Dave Reviews Wrestling — page 8

Imagine a TV show where you took an average member of the public and tried to turn them into a professional wrestler. No, it’s not Tough Enough, it’s The Big Time, a BBC series from the late seventies/early eighties, which is probably most famous for launching the career of Sheena Easton. In this episode from 1980, teacher and church organist Keith Rawlinson gets to go through a transformation and rub shoulders and trade forearms with the stars of British wrestling from the World of Sport days.

(First part above, second and third parts at the bottom.)

OK, here is the show I was going to review before California Championship Wrestling made a blip on the radar. From 1988, Ron Fuller (brother of Robert “Colonel Rob Parker” Fuller) presents USA Championship Wrestling from Knoxville, one of the last Knoxville wrestling promotions before Smoky Mountain Wrestling gave it one last try. It’s a who’s who of names in the promotion and just some good ol’ Southern rasslin’, so I thought I’d give it a look.

I had it in mind to look at another promotion with Championship Wrestling as part of their name, and that’s still coming, but this came up on a search and I thought I’d look at it instead. We’ve talked about infamously bad bodybuilder/wrestler Ripper Savage before, and he’s part of the show, but we’ve also got the Superfly and the Rock’s dad slumming it too, which has to have some entertainment value.

I’ve found a Stampede episode with returning stars the British Bulldogs, one of the longer TSN episodes, so I’ll have a look at that before possibly alternating between episodes of this show and an interesting but short-lived show from the late eighties with some entertaining and incendiary elements in it.

In the case of Stampede at this time, the Bulldogs are back in as the top stars, between tours of Japan, and Dynamite was the booker, with an emphasis on wrestling and less on gimmicks, and seemingly a lot of new additions up and down the card, the latter not being dissimilar to Jerry Lawler’s booking philosophy.

A quick review tonight from the Stampede collection, with an episode running 35 minutes and doubtless having a bit cut out. Jason’s on the still for the episode, so let’s see if Luke is angry.

Let’s go with some more Stampede, this episode towards the end of the run, but with some interesting characters in it, some you might recognise and some you might not.

GrantM sent me a link so I could do more AWA reviews, but the channel had some Stampede shows on it, so I’m looking at that instead.

I picked this particular episode because the guy in the picture for the show, Brick Bronsky, looks like he’s in full roid rage, so let’s see if the action lives up to that.

One more AWA show and then we’re done. It’s been fun… most of the time.

This might be the first lacking Rockers match, but we’ll see. In the cold open, we see the Nasty Boys stealing the mic from Lee Marshall to berate the crowd in the introduction from their match, then the Midnight Rockers coming out. Weird way of presenting the match.

More after and before the WWF action in the AWA. Gotta comment on the overdubbed music for the opening, which sounds like it would be playing in a rave club in Essex in 1989 as opposed to Verne Gagne’s aging product. “Little” Larry Nelson, who seems to have been sponsored by an orthopaedic chair company for this episode, opens the show. He talks about how the AWA Superstars programme is recorded in front a “semi-live” audience, and anyone who’s watched an AWA show knows how accurate that description is. It’s a “Day of Champions” today. Especially topical too with Adonis and Orton featuring on the newly uploaded episodes of Wrestling Challenge.

Into 1988, the last year that the AWA had anything approaching decent talent or a hope of hanging on before two more years of circling the drain. Introduced by Larry Nelson, in what looks like someone’s living room.

Continuing on with the Network’s limited AWA run, the only listed TV episode from 1987, featuring an introduction from Rodger Kent against what sounds like the disco version of Star Wars. I have to imagine they’d had this for about ten years or so by this point. Introduced by Larry Nelson and Gary Ron… I’ve never heard of him, either.

I thought I’d have a look at the extremely limited AWA content on the Network, which pretty much should be subtitled Shawn Michaels: The Early Years, but at the same time it’s still fucking HBK, only almost the best wrestler of all time, so that’s enough for me.

A match popped up on my YouTube feed that looked far too good to let pass without talking about, so taking a break from the normal shows I’ve been looking at for a mix of different stuff that deserves having some light shed on it, featuring the Sarge, Mr. Wonderful, Sid and Jake and the Undertaker, Bobby Heenan as a “manager” after his retirement, plus more!

Jumping ahead a month, with not too much happening in the mean time.

Missing a week, but not missing much.

Before the credits, Cowboy reads a congratulatory message to Ron Simmons at CNN Centre, in a polo shirt, looking like he popped down on his way to the bog. FFS, Bill! Ron says it’ll take an Act of Congress to get the belt off his waist. Careful, Ron, getting political there!

The Ron Simmons era begins as Bill Watts tries to recreate the glory days of Mid-South almost a decade removed.

On the last review I said big changes were coming soon, and I wasn’t kidding!

Skipping ahead a few weeks, with Vader the world heavyweight champion and Doc and Gordy with both the NWA and WCW tag team belts. A big change on one of those fronts was not far off, though.

Lockdown fever is kicking in, so I thought I’d pick back up with some available WCW Worldwide from 1992. At this point we’re just past Beach Blast and Clash 19, with clips from the Steiners against Doc and Gordy prior to the opening, with Doc clipping Scott.