[00:00:11] Speaker A: Take me to the limit if you can don't wanna foil nothing for a man they understand what I gotta do by the fair I think you can fit in the flare you sh my love with just attention you.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Memphis. In minutes, the only retro wrestling podcast that will give you the glory days of Memphis. And less time than it took Jimmy Hart to tell you all about the greatest day of his life. Baby.
I'm Gene Jackson here and we're starting a brand new series on 1982 and folks, this wasn't just a good year, this was the year in Memphis wrestling. Ask Jerry Jarrett, ask Dutch Mantel, ask any fan who lived it. They will tell you. Memphis wrestling hits its Peak in 1982 and it's all kicked off in January.
With a stacked roster, we've got the tag team of Nightmare and Speed. First up, let's talk about them, Danny Davis and Ken Wayne. Two masked guys who weren't giants but could fly around the ring like they had rockets on their boots.
Memphis wasn't exactly loaded with luchadors, so these two stood out among the pack. And of course, eventually Speed would also become a Nightmare. And we'd get the Mass Nightmares tag team that many of you I'm sure are much more familiar with than the duo of Nightmare and Speed. But they were out there having tremendous matches with the tag champs, Bill Dundee and Steve Kern.
They had this, you know, sneaky, fast paced style that, you know, it pissed the fans off because they were about the same size and you know, they switched in and out and it was even at this point they were a great team. Of course they would go on to become just like a well oiled machine tag team specialist, as Gorilla Monsoon would say about the Rockers. But every time you thought they were down, they'd pull something out of their trunks or stick something in their mask or use some kind of cheap double team move and steal the win.
And so Nightmare and Speed, it gave everybody a little bit of something different. You know, Memphis was used to a lot of these larger, you know, mass guys like you had and you know, like the Interns and the Assassins and different things. And so Danny Davis and Ken Wayne were out there flying around the ring but also cheating, which, you know, rather than making the fans drawn to them for the, the high flying moves, they still got a lot of heat. So I don't know, they're, they're going to be fun to keep our eye on as we go through this whole series here on 1982.
Then you had Ricky And Robert Gibson. And they were fighting it out with the original Midnight Express. That's right, Dennis Condrey, Randy Rose and Norville Austin. This wasn't yet Cornet's version because Cornet wasn't managing yet.
But they were still one of the most hated groups in the territory and made for quite a team.
Of course, the Gibsons were a fiery baby face team.
Robert Gibson had the speed and the youth. Ricky Gibson was a veteran who had the fire. And together they gave the Midnight Express a real run for their money. They even teamed up with a young Ricky Morton and some six man tags.
Yeah, that Ricky Morton, not yet the Rock and Roll Express because you'd already see he was a future star and it wasn't gonna be that far down the road. And ironically, he would be doing it with one of the Gibsons.
This view, though, with the Midnight Express and the Gibsons, they were wild, wild brawls, chaos every night. And by the end of the month, the Midnight Express was climbing higher up the card. While unfortunately, the Gibsons were starting to slide back down a bit.
The January 25 card even had the Express going after Building D and Steve Kern for the tag belts. That's how fast things were moving around Memphis at that time.
And speaking of the tag belts, Bill Dundee and Steve Kern had been Southern tag team champions since November of 81. And January was all about holding their ground.
They weren't just champs on paper, they were fighting champions. They beat the Assassins, they beat Nightmare and Speed. They survived the Midnight Express and the fans loved them because they didn't back down. These guys would get in there and throw down with anybody. If you know anything about Steve Kern and Building D, I'm sure that's not surprising to hear.
But Jerry Jarrett knew if he kept Dundee and Kern strong, the tag team division stayed hot. And in Memphis, the tag team division was not just used as filler, it was the backbone of the territory.
Now let's get to the big one. The big feud going on at this time.
And in a move that's not typical for Memphis, it was a baby face versus a baby face. It was Jerry the King Lawler versus Dirty Dutch Man Tail. And by January 1982, Dutch was holding two titles. He was the Southern heavyweight champion and the Mid America heavyweight champion. Nobody had ever pulled that off before.
Dutch was tough, believable, and carried himself like he didn't give a damn what anybody thought. And the fans respected him for it.
But this is Memphis and nobody, and I mean nobody, was going to outshine Jerry Lawler. In his own backyard. On January 18, Lawler challenged Dutch for the Southern heavyweight title.
