by Jeremy Cundiff
3. Blonde Bombers vs. Jerry Lawler & Bill Dundee from Memphis Wrestling (1979)
Thank you for your bandwidth. Last week, we looked at some puroresu cruiserweight action on a WWF show. Interesting enough. Well, today we’re going all the way back to 1979. The ’70s were such a wonderful time, filled with quaaludes and sideburns. Everyone’s shorts rode up their crotch and nobody cared. An afro almost guaranteed you would get laid, and the groundwork was being laid in professional wrestling for a radical change—although, like many sports promotions and leagues, it would be years and in some cases, decades, before the effects would be felt all across the board.
Exhibit A…an Atlanta Hawks jersey.
Professional wrestling always had its share of gimmicks and carnies, but for the most part it had been centered on athletes working in the ring. While there were flashy personalities, some with elaborate ring entrances, when the bell rang you could rest assured that everyone in the ring knew what they were doing. But as we all know, the same thing won’t work forever when it comes to having a paying audience. Throw the explosion of television into the mix, and it was clear: the formula either had to change, or adjustments had to be made to accommodate for the television cameras. The fans no longer wanted to see plain old fashioned wrestling. They wanted some flair, no pun intended, in their action.
I’m not trying to say that the old style of wrestling is bad. I love the classic style of hooking and shooting, real wrestlers doing real moves. I just understand that there has to be an entertainment aspect to the business as well, otherwise we wouldn’t be watching pro wrestling…we would be in a gymnasium watching an amateur wrestling meet. There has to be some sizzle with the steak, whether it be in the flamboyant personalities that were developing at the time…the Billy Grahams and Ric Flairs of the world that were a direct contrast to former champions such as Lou Thesz and Frank Gotch, who were nothing more than no-nonsense grappling masters…or it be in the content of the wrestling itself. With the advent of broadcast television, wrestling was no longer a big-city arena sport: it was now in the homes of any American with a big enough piece of metal attached to their roof. Now, these wrestlers had a much larger audience than those who were paying for straight-up wrestling: they had to wrestle for every single person who might be flipping through the channels and come across their match.
I believe that when wrestling began to be heavily televised outside of its local markets in the 1960s and 1970s, it began the slippery slope that morphed the business into what it is today. Vince’s national expansion in the 1980s was nothing more than a capitalization on a trend that had already begun: an attempt to make professional wrestling more secular and more appealing to a broader audience, for the purpose of television broadcast. The territory system was not built to compete with television. I believe the writing was on the wall well before Vince Sr.’s death, and this match, awesome as it is, was the sunrise of one era and honestly, the sunset of another.
Memphis Wrestling was one of the hottest territories of its time, and survived well into the national expansion of Vince McMahon’s WWF. One of the reasons I believe it did so was because of its refusal to rely on the flamboyant gimmicks and showmanship that the Northeastern territory did, and instead stayed true to the gritty action in the ring. In their own way, Memphis Wrestling (at the time booked by Jerry Jarrett, father of Jeff Jarrett) was able to stay fresh without changing their product and at the same time, revolutionized professional wrestling as we know it. One way was to take the action somewhere that nobody had ever taken it: to the fans.
Jim Cornette wrote about this match a few years back. I included a link to his commentary to give you more insight on the match, and how it came to be. A combination of a shitty talent pool and really bad ticket sales led Jarrett to go for broke, making a very bold and brash decision to put the Southern Tag Team Titles on two midcard wrestlers who had just been paired together a few weeks before: Wayne Farris and Larry Latham. You may know them better as the Honky Tonk Man and Moondog Spot. Anyways, in Tupelo, Mississippi, a wild brawl of a match ensued where the two youngsters upset the champions, Lawler and Dundee, to win the titles.
That, my friends, is when all hell broke loose.
Lawler and Dundee, the faces in all of this mind you, began to viciously pummel the Bombers (who were the heels, remember) after the match as the television broadcast began to fade to black, going off the air.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
You hear somebody yell, “get that camera down here, we have a hell of a fight!” When the video returns, we see the four men, bloody, brawling with one another through the concession stands of the arena. Food is thrown everywhere, bodies are mangled, and a ten-gallon jug of mustard meets its fate against the wall, missing the head of Latham by centimeters.
“Mustard everywhere!”
Everyone who tried to get in the way got served. The tape was re-aired the next day, and the fire was started. According to Jim, this match was the reason he bought a VCR. The tape was passed around more than a doobie in Barack Obama’s dorm room, and a dwindling Memphis territory had new life. Also, I know that when you watch that brawl, three letters come to mind. I’ll give you two consonants and a vowel. If you need a hint, I should smack you. This match reeks of ECW, at a time when Paul Heyman hadn’t even bought his first cell phone yet. Because they weren’t invented yet. And neither was “hardcore,” until this fateful night.
