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.
Coal Miner’s Glove Match for the SMW Tag Team Championship: The Dynamic Duo (3-3-1) beat the Rock N’ Roll Express (Champions) (4-1) after Al Snow pins Robert Gibson after hitting him with a chair to win the titles at 12:39 shown:
The sellout crowd lends the match a great atmosphere, something missing on a lot of SMW television broadcasts in 1995. In the clips shown, the Express dominate Al Snow until Unabom asserts his presence. Ricky Morton takes his usual beating as the Duo land their version of the Powerplex and Snow gets in his own splash off the top rope for good measure. What helps the match is that the teams do not spam going for the glove, making the efforts to try to get up the pole meaningful. After the hot tag, Unabom and Morton go for the glove, with Unabom basically helping Morton get it since Morton gets on his opponent’s shoulders. The camera zooms in on this and then zooms out, almost missing the most important part of the finish where Snow belts Gibson with a chair, falling on top of Gibson for the winning fall after Morton hits Snow with the glove. The messy finish weighed things down, as well as Unabom’s timing being off on account of his inexperience. Rating: **½
Kessler interviews the Duo. Snow says he is tired of being a secret in wrestling and says the next step for the Duo will be ending the Express’ careers.
Kessler says that the Tracy Smothers & Undertaker vs. Gangstas & D’Lo Brown loser salutes the flag match was too violent to air on television. The post-match antics are shown, though, where the Undertaker and Killer Kyle brawled to the locker room and the Gangstas and Brown beatdown Smothers, Bob Armstrong, and Jim Cornette. Eventually, the Undertaker returned to the ring and made the save. In a post-match locker room interview, Smothers says that the South will rise again and Cornette vows to do whatever it takes to help Armstrong rid SMW of the Gangstas.
Highlights of the Tennessee chain match between the Dirty White Boy and Buddy Landel are interrupted to show footage from Fright Night in Johnson City, Tennessee, where Landel won the SMW Championship from Bobby Blayze via referee stoppage. Landel has a big cheering section facing the primary camera and they erupt when he is announced as the new champion. Referee Mark Curtis tells Kessler that he ended the match because Blayze could not heed his instructions. Landel stops by to say that he will give Blayze a rematch on television next week and he will put the title, $10,000, his Mercedes, and Rolex against $1 if Blayze can find it by cashing in some food stamps.
The end of the Ricky Morton-Unabom coal miner’s glove match at Fright Night airs, where Al Snow attacked Morton with a chair and gave him three piledrivers, the last of which on a chair. The crowd quietly watches Morton do a stretcher job. Kessler says an update on Morton’s condition may be provided next week and slow-motion shots of him taking the three piledrivers airs. And shots of concerned SMW wrestlers are shown to the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie.”
The Last Word: Al Snow is quickly turning into the promotion’s second-best act behind Buddy Landel, bumping all over the place so that Unabom looks better by comparison and putting in some fantastic work with the Ricky Morton injury angle. It is also good that SMW is going to have Landel wrestle Blayze again for the title, hopefully giving him a pinfall or submission victory to further legitimize his victory at Fright Night.
After doing its monthly television taping, SMW ran a house show in Morristown, Tennessee. Here were the results of that show, courtesy of prowrestlighistory.com:
Morristown, Tennessee – Morristown East High School – April 15, 1995 (450): Unabom pinned George South…Boo Bradley & Jim Cornette beat Killer Kyle & D’Lo Brown in a tennis racket match…SMW Champion Buddy Landel defeated Bobby Blayze in a two-out-of-three falls match in three falls…Tracy Smothers & the Dirty White Boy beat the Gangstas in a street fight.
Backstage News*: SMW cancelled a house show in Erlanger, Kentucky on April 14 at Peel’s Palace because the club owners wanted to change its rental agreement with the promotion. SMW babyfaces were happy with this because the Erlanger fans tend to boo them. With SMW cancelling, local promoter Bob Harmon ran a show with trainees from Les Thatcher’s wrestling school and a few independent wrestlers, billing the show as an event for the Northern Wrestling Federation. New Jack and D’Lo Brown showed up, agreeing to work the show for free, but when fans saw them, they thought they would get to see other SMW talent. Then, Jack caused controversy by heckling the inexperienced wrestlers on the card, throwing a bar table onto his opponent’s shoulder in a tag match and injuring him, and then throwing real punches when he ran in during a ten-man elimination tag main event. Jack claims that one of the wrestlers made a racial remark and another was not selling for him. Security had to get involved in the main event to stop Jack when a large security guard tackled him and the fighting kept going in the parking lot, with Jack leaving before police showed up.
*The Jerry Springer Show appearance was cancelled largely at the behest of the WWF. The show wanted to play up the Gangstas racial grievances in SMW as real and have SMW babyfaces argue with them, but that made a lot of SMW’s babyfaces uncomfortable. Jim Cornette was willing to debate in their stead, but the WWF did not want negative publicity from the show because Cornette is their top heel manager.
*The next big SMW event will be called Volunteer Slam in Knoxville, Tennessee and Terry Funk, PG-13, and Dan Severn have been contacted to participate. It is expected that Funk will team with Bob Armstrong against the Gangstas in a Texas Death match, PG-13 will defend the USWA tag team titles against Tracy Smothers and the Dirty White Boy, and Severn will defend the NWA title against Bobby Blayze.
*In talent relations news, Jim Ross will be replaced by Chip Kessler because Ross is getting more responsibilities in the WWF and has moved to Connecticut.
*Backstage news is provided courtesy of Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer for April 24.
Up Next: Smoky Mountain TV for April 22!
