A babyface Hayes leads a young Double J into battle against Buddy Robert’s Samoans.

Jarrett starts of with a plucky babyface run of drop kicks and other offense. The SST are fun heels that play the tough guy role well. After his run the Samoans come back, isolate Jarrett, and work him over with quick tags. The beating the SST give the smaller Jarrett, especially the side kicks, is great stuff. They do a spot where Hayes gets the tag, but the ref doesn’t see it. Jarrett really is a rag doll in there. Jarrett gets several hope spots. He looks green on offense, but his selling is good.

Hayes finally tags in and plays the house of fire. They do the double head butt no-sell by the SST, but Hayes manages to rule it anyway. Jarrett gets a pin but the ref is distracted. Steve Cox is out to nullify the interference of Buddy Roberts. Everything gets out of control and the bell is called for. No contest.

Decent selling by Jarrett, but he had a ways to go on offense. Hayes was only in for the hot tag, and you could tell the Jarrett/Hayes teams was just singles guys thrown together. I was actually far more impressed with the SST as a team. I thought they did a lot of solid stuff. An average match with an okay story and a blah ending. 2 ½ stars and 5.4/10

Alright, so the rules are they’ve got four boxes ON POLES (TM Russo) and three have weapons. The fourth has the World Title. Find the gold, you win. So wouldn’t you find the gold in the first or second box, calculating the chances? Ugh, I’m going into this hesitantly. I wish very much someone had shown Russo the build to the greatest stip match of all time, Dibiase vs Duggan from Mid South in 1985, for some perspective on gimmick matches.

Booker T channels Bret Hart by trying to give his shirt to a ringside fan, so Jarrett jumps him. First box contains a blow up doll. Hooray. I remember Booker’s offense and control time being a lot more compelling than this, but it could be Jarrett or the stips. He pulls down the second box: a framed picture of Scott Hall. I’m lost.

Jarrett has the right idea, using the box as a weapon. His brawling is a lot more interesting than what Booker had been doing. WCW steals the announce table bumps, having Booker pile drive Jarrett through one. The third box has a coal miner’s glove, and I doubt anyone (maybe Russo) knows the historical wrestling significance of this. They just use it because it’s wrestling. Jarrett cuts him off. He seems to be the only one with a sense of teasing and character in there. Jarrett steals the glove, but doesn’t go for the wide open final box. Boo this match. The glove shots aren’t compelling or over at all. Jarrett uses the boxes as weapons. No urgency in this match at all, but no great selling to compensate either. At least Jarrett’s punches are pretty good. Jarrett with a sleep to little reaction, then the crowd pipes up with a chant for Booker. They are dropping the hand of Booker when Mark Madden rightfully points out that the only way to win is get the box. Silly asses. Jarrett, in the story they are telling, is actually out wrestling and out smarting Booker.

Booker ends up coming back. He hits his signature stuff. The tease the climb for the final box well enough. This is WCW, so Jarrett’s guitar gets stuck under the ring and they have to stall while he retrieves it. Beetle Juice from the Stern show attacks Jarrett, while Booker drops the belt out of the box and has to have it handed to him by the ring announcer to win. What a dull, dramaless, second gear match where Isadly think these guys tried, but the gimmick was aweful and the progression of the match wasn’t main event worthy. 2 ¼ and 4/10.

An odd pairing of faces and heels, with the Jarrett/Booker team fighting against each other in a single later in the night. Seems Russo-rific to me. One question: Will anyone sell on the Steiner/Sting team given the other team is the motivated one and neither member is known for wanting to show weakness, at least well.

Steiners valet was hot as hell, if a little plastic. Someone took the time to make a “Slapnuts Country” sign. Wow. Lots of stalling and crowd baiting to start. Stings offense was the forerunner for the weakest of John Cena’s stuff, but Jarrett sold it valiantly. Steiner goes up against Booker T wearing a black face protector that is simply ridiculous. Steiner works the crowd quite a bit too. Steiner doesn’t move well at this point, but he does take an effective bump for Booker. Sting and Booker have an ugly communication breakdown at one point, but it’s slow enough that they recover.

While I’m not in love with the actual early work, I will say it’s being build slowly and smartly, playing to the star aspect rather than taking a thousand bumps. I’m so sad that Madden has been using the phrase “Sports Entertainment” at will. I guess everywhere he goes Russo wishes he was back in New York. It breaks down to The faces fighting each other and the heels doing the same. Steiner’s stuff is really held back by his size and bulk. He still pulls out the odd suplex here and there to remind us what he once was. Nothing about this match is compelling, especially the Steiner ring time. Sting and Jarrett have a more motivated volley, as even Booker T looks sluggish tonight. Perhaps it’s the repetition of moves. It’s not that no one is trying, but it feels relatively dull. Ref bump 10-12 minutes in. Jarrett with the guitar. Booker tries to save Sting, but Jarrett nails him and pins him. 2 ¼ and 4/10.

Oh good, a rematch of our # 139 match, because we weren’t tortured enough the first time. I hope this is a straight up wrestling match, though I have a feeling it’s gonna involve run-ins and ref bumps.

