By Scott Bowden
February 26, 2004
Monday night rasslin’
As the WWF and WCW battled for Monday ratings supremacy in 1996, Scott Bowden returned to Memphis for the final card at the Mid-South Coliseum
While the Monday Night War was heating up in June 1996, with the WWF and WCW trading high spots with each other on the USA Network and TNT, respectively, the Memphis-based USWA product was still barely simmering on channel 5, the local NBC affiliate. I had left the promotion for the third time months earlier, once again burnt out on the glamorous wrestling lifestyle, which, for me, mainly consisted of $40 payoffs for 16-hour roundtrips to Louisville, Kentucky, and back. (The outdated, recycled ideas — and I use the term “ideas” loosely — of booker Randy Hales hadn’t helped matters either.)
The rub about professional wrestling, however, is that once the business gets in your blood, it’s hard to get it out — no matter how many times you slice open your forehead with a razorblade. After Hales refused to take me back, I did what I always did when I wanted to go over his figurehead: I called Jerry Lawler. In a babyface-like sincere moment with the King, I blurted out, “I mean, Jerry, c’mon, I love the business so much that I’d work for free.”
A few days later, Lawler called me back: “Were you serious about what you said about wanting to come back?” After I assured him that I was, Lawler reminded me of what I had said: “And you’ll work for free, right?” Um, what? Never missing a trick, Lawler reminded me of my passion-induced plea for reinstatement. Sensing that I was wavering on this generous offer, Lawler dropped the strap and went into babyface mode himself, despite the fact that he had recently started again working as a heel for the promotion: “You’d be doing me a favor — we can’t afford to pay a manager anymore. And I don’t want you to just come back as a manager. I really want you to be my manager.” Oh, man. A chance to recreate the glory days of Jimmy Hart’s first managerial gig and conduct heel promos alongside one of the greatest interviews ever in the business. Lawler sweetened the proverbial payoff: He wanted me to debut the following Saturday, just in time to work an angle promoting what was supposed to be the very last card at the Mid-South Coliseum. Years ago, I would have paid Lawler for this opportunity. I agreed.
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According to the WWE’s recently released MONDAY NIGHT WAR DVD, Gene Okerlund was getting increasingly frustrated toward the end of his WCW run, as Eric Bischoff wouldn’t have a TV outline completed until minutes before NITRO was to go live on the air. In Memphis in 1996, 10 minutes would be considered advance planning. So I was shocked when Lawler wanted to go over the scenario for my Saturday introduction as his manager days in advance. The promotion hadn’t been able to reach an agreement with Beth Wade, the-then manager of the Mid-South Coliseum, to affordably remain a tenant — the infamous Monday Night Rasslin’ shows would be no more.
To promote the Last Blast at the Coliseum, Lawler wanted to book announcer Lance Russell to be directly involved in a bout for the very first time. Past run-ins with Lance had been booked only sparingly, usually to great effect. The Dream Machine (the late Troy Graham) grabbed Lance by his Baxter Suit lapels after the announcer aired a highlight reel of the Dream set to the song ALLEY OOP. A few years later, Jimmy Hart dumped a bag of flour over Lance’s head in the Mouth of the South’s last appearance in the studio. Around 1986, after Tojo Yamamoto and his team of Akio Sato and Tarzan Goto were running roughshod in the WMC-TV studio, Lance threatened to go after the evil manager with a hammer. But this was to be the first time Lance would be in someone’s corner — in this case a hooded Wolfie D (Cyber Punk Fire) — to get revenge on his antagonist (me) in the main event. The Punk’s mask was on the line, and if he was revealed to be Wolfie, who I had run out of town months before, he’d be suspended indefinitely. (Not exactly the drama of a WWF title match, but….)
Side-Note Slam: Sure, the WWF had guys like Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, the Undertaker and Bret Hart to counter WCW’s Hulk Hogan, Sting and Ric Flair in 1996, but Memphis had the man who would develop into the most electrifying personality in the history of sports entertainment. Lawler, Wolfie D, Russell and I worked the main event at the Last Blast. On the same card, the Rock (working as Flex Kavana) was in the opening match, a tag bout with partner Bart Sawyer. I’d say the Rock’s come a long way since then.
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Though perhaps not as threatening as the Dream’s attack on Russell years earlier, I antagonized the announcer throughout the show, interrupting his opening segment. (“You’re gonna have a Last Blast at the Coliseum without Scott Bowden? I nearly jumped out of my Cole Haan shoes when I heard that!”) Later, Russell was disgusted as Lawler introduced me as his new manager, prompting me to tell him to “keep his big nose out of it.” Minutes later, Lance was preparing to show highlights of a classic encounter at the Coliseum in the 1970s: The Mongolian Stomper (Archie Gouldie) vs. a young Lawler. I pushed him aside, grabbed the microphone and introduced the clip as “one of Lawler’s greatest victories.” Of course, the match ended with Lawler getting pinned, making me go ballistic. After I got in his face again, Lance was so teed off that threatened to come after me with a golf club Monday night.
On that Monday night, June 24, 1996, wrestling fans nationwide tuned in for the next battle in the Monday Night War, which featured decidedly more intriguing main events than the USWA could hope to offer at that point. While hundreds of thousands of people saw the Undertaker beat Steve Austin by DQ on RAW and the Harlem Heat win the WCW World tag titles in a three-way bout over Sting/Lex Luger and the Steiner Brothers on NITRO, about 1,200 hardcore regulars trickled into the 11,500-seat Coliseum for seemingly the last time. Although I carried my entire bag of PING golf clubs to the ring to defend myself against Russell’s threat to use my head as a Titleist, he still gets the better of me, chasing me from the ringside area with his 3-wood in the match’s waning moments. As the ref is distracted, Lawler cheats to get the pin. However, the hooded Wolfie D is one step ahead of Lawler: He does unmask but has another mask underneath to conceal his true identity. Whew — the marks can leave the Coliseum happy.
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With the Coliseum no longer a viable option, the once-proud Memphis promotion was relegated to the Big One Expo Center, a flea-market building that made the Coliseum look like Toronto’s Sky Dome.
At one point in the MONDAY NIGHT WAR DVD, Vince McMahon, portraying the classic babyface, admits he was initially hurt by Eric Bischoff’s and Ted Turner’s heel tactics of placing NITRO in direct competition with RAW and signing away his top talent. After all, he says, competition should be “about helping yourself; not hurting the other guy.” That’s rich coming from the man who helped run hundreds of people out of the business to begin with in the mid-’80s.
Memphis wrestling is now back on the air in some form on UPN after a hiatus, producing the occasional big show at the Coliseum once. Really, though, the promotion was never quite the same after that move to the Big One. And it was on its last legs to begin with in 1996 after withstanding McMahon’s initial invasion and establishing a base of minimal survival years earlier.
There’s talk that the Mid-South Coliseum might be demolished in the next couple of years. I remember I heard the arena referred to once as “the Grandfather of Wrestling in the South.” How appropriate. If it’s torn down, it will seem like a death in the family for many Memphis wrestling fans.