Both guys were baby faces, but both had huge fan followings. And the Mid South Coliseum felt like it was split right down the middle. Lawler walked out with the win. He took back the Southern heavyweight title. But here's the genius part of it.
Jerry Jarrett didn't just burn through this feud.
He slowly. He gave it a slow burn. He played it for the long game. Lawler and Dutch didn't wrestle each other into the ground every week. Instead, the tension just simmered.
Fans debated who the real man was in Memphis, and every time they touched, it felt special.
And that's a way of booking. That's just a lost art these days, unfortunately.
And of course, you can't talk about Memphis in 1982 without talking about Jimmy Hart. The mouth of the south had his first family roster that looked like a circus parade. He had Stan Lane, Sweet Brown Sugar, who you would know better as Coco Ware, Bobby Eaton, the Assassins, the Dream Machine, Nightmare Speed. Basically, half the Hill locker room was in Jimmy Hart's first family. But Hart was riding high until January bit him in the ass. Stan Lane figured out that Jimmy wasn't really investing his money as he had been telling him he was.
He was flat out stealing it. So Stan Lane walked out on the first family turned baby face and eventually would start teaming with Robert Gibson.
That was bad news for Jimmy Hart, because not only did he lose one of his big stars, he also created a new enemy, and the fans loved it.
And nothing will get you over in Memphis in this era faster than telling Jimmy Hart to shove it.
Even the undercard in January was ridiculous. You had Ricky Morton, Bobby Dream Machine, Troy Graham, Tojo Yamamoto, Rick McCord, names that would either become legends or already solid hands.
And they were making every show that they were on that much better. When your undercard features Ricky Morton and Bobby Eaton, you know times are good.
And here's the kicker. Memphis ran 34 shows in 31 days in January. Let that sink in. These guys weren't flying first class. The TV tapings once a week.
They were driving their cars from town to town, wrestling, hurt, sleeping in fleabag motels, and. And not making probably as much money as they thought they should, considering the houses they were drawing. It was a grind. But the grind is what made Memphis so damn good, you know, because those guys had to deliver night after night and twice on Sundays. And somehow they kept it going.
So to wrap up, January gave us nightmare and speed, stirring up the tag division. The Gibsons battle in the Midnight Express with a rung, a young Ricky Morton in the mix.
Bill Dundee and Steve Kern holding strong as a tag team champions.
Jerry Lawler vs Dutch mantel splitting the crowd at the Mid South Coliseum.
Jimmy Hart losing Stan Lane and gaining a new enemy and an undercard stack with talent that would shape wrestling for the next decade all in one month. That's why 1982 gets called the glory year. Memphis was hot, the stories were striking a chord with the fans and the territory was loaded with talent from the top of the card to the very bottom. And guess what? This is just the beginning. February was waiting with bounty hunters, betrayals and even more Jimmy Hart chaos.
So make sure you join me so I can tell you all about it on the next Memphis in minutes with Jean Jackson.
And also if you don't mind, I would love for you to check out the new book that I just finished along with Wolfie D. It's his life story, A Tale of Two Wolves, and you can find that right now at tinyurl.com wolfiedbook Wolfie's got a very interesting story in and out of the Ring. I had such a great time helping him write this book and I know he's really proud of it. I'm proud of been a part of it and it's, it's something if you're, if you're a Memphis fan, especially from that USWA era, you definitely want to check it out. And of course, you know, PG 13 they were not only Memphis guys, but they were in the wwf, they were in wcw, they were in ecw.
Wolfie went on to be Slash and OVW tna.
So much to talk about there, so many great stories and I thought I knew a lot about Wolfie's career, but along with the inside of the ring stuff, but especially with a lot of the outside of the ring stuff and all the wild stories, I learned so much about Wolfie and I think you will too. So make sure you check that out. It's a good one@tiny URL.com wolfy dbook and of course you can always check out my weekly USWA review
[email protected] and of course that's the Retro Wrestling Review USWA podcast, as well as my weekly podcast with Dangerous Doug Gilbert and Wildfire Tommy Rich entitled Dangerous Conversations with Doug Gilbert and Tommy Rich. And you can find
[email protected] and again, thank you for joining us for another episode of Memphis in minutes. We'll be back soon with more from 1980.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Take me to the limit if you can.
You're one of all I'm looking for understanding.
