Wednesday, September 7, 2011

old post - wrestlin' or 'raslin'

Another old one - this one from March 25, 2009...



Last night Colton and I headed out to the Armory in Alamo for Memphis Wrestling. Jerry “The King” Lawler was there for autographs and to fight in the main event. Colton and I had a good ole redneck time of it.

I am not a Wrestling fan. I don’t watch RAW or WWE or Smackdown or any of that. I did, however, grow up watching ‘rastlin’ on Saturday mornings. This was before cable TV & Satellite stations and such. We learned years later that when someone would lose a “loser leave town” match that they would go off somewhere else and be a guest coming in to that market. This was first made known to me when TBS was the first “outside” station available locally and Jerry Lawler himself would come in there and be a bad guy.

Anyway, last night reminded me more of the old style promotion. These were “local guys” in training, basically. The heels were obvious & unknown, but they captured the hatred of the crowd VERY quickly. The good guys were beaten down but somehow found the strength to come back and surprise the bad guy at the end.

It was all very typical and nothing new, but that did NOT take away from the fun. A couple of times I predicted what would happen and I was close, but they’d put a little twist on it. I told Colton at one point that this was MUCH more fun than watching the scripted stuff on TV.

Lawler’s son was there as well - Grand Master Sexay. The crowd loved him as well and he managed to smile and draw their attention. He seemed more “open” to the crowd than some of the others. I know they’re all actors to a degree, but he seemed to be more comfortable in his role.

Another guy was there that I found out later was a known “rising star” from ECW - Matt Bryce. He was a little more athletic than the others and could really fall hard and jump around a little more. I’ve always enjoyed that athletic side of it.

Speaking of which... I remember seeing Leaping Lanny and his brother Randy Savage on Channel 6 out of Kentucky. We couldn’t get it EVERY week, but if the weather was good we enjoyed that too. When Randy Savage “made it big” it was no surprise to us because we’d been watching him all along.

I found out from a flyer last night that Memphis Wrestling is still being aired every Saturday morning at 11, just like in the old days. I set the DVR to start catching it for me...


And one comment from Bec -

If you liked the small town show you should go to a big Pay-per-View event. There's nothing like it! Jarrod is going to Wrestlemania in Texas this weekend! :)

2 comments:

dhrnrcpa said...

Alas, Saturday morning Memphis rasslin' just isn't fun like it was back in the day. Seems incredibly fake now (I know, I know).

In it's heyday, Memphis wrestling was vying to become the 4th major organization (after WWF, AWA, and NWA). Now it's just a training ground.

jimmylogan said...

Agreed David - I started DVR'ing it (as I mentioned 2-1/2 years ago) but it got stale REAL fast...