaming with Smothers to take on Gibson who had turned heel when Ricky left. They really didn't give us much Morton vs. Gibson (which I imagine would have been a big feud if SMW survived), but everything we got was pretty great. I thought the big finale was pretty perfect with everyone cleaning out Cornette, that is really the way ECW should have ended too, with the locker room taking out the bounced checks on Heyman.

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