So why don’t we remember this classic match? Because Jerry Jarrett went to the well once too often, using this same brawl through the arena two more times in the next two years. (Think about that. Three arena brawls in three years and it overexposed the territory. ECW would run three arena brawls a NIGHT.) The fans were numb to it, because they had seen it all before. This was where the hardcore, deathmatch style was born. On a tour from Japan, Atusushi Onita participated in one of the brawls. When he returned to his home country, he soon founded FMW, the first hardcore deathmatch wrestling promotion. This led to the American counterpart, ECW. Today many promotions either feature or are centered around hardcore wrestling and well, why the hell would you have a reason to care about this match I’ve shared with you? So what, Jerry Lawler tried to throw a jug of mustard at somebody. Now, you can look up a million matches with barbed wire, staple guns, fire, thumbtacks, or any other weapon you can think of.
I love my old school mat wrestling. I love to see two guys who can work in the ring. But sometimes, yes, I love to see two guys get so pissed off at each other that bare hands just don’t get the job done. I love a good brawl. Done right, and done sparingly, a good street fight can work wonders all around. This match made Farris and Latham stars overnight, and it shot a boost of adrenaline into a crashing territory. This is the first hardcore match I can think of, and it’s a very good flashback to yesteryear. But between the brawl itself and its broadcast on television, and its subsequent taping to be traded, this match also opened the floodgates, for better or for worse. Nothing can be done to go back and fix it, we can only move forward. Except for this series. We’re allowed to look back.
Next week, I’ll think of something else to shock you. There’s so many great matches throughout history, and so many of them right under our noses. Until then, I’m Madman Szalinski, and in the words of Jumpin’ Jeff Farmer…….”Yup.”
See the match for yourself here!
Also see Jim Cornette’s piece on this match here!
Photo Credits:
Photo 1: fineworkshops.com
Photo 2: wikipedia.org
Photo 3: youtube.com
6 Great Matches You’ve Never Seen: Part VI
by Jeremy Cundiff
Thank you for your bandwidth. I’m Madman Szalinski, and I’m just about done with this shit. By shit, of course, I mean this six-part series on great matches that might be a bit obscure. First, I’d like to go over the five matches I’ve already chosen, along with the main reasons for doing so:
#1: Sid vs. Vader (WWF IYH 10, 1996)
#2: Taka vs. Sasuke (WWH IYH 16, 1997)
#3: Blonde Bombers vs. Dundee/Lawler (Memphis, 1979)
#4: Regal vs. Goldberg (WCW Nitro, 1998)
#5: Bas vs. Kanemoto (NJPW, 2002)
#1 was chosen due to the extreme effort by both participants. For a matchup of two big men, moves were used that defied logic it seemed. I knew immediately when I started that I would be including this match for my list because I knew it was an overlooked match due to the main event, and that it exceeded many expectations coming into the opening bell.
#2 was chosen because of the historical significance, and the quality of the match itself. There’s no question, we had Taka Michinoku and the Great Sasuke in there, they both could be hungover and shitting Yoohoo, and still put on a three star minimum. I just didn’t thnk they’d ever be able to do it in America. This match, in my eyes, was much higher than three stars. This was a major shift in the WWF, and it was the first time any WWF fan had ever seen cruiserweight action like that. Another no-brainer to me.
#3 was chosen for, again, historical significance. The match itself was standard 1970′s Southern ‘rasslin. The Bombers weren’t the seasoned veterans we came to know them as (Honky Tonk Man and Moondog Spot) and I’m willing to bet they weren’t ready for what was going to happen that night. The brawl post-match, where the bare-plywood-for-walls concession stand got ripped apart, was where the true gem shined. Again, for a hardcore brawl, it’s tame by 2012 standards (unless you’re a mark for mustard.) But in the big picture, this match was actually very well done and even though I don’t like what it did to the business, I appreciate the entertainment value it gave me. So it was in.
#4 isn’t so obscure, I don’t think. Several people know about that match, and it’s been reported about more than once that Regal was intentionally shooting. When I first heard of the match, it was on Armpit Wrestling’s legendary listing of backstage fights. The following quote was straight from this list: “Regal could lead a dead man through a believable sequence, and I believe that’s what he was trying to do here. However, Goldberg flopped around and looked like an idiot.” I don’t know who wrote that, but dude…we didn’t watch the same match. Regal shot on Goldberg thinking he was going to kill the Goldberg myth once and for all. Goldberg came back and used more moves in one match than he had pretty much his entire career up to that point. While it was clear that Regal did prove the experience factor, Regal still got his ass beat (and countered cleanly a few times). Goldberg showed everyone that he COULD wrestle. It wasn’t just that he only knew two moves, but those two moves seemed to work for him. Hey, nobody is going to argue that Bret Hart knows more than five moves, but the Five Moves of Doom seemed to work for him, right? This match was chosen for the shooting, and the outcome.
