As with every child that didn't grow up in the northeast in the '80s, we here in Houston had our own special gang of misfit wrestlers formed under Paul Boesch. Every Saturday evening at 9:00pm sharp on channel 39, I became hooked to the antics of Jim Duggan, One Man Gang, Terry Taylor, and other characters like I'd never been hooked before. Mr. Boesch got up there in age and the reins of the southern territories eventually landed on future WWE Hall of Famer "Cowboy" Bill Watts, who wasn't content with staying regional and wanted to present a product to compete with Vince McMahon and the empire that his WWF was creating. The Universal Wrestling Federation was born and with the episodic nature and tremendous booking did very well for itself. That is, until Mr. McMahon and Mr. Crockett down in Mid-Atlantic began signing away the UWF's biggest stars.
Around the time of this show, Watts and Mid-South had already purchased Leroy McGuirk's Tri-State promotion, so Cowboy was running shows in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana as well as splitting the Sam Houston Coliseum (think Sportatorium of Houston) with Boesch and his crew. The national scale was still free game at this point as Hulkamania was still over a year away from exploding. Personally, I've always found pre-Hogan wrestling shows to be fascinating due to the different edge it felt like the overall product had. Enough of memory lane, let's watch some good ol' Texas 'rasslin' like I'm six and in my pajamas again!
Boyd Pierce opens the show by running down today's card in about thirty seconds (masterfully might I add) and ships us ringside with both Bill Watts and Paul Boesch. Cowboy chats with some kids from the local Boy's Club in attendance and goes over the loser leaves town no DQ tag team title match happening later tonight between JYD's team and Ted DiBiase's team. Matt Bourne (O.G. Doink) is being brought in to stand aside Ted, making for an intriguing second-generation tag team. Paul Boesch is concerned as the losers leaving stipulation also affects his promotion, so he made it a point to appear for the first time on Mid-South in person. This was a television show and they just managed to make it feel like a modern day pay-per-view event within five minutes. All hail the old school.
Andre The Giant, The Junkyard Dog, & Mil Mascaras vs Tully Blanchard, Gino Hernandez, & Killer Khan
This match is brought to us from Houston and WHO HIT THE RANDOM BUTTON ON THE LEGENDS OF WRESTLING GAME? Bizarre stuff, but par for the course at the time due to people working all over. Tully and Gino were still the main attractions for San Antonio's SCW at the time and Andre and Khan were on loan from New York. Simple short match that was mostly the heels laying into Andre's leg until he got the tag to Mascaras. That didn't last long until Blanchard tried to launch Mil outside, but Andre caught him on the floor and tossed him OVER the top rope right into Tully, scoring the win for one of the oddest three man teams I've ever seen at 2:51. One thing worth pointing out is that I never realized what a hell of a play-by-play man Watts was until now. He called the entire match by himself, non-stop, with facts and gimmicks flying a mile a minute making him the only guy other than Joey Styles that I can recall pulling it off. Perhaps that poor fellow Byron Saxton should be tied to the UWF learning tree soon.
Kamala vs Ted Allen
Kamala was the first and only wrestler to scare the living shit out of me as a youngling. No lie, I'd do the whole "cover my ears and close my eyes" thing when I saw The Ugandan Giant was fixing to wreck shop. I always thought Kim Chee was a WWF creation, but here he is in all his Kim Chee glory. "Nightmare" Ted Allen was a popular, well respected masked wrestler in Georgia later in his career and sadly passed away in 2010. Total squasharoo here as Kamala gets so amped up that he tried an RVD style vertical leap (it didn't work out) and hit two big splashes to earn his pay this week at :49. The slow-mo replay of that last splash looked badass, with the ring ropes shaking and Allen looking unconscious.
