Les Thatcher

Chip Kessler and Les Thornton are doing play-by-play duties, with this being Kessler’s first broadcast in that role.  Thatcher tells fans that Jim Ross is no longer handling television due to his growing WWF responsibilities.  They kick off a new round of tapings from Warrensville, North Carolina that took place at Northwest Ashe High School.  According to prowrestlinghistory.com, the tapings on April 13 drew 350 fans.

Chip Kessler tells the audience that today’s broadcast will recap the events of the Bluegrass Brawl where fans were turned away in Pikeville, Kentucky.

The show has a new introduction, with a knock off country song about SMW having the “biggest brawls” and “biggest stars” in wrestling.

Jim Ross and Les Thatcher call the action as they wrap up the television tapings in Sevierville, Tennessee.

Today’s show features some of the matches that took place at Super Saturday Night Fever in Knoxville, Tennessee on January 28.  Les Thatcher does commentary on the matches.

While Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) paved the road for wrestling’s future by the end of the decade, Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW) was a product yearning for the past.  Started by former Midnight Express manager and Louisville native Jim Cornette, and bankrolled by record producer Rick Rubin, in 1991, SMW billed itself as “professional wrestling like it used to be and the way you like it.”  Running shows in the Appalachian areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas, the promotion’s presentation and booking mirrored the territory days, with a traditional babyface-heel alignment and the adoption of Southern wrestling customs like disqualifications for wrestlers who tossed their opponents over the top rope.  SMW relied on older NWA talents to boost houses, reviving the careers of the Rock N’ Roll Express and Buddy Landel, but it also became a haven for new acts that would later make their mark in the big time as Chris Jericho, Chris Candido, Tammy Sytch, Boo Bradley (the future Balls Mahoney), D’Lo Brown, the Gangstas, Lance Storm, and Unabomb (the future Kane) spent time in the company.