#5 was the encompassing definition of what it took to make this list. The action was beyond expectation, the match was entertaining, and I never heard about the match to watch it before. I’d heard that Bas Rutten, one of my few favorite MMA fighters, had worked for New Japan. I found the match and watched it, expecting a Bam Bam/LT type match-up where only the most fundamental basics of pro wrestling would be used. What I saw was Bas and Koji telepathically agree that if there was a script, they didn’t need the motherfucker. And of course, there was this.
Yeah. Let’s move on before I laugh myself into asphyxiation.
So…the final video was kind of hard for me. I spent a week doing nothing but watching and searching YouTube like a Deep Web bot. I had included a big man contest, a hardcore brawl, a cruiserweight match, a worked shoot and a shoot shoot. I wasn’t sure what else to do. I was this close from just pulling a bait and switch, doing some M. Night Shyamalan shit and rambling about how “any match you haven’t seen before that entertains you is number six.” Fortunately for you, I’m not retarded and I found this.
6. Earl Caddock vs. Joe Stecher (Madison Square Garden, 1920)
This match is OLD. So old, it predates every promotion in existence today. So old, it predates the modern preconception of a wrestling promotion. It’s so old the copyright on the footage expired. This is one YouTube match that won’t be in danger of getting taken down anytime soon. But I wouldn’t wait forever to go watch it.
You want to know what you’re watching? Real wrestling. THIS, my friends is what professional wrestling forgot. These two aren’t showboating, although their personalities and characteristics are distinct. They are completely focused on the ring and what’s at stake inside of it. And that’s another thing. They’re not superstars or performers, or even talent. They were real fucking wrestlers doing real fucking wrestling. Nobody in that crowd questioned the “workrate” of these guys. They knew what they were getting was real. And there is some debate as to whether or not this match was worked. Remember, this was 1920 and Kayfabe Commentaries didn’t exist yet. There was no way of knowing for sure. Nobody wrote that shit down. And you know what? THAT’S FINE WITH ME. I don’t need to know everything going on in the locker room to enjoy pro wrestling.
Was it a shoot? A work? I don’t know, but you don’t fake the effort these guys put on in the ring. You might not see a shitton of bump taking or many Irish whips to the ropes for that matter. But you will see two guys legitimately scrapping with each other on the mat, clawing for the championship that was on the line. And to let you know how wrestling has changed, the match ended in two hours (video only shows around 25 minutes.) The length of an entire episode of Smackdown or Impact, being just one match, no commercial breaks…yeah, we’re getting robbed. Oh, and the finish? A leg-scissors and wristlock combination. The leg-scissors was a common finisher for this guy. His opponent wouldn’t submit, so he turned him over and pinned him.
I also saw Jiu-Jitsu rear mounts in there, I saw armbars and toe locks, I saw punches and I saw elbows. I saw a real wrestling match that entertained me greatly, with moves I haven’t seen for a long time in the ring. I knew these were two guys who could finish this match, and then beat the shit out of every man in that building who dared say something. I’d love to see a group of Marine thugs in Syracuse try to tackle one of these two on the street. You just know watching these two that they could shoot on virtually ANYBODY in the business today, and nobody could stop them. Legit tough men, with legit grappling skills, trying to get paid and get respect. Not show-offs or prima donnas who couldn’t wrestle, so they learned how to get beat up by the men who truly could. Now, don’t get me wrong…I am not disrespecting those men at all. Shawn Michaels is one of my all time favorites and he sucks worse at shooting than Dick Cheney. But I’m saying that pro wrestling needs legit wrestlers, tough men who can wrestle, in order to be taken seriously again. It needs men like these two, who knew how to cater to the fans or how to rouse them, yet understood that it began and ended IN THE RING. That’s what matters to those casual fans, the total marks, the smart marks, and overall to me as well.
And while this might have been a World championship match…neither Caddock or Stetcher were considered close to “the best in the business”, not then nor now. That’s the thought I wish to leave you with.
I’m Madman Szalinski, and in the words of Teddy Hart…”All that really matters is I took three hours of your day where you didn’t have to think about your bills, your pains, or your worries. You got to live in a reality called professional wrestling. Don’t let it die, my friend.”
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Now that this massive piece is finished, what the hell should I do next? Any comments, suggestions or death threats? There’s a comment button right below me, so feel free to give me an idea of what you’d like to see me do next (or tell me how I did with this effort). And if you’d rather do it privately, I’m sure there’s a link to my e-mail somewhere around here. Again, below me.
madman_szalinski@hotmail.com (and it works for Windows Live, too!)
See the match for yourself here!
Photo Credits:
Photo 1: youtube.com
Photo 2: en.wikipedia.org