The SmarK Rant for Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling – 09.11.82
Oh man, Darryl Stewart had another major downturn and he’s back in the hospital, so you know what that means? Back to Mid-Atlantic, even if no one’s reading it but him. I can’t do much more to help, but I can sure review some wrestling for him.
LAST WEEK: Paul Jones cheated and upset Jack Brisco to win the Mid-Atlantic title! Plus Roddy Piper’s uneasy alliance with the babyfaces continued!
Taped from Charlotte, NC
Your host is Bob Caudle
Oliver Humperdink and his hired goons, Bad Bad Leroy Brown & Jos Leduc, join us to start and they’re not afraid of Jimmy Valiant, despite cutting off some of his hair recently and earning his wrath. So Jimmy storms out for his match and yells at the heels, who take the opportunity to steal Jimmy’s boombox and smash it into a thousand pieces. Man, they made those things to last in the 80s, too.
Back from the break, and Jimmy is PISSED OFF and promises that the poor jerk in the ring is gonna pay for it.
Jimmy Valiant v. Juan Renoso
Jimmy quickly drops the elbow and pins him at 0:44.
Jos Leduc & Bad Bad Leroy Brown v. Kelly Kiniski & Mike Rotundo
Brown quickly tries to work on Rotundo’s arm, but Mike reverses out despite Leroy going “HEEEY!” every time he twists on it. Leroy grabs a headlock instead, but Mike powers out of that and it’s over to Kelly, who manages to take Brown down with his own headlock. Brown did not look particularly graceful going to the mat on that move. Brown holds him on the mat and it’s over Leduc, who slugs Kelly down, but misses a dropkick. Kelly tries an armdrag, but Jos won’t go down for him for some reason, and Rotundo comes in again and tries to work the arm. Leduc just takes him down by the hair and puts him down with a knee to the gut, and then Brown comes in and bites on the arm. You know, with all the talk of Brown selling out and wearing expensive suits and living the high life, I would hope that no one, say, AUDITS HIS TAXES. Maybe he faked his own death because he knew Rotundo was gonna be onto him. Kelly comes in to save his partner, but Brown slams him to cut off the comeback and goes to a chinlock. Rotundo was rapidly improving despite being a raw rookie and he had a good babyface presence and connection with the audience building. The heels trap Kelly in the corner and Jos hits a dramatic backbreaker for the pin at 7:13. And then Rotundo chases off the heels to get a little something in defeat and keep him reasonably strong. Man Leduc gave him that backbreaker like he was owed money or something.
Ben Alexander and Jim Dalton, who will be jobbing shortly, fill some TV time and do a promo that’s pretty bitter, and Dalton is pretty funny calling all the babyfaces crybabies and pointing out that the ends justify the means, and then calls Steamboat and Youngblood LOSERS for the big finale. That was a pretty great promo from Dalton, actually.
Greg Valentine & Paul Jones v. Jack Brisco & Wahoo McDaniel
Brisco is SALTY about losing his title and goes after Jones, but Valentine runs interference and starts the match instead. Brisco quickly wins a slugfest and chases Greg into the corner and then rolls him up for one. Over to Wahoo, who works a headlock on Valentine, but Greg goes for the leg that was broken years earlier, perhaps hoping to do so again. Over to Jones, and he takes a chop that sounded like it stung, and Brisco finally gets his shot at Jones and hammerlocks his arm before running him into the corners. Brisco goes for the leglock, but Jones makes the ropes to escape and hides in the ropes, and Brisco quickly takes him down again and ties him up with what later became the STF. Valentine gets the tag to break up the hold and goes to work on Brisco’s leg, and the kneecrusher sets up the figure-four. Jack reverses that into a cradle for two, so Jones comes in again and Brisco immediately takes him down and lets Wahoo come in and add punishment. They double-team Jones in the corner and Brisco gets the figure-four, as it’s BREAKING LOOSE IN TULSA and Humperdink takes the ref to break things up and then goes after Brisco. And everyone brawls as the ref calls it off and the babyfaces win by DQ at 7:10. I know they wouldn’t typically gave away a finish on free TV for a match like this one, but it felt like we went a whole year without any screwjob finishes on this show and now we’re getting manager interference and DQs weekly. Anyway, yeah, this was going pretty good before the abrupt finish. **1/2
Jimmy Valiant is still pretty pissed about that cassette player and Humperdink should PREPARE TO DIE. I mean, I really love my Sony wireless headphones but if someone smashed them I have about 17 other pairs of headphones I could use. Or I could just go to the store and buy new ones. Also Wahoo is concerned because Abdullah the Butcher came into the territory last year and tried to take out his eye with a coat hanger (?!?) and now there’s a $5000 bounty on his head as well. That’s definitely something to be concerned about.
Ricky Steamboat v. The Gladiator
Ricky leapfrogs him into a dropkick to put him out on the floor, and back in for a test of strength before Gladiator takes him down with a headlock. Steamboat comes back with a hiptoss to escape and takes him down with the armbar, but Gladiator headlocks him again. Steamboat fights out of that and chops him down and back to the arm again. And then Gladiator goes back to the headlock as Bob expands the destruction of the tape player from a thousand pieces to a MILLION pieces. Come on, now it’s just not a believable story anymore. Quit while you’re ahead. They keep trading armbar for headlock and Oliver Humperdink joins us on commentary again so he can be in EVERY SEGMENT this week, and Gladiator comes back with a back elbow and gets two. Neckbreaker and he chokes away on the ropes, but Steamboat fires back with chops and then unmasks the Gladiator and chops him down to pin him at 8:44! I don’t recognize him, but Bob Caudle clarifies that it’s actually Ken Timbs under the mask. Leroy Brown goes to attack Steamboat after the match, but Steamboat whistles and summons Jay Youngblood to whip the heels with a strap and chase them off.
Keith Larsen, who sounds like Tom Petty doing a wrestling promo, thinks that the heels smashing Valiant’s radio was a bad idea. Wait, now it’s a RADIO? This story is changing by the minute. You expect me to believe that there was some kind of magic device that played cassette tapes AND the radio in 1982? Sounds like make believe to me. Also King Parsons is disappointed in the actions of Leroy Brown, but his promo style is starting to move towards the jive-talking style he later became known for.
Gene Anderson v. Keith Larsen
Keith works the arm to start and gets an atomic drop for two. You probably won’t be surprised who is managing Gene here, by the way, as Hump gets the perfect sweep on this show. Larsen slams him and stays on the arm, while Bob calls Anderson “one half of the Minnesota Wrestling Crew”. Who’s the other half, Bob? SAY HIS NAME, DAMN YOU! Gene reverses to a front facelock and holds Larsen with that, and then necks him on the top rope and adds a neckbreaker for the pin at 3:20. Surprised to see Gene still grinding away late in 82 but he looked fine.
And we close with the House of Humperdink, who calls out the “Brisco Sisters” and also “Sissy Indian” Wahoo. I’d have gone with “Pocohontas” myself. Also Valentine laughs at the potential irony of Paul Jones beating an Indian with an Indian Deathlock, apparently unaware that the move originates from India, not American Indians. And then Paul Jones goes further down the rabbit hole by claiming that the move was ACTUALLY invented by a “white man from Texas” who used it to beat Indians, so that’s why it’s called an “Indian Deathlock”. Man if they had Twitter in 1982 he’d have been fact-checked SO HARD.
The only thing more annoying than Darryl’s cancer is Oliver Humperdink and hopefully they both go away soon. This was a fun show otherwise, though.