The Furious Flashbacks – UWF The Main Event

Finally a UWF DVD actually lives up to the title it has. I assumed those were awarded at random

Yes, it’s another crappy UWF DVD! Thanks, Herb Abrams! They have the temerity to run a “wrestling the way it used to be” promo with Herb Abrams promising to “bring wrestling back to the glory days” during it. What a fucking crock of horseshit. Black & white home video footage of Bruno Sammartino mixed with bad wrestling from 1991 doesn’t make me think “wow, this company has bridged the past with a new era!” It makes me think; this company sucks.

We’re in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Hosts are Craig DeGeorge & John Tolos, which means they can’t even afford Bruno Sammartino anymore. The team of DeGeorge & Tolos is terrible.

PROMO TIME – Colonel Red rants about refusing to interview Jimmy Valiant. That was from the first shitty UWF DVD! Herb Abrams threatens to fire him. Who’d answer to Herb Abrams? He looks like the product of a monkey and a rat. This is a repeat of the first DVD and the terrible Valiant-Koloff main event from that show. They actually run over 8 minutes of replays from the first DVD. They must have been really proud of that particular angle. We cut to a plug of Orton v Orndorff, which is tonight’s main event. To build up this match we get clips from the last time they wrestled. Only it’s not clips. It’s a huge chunk of the match. Most of which is Bob Orton stalling. Orton eventually, when he’s done complaining of a bad back, goes to the throat then the arm. The clip finishes with Orton getting thrown over the top. What the fuck? What’s the point of that? They clip to another match between the two from Fort Lauderdale. As if the place makes any difference. Orton works an armbar for about three minutes. This is the highlights of the match remember. We’re already 15 minutes into the show with no new footage. It beggars belief that anyone would be stupid enough to release a DVD of such poor quality. If the WWE put stuff this bad on one TV show people would be forecasting the date they’d go out of business. Anyway, Orton & Orndorff continue to brawl around on the floor with Orton aiming for a count out win. Orton with another armbar. This time for four minutes and that’s where the clip ends. WHAT. THE. FUCK?

UWF Southern States title – Bob Orton (c) v Paul Orndorff

Finally we get to the actual match after 20 minutes of clips from their two previous encounters along with all that Herb Abrams bullshit at the top of the show. Crowd for this show is about 150 people. Maybe 200. It makes UWF look bush league. Orton comes out acting like a babyface and slapping hands. The joke here is the way the DVD’s are edited to make it look like Orton had this title for about a year despite the UWF creating the title in order for Orndorff to beat Orton for the first big title change on the Fury Hour. Shame the crowd has already tuned out and left the company. Well, I say shame but I don’t actually care. I don’t think Herb would have created anything special if the crowd had stuck with him. Smoky Mountain Wrestling benefited from gaining the likes of Orndorff when they walked out on the promotion as it was dying. After about three minutes of rest holds someone in the crowd starts chanting “boring” on his own. They’re not exactly holding the audience in the palms of their hands here. Tolos shouting “what a move, what a move” on a roll up is pretty irritating but at least they’ve stopped pumping in the crowd reactions. They work the mat effectively with Orndorff attempting to ride Orton who runs him out of the ring. Tolos rambles about all the wrestling holds he knows and therefore all the holds these two wrestlers know. Listing moves just makes a commentator sound like an idiot. Just sayin’ John. That “boring” guy is back again. Orndorff works at the leg. His leglock is countered and they roll into the ropes. “Boring”. C’mon man! Give them a chance. I fucking hate fans like that. They’ve done some strong mat wrestling here. You don’t go to see Orton-Orndorff and expect quebradas and suicide dives and if you do then you’re an idiot. But then you paid to see a promotion run by Herb Abrams. You already lose. Before someone tries to point out the irony of me paying to see these on DVD they were freebies. Orton heads outside for a breather. If I didn’t know better I’d suggest this match would be a broadway with the show ending without a winner. Orndorff cheap shots Orton after holding the ropes for him and then jabs him in the eye with a Dixie Cup. UWF even has lame weapons. Orndorff with the big second rope elbow for 2. That’s the closest to a pin so far. Crowd isn’t so much divided as apathetic. Orndorff bites Orton giving the clearest indication so far of who is heel. UWF had real issues with their heel/face alignments. Often you can’t tell who’s a heel until the finish of the given match. Orndorff chokes away with the tag rope. I guess he’s going to the Hulk Hogan Babyface School. Orndorff is relentless and runs Orton into the ring post before choking him with the camera cables. Orton is bleeding from the nose. Orndorff stops to invite a fat guy into the ring in a pink and yellow shirt. The fat guy gets so excited he tries to jump the rail…but he’s too fat to do so. Orton is given recovery time and lays Orndorff out. So he IS the babyface. I’m glad we got that cleared up. Orndorff begs off so Orton bites him. So why has Orton been a heel on pretty much every other DVD he’s appeared on? There’s no character building or continuity or anything. Orton runs Orndorff into the ring post as a receipt for earlier. Orton with a reverse Russian sickle for 2. Orndorff’s ring positioning allows him to get the rope rather than waste energy kicking out. Orton tries to come off the top, which has bad idea written all over it and indeed Orndorff gets his feet up. Orndorff uses his superior ring positioning again by dragging Orton into the ring post. Orton gets knees up on a charge though and I don’t hear anyone shouting “boring” now. Orton looks for his superplex finisher but Orndorff pulls out brass knucks and bashes Orton with them. Orndorff handily poses for long enough with the knucks so the camera picks it up BUT the ref, dealing with Orton, doesn’t. Orton backdrops out of the piledriver but Orndorff rolls through it into a sunset flip at 21.52 for the title belt. ***1/4. Hey, they DID have a good match! Knowing the UWF it’s probably the only one but at least they got it on DVD. It’s confusing that prior to this match Orndorff was always babyface and Orton was always heel. Then they switched them around and the lack of commentating bias combined with the crowd’s apathy made it hard to distinguish who was supposed to be what. It wasn’t until Orndorff tried to attack that fat guy that I realised what was happening.

UWF SPECIAL REPORT – On… a bloody Herb Abrams ranting about Colonel Red. Well, if you’re going to go out then go out plugging a match that no one will ever see.