Christ, David Flair is the ref. I knew they’d have some lame booking catch . Jarrett and Flair go heavy at first, but it turns quickly into outside brawling. Less than a MINUTE in Russo brings down the ramp Beth and Reid Flair with security, and they comment that these two are like prisoners of Russo. This match is so bad that my DVD player is having trouble playing the disk, and I’m missing parts of the lazy walk around brawl.

Well,mercifully the DVD player wasn’t playing that match, and frankly, it wasn’t getting anymore than 2 stars outta me. So lets just cut to the chase. Flair drops the title and I’m apathetic. 2 and 4/10.

Right away I’m not sure how I feel about this because Vince Russo is coming out wearing Ric Flair’s robe to horribly fake “Iron Man” rip off music. David Flair (was he forever against his dad once he started wrestling?) and Daffney are out. This was before Daffney was really sexy. She was just cute. Good enough. The worst thing about this: Russo on commentary. Oh, and the match is against Jeff Jarrett.

Flair doesn’t even bother to wear ring gear, and Jarrett is in his obnoxious Russo-influence Slapnuts phase. Anyway, Flair beats the guy from pillar to post, catching him on the ramp and brawling with him all around the ring and into it. Flair looks smaller than I’ve seen him in years. Perhaps he’s clean here. Jarrett looks decent here taking a beating, but he’s never been someone I enjoyed in the ring past a few Memphis matches. Jeff cheats, uses chairs, and he gets a control segment. This match is a lot of short cut brawling, though I guess it’s feud appropriate. Jarrett puts him in the Figure Four and the crowd gets behind Flair with claps, but the noise is in and out. I’m having trouble liking this match, obviously. I think Flair vs Vince McMahon at the ’02 Royal Rumble was a better lay out of the same style of brawling match. I’m I saying McMahon was a better worker than Jarrett? I won’t go that far.

Russo and David Flair are killing this on commentary with their one dimensional heeling attempts. David: “He’s not my dad, he was never there for me.” Russo:”I’m from NYC (and obviously thinks he’s Andy Kaufman with less depth)”. Flair runs through about two signature spots, it’s 50-50, and then he gets a small package for the win in six minutes. Flair wins the world title and Jeff Jarrett has to use the guitar, so the ref takes the shot. A-Boo. 2 and 4/10.

Jokes aside, the goofy Freddy stuff is both embarrassing and surprisingly okay. Tommy Gilbert under the mask throws great punches and walks the line between goofy and good work. I can not believe he was a babyface though.

A lot of the focus of this drawn out match is the crowd heat on manager Ronnie Gossett, and everyone waiting for him to get in the ring to get beaten up. They milk that one forever, and they milk most of the match w/ pauses and heels stooging. A good time but I got bored because I personally don’t care about Gossett. That probably unfair, but it’s my journey/ballot through 80s Memphis, and this story didn’t quite capture me.

Ending is just everyone brawling and I unfortunately could not figure out who won or lost. 2 ¼ and 4/10.

Memphis has gotten a little low rent at this point. The studio show has a banner on the ring apron for a local car dealership. I always liked the small town feel of Memphis, but the local corporate sponsorship just has me bummed. Oh well, let’s just talk about the wrestling.

Mantell makes Jarrett look like a million bucks in the early going. He’s bumping and feeding him, powdering out and everything. Jeff Jarrett is a perfect young plucky babyface by this point, and he’s absolutely improved from just a year before.

Mantell gets the heat on him and Jarrett draws the right kind of sympathy. Dutch hits him with the best short arm clothesline I’ve seen in forever. Everything is decent, but I don’t want to make it sound like this is Mid South Coliseum material. It’s above average TV show work.

Good near falls with the story that Jarrett just won’t stay down. Dutch starts cheating because he can’t win. He’s good at showing frustration. I’m very sad that these two are 2/3 of the TNA creative team and they can actually have a very good match. What happened?

There’s a ref bump. Jarrett gets a visual pin, but then Mantell kills him for it. Jarrett starts selling the knee, but it’s a trick. Fun DQ ending where Mantell tries to use the bull whip and Jarrett ends up nailing him with a chair. Good solid stuff at under 8 minutes. 2 ¾ and 6/10.

Wrestling is performance art at its core. This takes that to another level as they perform thing match on a stage with a symphony orchestra in front of a crowd. The wrestling is decent to solid. Nothing to fancy. The fundamentals are there, as is the struggle, and these two know their stuff. A big disappointment for me was that while the setting has its limits, it also has a chance to be profound in this bizarre bubble. I mean, if the music had been worked out to fit the scripting of the match this would have had a heightened sense of drama. As it came out they probably kayfabed the conductor, and the music doesn’t match up. It’s as experimental as the match. As an artsy geek at heart, I have to give this a match better than average rating for how ballsy the experiment was. I just wish the experiment had had better results. 3 and 6.2/10.

This doesn’t give me cause to write much. It was an okay match. Classic southern booking and lay out. Nothing wrong with that. Also nothing really to write home about. These AWA tapings in Memphis without Lance Russell on commentary leave me feeling like I’m seeing something synthetic that has no real value taken out of it once it ends. For that reason I’ll say little more than thumbs in the middle. 2 ½ and 5/10.