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Post by cabbageboy on Aug 28, 2018 9:19:46 GMT -5
Okay I have been watching most of 1984 Mid-South and this show has started to rule in a big way. Dundee's booking has massively jump started the place and the show is so much more excited and hyped up. Heels do awful things to the faces, faces do hilariously humiliating things to heels, and the show finally has some actual white meat babyfaces: Rock N Rolls for the teen girls, Magnum TA for the grown women, Terry Taylor for dorky nerd girls, JYD still for the black fans, Duggan for the redneck men. On the heel side there's the Midnight Express with Cornette at his most annoying, Wrestling II as the grouchy heel veteran, the Russian team of Volkoff and Krushchev, Butch Reed has found his sea legs as a heel, etc. Yes, the TV title tourney veered into Russo territory at times but nothing is perfect. Bring back Dibiase and this will really start rocking.
Basically imagine a bunch of guys who all either went to the WWF or NWA later on filtered through the lens of wild Memphis style booking.
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Post by chronocross on Aug 28, 2018 12:28:54 GMT -5
1984 Mid-South is some of the best wrestling I've seen, the feud with the Midnights/Magnum & Wrestling 2 which goes into Magnum vs. Wrestling 2 is one of the best angles I've seen in a while. I may have posted this before but Cornette got some crazy heat once he came into the territory and it picked up as the 1983 shows kinda flat after DiBiase is gone,IMO.
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Post by cabbageboy on Aug 28, 2018 13:01:55 GMT -5
I think a big difference is that in 1984 I've seen a shift in the crowds. On those 1982 shows it's a bunch of old American Gothic types, freaky rednecks in trucker hats, etc. They were a really tough audience, rarely reacting. In the 1984 shows there are a lot of younger people, more female fans, and they are far more into the show and go crazy for these guys.
I don't think Bill Dundee gets the credit he deserves for his Mid-South booking circa 1984-85. Angles had more heat, there was more wild excitement, and so on. Some other fundamental things started shifting as well. There are fewer really terrible jobbers in 1984, and if there was a jobber match it was usually kept short. I mentioned earlier in this thread about some awful Duggan vs. whatever jobbers matches (not Duggan's fault) where these guys botched every move because the match was going 4-5 minutes. Now Duggan just steamrolls a dude in 2 minutes and the guy gets zero offense. But yeah, the only people I've heard that praised Dundee from this time period were Magnum TA in some interviews (said Dundee had faith in him as a top guy and made his career) as well as Cornette on his podcast (Watts was going to just send them to WCCW or wherever after the Last Stampede feud, but Dundee convinced Watts the Midnights still had a ton of heat and could do the RNR feud).
It's funny how the Rock N Roll Express were B list guys in Memphis and became matinee idols in Mid-South. I think it's because the Memphis audience was just too used to these guys. They'd seen Robert Gibson team with his brother Rick for years, seen Morton team with Eddie Gilbert and as an underneath guy, etc. However, go to Mid-South where fans hadn't seen them and they had a blank slate and they got over. It also helped that the Midnight Express are the perfect foil.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2018 6:41:50 GMT -5
Currently enjoying Mid-South (my favorite of the three Territory shows I currently rotate in along Mid-Atlantic and WCCW) and I am in October 1983 just now. Hearing all this talk about how it will get even better in 1984 makes me even more excited.
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Post by cabbageboy on Aug 30, 2018 7:33:34 GMT -5
Some of my lackluster thoughts on 1983 Mid-South are due to watching some really faded 3rd generation shows on You Tube before WWE added that stuff to the Network. I wisely held off at the end of 1983 until they actually added a bunch of 1984. For 1983 I'd say WCCW was a much better show than Mid-South. Mid-South just hit a wall in the 2nd half of 1983, where most of the guys that were carrying things in 1982 and early 1983 left for a while.
But yeah by 1984 Dundee takes over the booking and they go into crazy Memphis style stuff. I hope you enjoy wild studio brawling, tar and feathering angles, heels painting faces yellow, faces painting heels pink, attacks with clippers to shave beards, birthday cake angles, etc. Given how staid and conservative minded Mid-South's show was before this stuff had to have blown people's minds in that area, haha.
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