The Johnson Transcript

The USWA was filled to the brim with crap, especially in the last few years before the company went out of business in 1997. The company produced enough clips to keep this blog going for at least a few years. To help speed up the process and get through some of the worst ones I thought I’d include a bunch here in one post.

First off, we have the USWA’s take on the Lord Humongous gimmick. The man under the mask is Randy Lewis and he is holding the USWA Texas Heavyweight Championship. Sad fact: The title actually has an incredibly rich history dating as far back as the 1930s and the championship still exists today as the NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship. The title had to have been near it’s nadir of prestige here. Especially dreadful in this bout is Humongous’ belly-to-back suplex from the ropes that he awkwardly delivers after fidgeting with his opponent. A more uplifting fact is about the jobber here, The Scorpion. After this bout he would lose the beer belly, drop the “The” in his name and take part in a highly successful franchise eventually hosting a cooking show.

No, this is not the host from The Daily Show, but rather some guy trying to make it big in the USWA by putting the word, “illustrious” in front of his name. This match shows that the USWA didn’t need incredibly over the top gimmick to present bad wrestling. Since the most interesting thing about “Illustrious” Jon Stewart is that he shares a name with the anchor of a comedy news show there is one mildly funny story involving that fact. According to this link that includes more information about Jon Stewart than you would ever want to know, a charter school in Ogden, Utah once booked him believing he was the other Jon Stewart. It actually got him some national attention so at least he got his 15 minutes due to his name because it would never happen due to his wrestling.

Pretty much the most awesomely bad, pre-debut promo ever (okay maybe TA-GAR still wins that). Some might call these guys Road Warrior ripoffs, but I like to think if the gimmick developed it would have been much more original. Brute even hints at it when he says people will say, “What the heck are these guys on?” Of course! The gimmick had to have been that manager, Ronnie Lott was a pusher that rounded up two steroid abusers. The twist was that he would give one (Screamer) uppers and the other (Brute) downers as evident by their speeches. Anyway, at least they shared the name of one of the better Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

Usually, I try not to include any severely clipped matches on this blog, but this one has so much garbage in so little time that I had to. You have The Cyberpunks, Downtown Bruno (Harvey Whippleman) as a ref, and T.D. Steel in a construction hat/dancing! The Cyberpunks was a gimmick that PG-13 (J.C. Ice and Wolfie D) used after they lost a loser leaves town match in Memphis. Jamie Dundee proved to be a master of disguise when he went from J.C. Ice to Cyberpunk Ice. At least Wolfie tried a little harder with Cyberpunk Fire (or did he?). On the other side of the ring was the aforementioned T.D. Steel (always good for a job), Tony Myers and Charlie Laird. Oh yeah as with many matches involving trash in the USWA, Brian Christopher was in this one too.

Before The Rock was distancing himself from them to become a top performer, The Nation of Domination was known as the WWF’s politically incorrect black militant group. At the same time they were stinking up the USWA in the company’s death year. After all what stable says, “black militant” better than one including J.C. Ice, Wolfie D and Spellbinder aka two white kids and some guy into magic (also white). Regardless they rallied around their man challenging Jerry Lawler for the  USWA Unified World Heavyweight Championship. The man in question was Shaquille Ali portrayed by Tracy Smothers. Yes, Tracy Smothers wrestled in (at least) two stables where the joke was that he was the wrong ethnicity.

This final match isn’t that bad. After all once you take away the silly gimmicks it is still Tracy Smothers wrestling Jerry Lawler. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Kareem Olajuwon (Reggie B. Fine) promo that follows. Lastly, it is probably for the best that Ali didn’t walk away with the title here. As the clip shows PG-13 already held the USWA World Tag Team Championship. The USWA had enough problems without giving The Nation of Domination a push reminiscent of The Four Horsemen.