Board 8 > B8 Discord #wrestling's Match of the Week - A Turn away from Toryumon

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hey all and welcome back to Match of the Week where one match at a time we share interesting wrestling with one another and then kinda sorta talk about them

The current Queue is:

1. Steiner
2. Maniac
3. Iceman
4. Bidoof
5. Eddv

Up this week is....me

Ill be posting a match later today but were going down south to The WCW this time.

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Woo WCW!

I cant find the match I want for free. Need to figure out a backup.

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NWA United States Tag Team Championship Match: The Midnight Express ("Sweet" Stan Lane and "Beautiful" Bobby Eaton) (c) vs. The Wild-Eyed Southern Boys (Tracy Smothers and Steve Armstrong) - Great American Bash, July 7, 1990

I recommend using the WWE Network or Peacock but this link works:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3au6it

The year is 1990, Ultimate Warrior is main eventing the wwf and for the first time since 1985 WWF is presenting a genuinely bad product. The opportunity was there for NWA:WCW to make a big dent and display their worth as an alternative and Great American Bash 1990 was a banger of a show that did just that. It was main evented with Stings finally defeating Flair, Luger continuing his red hot rise and Doom in the midst of their bad ass world tag team titles run, but newsletter readers were all atwitter with praise for the US tag team titles match.

The build to this match is pretty simple - Southern Boys came into the territory and have been beating everyone in their path, the Midnight Express was in the midst of their third and final run with the title they're probably the most synonymous with. Cornette promises that while the Southern Boys are good, his team is just better and dares them to prove him wrong.

The match itself is practically the very template for "Young Face Tag team vs Wily Veteran Tag Team". There isn't a lot here in terms of solid technical wrestling but there is a lot of just really solid as fuck work, with Bobby Eaton and Tracy Smothers doing some spots that are far enough ahead of their time that rookie announcer Jim Ross has a hard time calling the action. There is a very fun exchange of Karate kicks and chops by Smothers and Lane that is a real highlight of the match.

I first watched this match a month ago when Eaton died and considering Smothers also died this year I just wanted to share a match that demonstrated just how good they were. This match could be on dynamite or All Out and still fit in.

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Lets give this a bump

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This last week's been busier than I expected but I fully intend to do this tomorrow.

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Very fun match. Everyone knows this period of wrestling is a pretty big blind spot for me, but everything that I have seen from it (i.e. specific recommendations made from people with taste I trust that ignore all the lousier stuff) has been quite enjoyable.

Hard to give many super specific "takez" on it because, as Ed said, it's almost just a prototypical example of how to work a dynamic like the one these two teams had, but I will say I was surprised at how few things that I expected to bug me were present in this match. Cornette's involvement is minimal and has no bearing on the finish, there's no long and boring control period by the heels, etc. The one thing I'll disagree with is that I don't think it would fit in on current AEW programming. That's not an insult - it's just very much a departure from the formula that tag wrestling in 2021 has seemed to settle into pretty much the world over. I could go into more specifics on that feeling but it would involve a long, almost blow-by-blow account of the whole 20-minute contest and I don't think anyone wants to read that.

Want to shout out the commentary, too, because it also gives off a very different feel than what you hear in today's American TV wrestling. It's a lot more conversational and less of a "production," if that makes sense. You never get the sense they're trying to force excitement or put on their own personal show apart from the match or fill time with trite platitudes; they just call the action and make small comments for happenings that would naturally prompt them. It's very refreshing.

Just good stuff. It's probably nothing I'll remember for a long time if for no other reason than that the overall presentation still falls a bit outside my personal sensibilities, but I think it's something that pretty much every wrestling fan can watch and get at least some degree of enjoyment from.

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