Herb Abram’s UWF Fury Hour #40 07/20/91

UWF Fury Hour
July 20th, 1991
Taped June 19th, 1991
Memorial Auditorium
Spartanburg, South Carolina
Commentators: Craig DeGeorge & John Tolos

The last show from the penultimate tapings, with plenty of tape damage as even the video recorders have had enough of this.

The Nightstalker vs. Death Row 3260

Tolos says Nightstalker has that thing you can’t be born with and you can’t buy from a shop. I’d disagree with the second point. These are two big bastards so they trade shoulderbarges until Stalker misses a Patera charge in the corner and 3260 armdrags him down. Row bodyslams Stalker but misses a splash off the second rope. Stalker gets his own much less impressive bodyslam then goes for his axe! Row gets out the ring as Stalker strikes the ropes with his axe but doesn’t slice them in half or cause pyro to emerge from the ring posts so he needs to work harder. One of Row’s mates tries to get the axe off Stalker but can’t, so he runs away and the match is declared a DQ loss for Stalker. Commentary reminds us Stalker did nothing to deserve his imprisonment but if they were charging him for finishes like this then they’d be hanging a guilty man.

We immediately cut to Herb yelling BACK TO BASICS, THAT’S WHAT UWF IS ALL ABOUT like when Hackenschmidt swerved Gotch and used an axe.

Vladimir Koloff vs. Pistol Pez Whatley

Tolos puts over Pez by reminding us he’s from Bourbon Streets “where you can get really good oysters.” NWA veteran Pez starts with a Sunset Flip from the apron into the ring to tease a quick death by Vlad kicks out. Vlad plods along and locks in a chinlock, then when Red distracts his opponent he gives him EXTRA RUBBING. Tolos doesn’t explain what’s happening (because I can’t see through the static) but he points out the worry of the remaining nine billion Russians called Vladimir that Red has threatened to bring to the UWF. I don’t know, I just don’t think an evil Russian called Vladimir is realistic. Pez has seen the size of the crowd and decided he’s going to spend the entity of the match on the mat taking rest holds. After we come back from break he’s still horizontal. Finally Vlad misses a Patera charge in the corner and Pez makes his funky punch combo comeback but Vlad kicks out. Koloff then demonstrates why he spent most of the match applying locks because he’s rubbish on his feet. Pez lands a crossbody but Koloff walks backwards and lands in the ropes where both men eat poo on the outside before Koloff bounces a chair off Pez’s head…who shrugs it off because uhhh it’s the early 90s and that’s your second non-finish of the night. The UWF locker-room rush to pull them apart

Sunny Beach vs. Barry Horowitz

The VHS static is threatening to make this a radio broadcast so I’m relying on Tolos’ words. He emphasises the importance of a good diet as “that’s why the Japanese are all 3′ 8” because they don’t watch what they eat!” I avoided sushi for years as a kid because my Grandad said the exact same thing. He wasn’t a dietician, just a racist. Anyway there’s a headlock happening in this snowstorm. Beach stops on a criss-cross reversal to jump on Barry’s head so Horowitz decides to turn heel and slaps Beach during a referee break up. Bazza then works hard with a Fireman’s Carry and a knee-pad removed high knee drop for two. “They didn’t have that move in your day” says DeGeorge, reminding us he’s here. Eventually Beach reverses an O’Connor Roll into one of his own to get the pin by pulling Barry’s pants down, which the static allowed us to see. Thanks static. Decent match to listen to.

Steve Ray vs. Helmut Hessler

Steve brings out Sunny as his manager to even out things with Helmut bringing his evil German manager with him whose name I can’t be bothered to google. I love Herb’s idea of traditional wrestling being out-dated foreign wrestlers. The USSR doesn’t exist anymore and we still have Red’s army of Russian Restlers running around so we may as well have an evil German or two. If he’d got a proper TV deal we’d have seen evil Normans attempting to invade. After a break where nothing occurred, Ray takes out both Germans with a crossbody off the apron. Helmut gets his revenge by slamming the rock-hard table at ringside over Ray as Beach does nothing. Yeah great plan. Helmut brings back into down in the ring to make the match slower than the development of the Schwerer Gustav before Ray shrugs off all the offence and makes A WILD THING COMEBACK with the kids screaming before Evil German Manager holds the ropes down to cause Ray to fly outside. The referee sees it and DQs Helmut who wastes no times dumping the referee to the floor too. Three non-finishes on a four match card. Tolos promises us this is only the beginning! That was Helmut’s last appearance.

They loved showing this on Dark Side Of The Ring. A bloody, shirt-ripped Herb in an empty room yelling about how he’ll get his revenge on Colonel Red after a segment where the crowd made no noise at all as he was stretchered out because no-one cared about him as a TV character.

Anyway this may or not may have been the last UWF tapings as the timeline split as a result of the Beach Brawl cheque’s bouncing so hard it cracked the wall of reality so next week we join Earth-2 UWF and their last set of tapings ever, sadly not involving a wrestling owner called Coke who’s addicted to weed.

I’ve been Maffew.