Mid-South Tag Team Championship No Disqualification Loser Leaves Town Match
The Junkyard Dog & Mr. Olympia(c) vs Ted DiBiase & Matt Bourne
This started slow, but finished with some wild shit that was ahead of the 1982 curve. All four came out guns blazing until DiBiase started heeling it up. How he got over simply wearing by a black glove he could load/unload with a foreign object is on the same level of awesome as Lawler's old phantom object he would pull out of his tights. Psychology 101. The crowd is turned up to eleven, popping and jumping like maniacs for things like arm drags. Speaking of, once I noticed how sweet Mr. Olympia's armdrags were, I also noticed that all he did was armdrags after his first two tags, so practice makes perfect I guess. Earlier in the show, there was a person in a gorilla suit horsing around with the Boy's Club kids and when they cut to a quick, completely random shot of it during the match, I said "that's the good stuff". The only two things that drug the match down a bit were that JYD was noticably off on a few moves and that they barely used the no DQ rule until the end. My jaw slapped the floor when Bourne hit his Whoopie Cushion move on Mr. Olympia as I didn't know he always did that one. JYD was in the ring struggling to remove whatever Ted had just slid in his glove when all hell broke loose. The gorilla slams Olympia on the concrete and unmasks as Jim Duggan, laying JYD out with a pretty nice flying shoulder tackle. DiBiase's black glove finds it's target and The Junkyard Dog is pinned at 11:37, costing him 90 days in Mid-South and the tag titles. Young Doink resembles a young Eugene if anyone remembers him.
It's "The Foot Fetish King" Tony Atlas! I'm not going into the nickname, you're on your own. I must say, Atlas looks every bit the part of a superstar here, the dropkick into the flying head scissors in particular catching me by suprise. Tony whipped this poor bastard's ass from pillar to post, looking more agile than I ever remember him being, but to be fair, he was already gone by the time I got into watching WWF. Gorilla press into a body splash sends everyone involved home at 2:43 as somewhere, Warrior was taking notes.
Gino Hernandez is remembered for being one of the most tragic figures in wrestling history. Jesse Barr is remembered for having his goddamned eyeball ripped out of his skull by an angry Haku. The more you know. They openly mention that Barr is on loan from Don Owen's Portland territory right before Gino shrugs off his offense and finishes him off with his funky second rope backwards flying elbow at 3:01. Gino wasn't as heelish as usual and just kind of looked like Rick Martel out there.
We're joined by the new Mid-South Tag Team Champions DiBiase and Bourne as well as Duggan still in the gorilla suit at ringside. Paul Boesch himself is handling the interview and states that this is the wickedest shit he has seen in over 50 years in the business. Other than the uncomfortable line where DiBiase refers to JYD as a "monkey", this was one hell of an awesome deal. Ted was already doing the trademark laugh, Bourne was joking and clowning around a decade before Doink existed, and Duggan came hard with a killer heel promo. Social media would've already hit WWE with about 50 million comments by the time I finished typing this sentence if this was done today though, and rightly so. Different times.
Mr. Wrestling II vs Marty Lunde
For the unaware, Lunde would go on to a memorable career as Arn Anderson. This match confirms that poor guy must have been bald back in high school. Mr. Wrestling II is only around 38 here, but looks more aged than that and he is the only babyface so far in this show that the crowd hasn't reacted to. Knee lift, knee lift, body slam, knee lift and Mr. Wrestling took the match at 3:27. It isn't like I can blame a man for having a 1980's offense in a 1982 show or anything, so judgement reserved.
Hiro Matsuda & Yoshi Yatsu vs Vinnie Romero & Tim Horner
Hot damn! Vinnie used to work out here at Texas All-Star under the name Vinnie Valentino. Horner was mostly an enhancement guy throughout his career and I'm not as familiar with him as I should be. Hiro Matsuda is most famous for being the most out of place manager Ric Flair ever had as well as the man who broke the leg of a mouthy Hulk Hogan early in his training, or so Hulkster claims. Though I closely follow Japanese wrestling, the only thing about Yatsu that stands out was his being part of the tag match where Mitsuharu Misawa unmasked. Not much to this one as Horner gets nowhere, tags in Vinnie who gets a few moves in until Yatsu destroys him with a vicious belly-to-belly at 2:07. Gnarliest move so far this show, hands down.
With that, Paul Boesch and Boyd Pierce run down the card for next week's show (what a concept!) which isn't on The Network yet and we're out of time!
They packed so much into 45 minutes that it would send anyone who is tired of the three hour drag-ass pace of today's shows scrambling to find more. Great period for a great promotion that had even bigger things to come.
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