The greatest matchup in US wrestling history produces yet again. We're all absolutely stunned, I'm sure. I remember when this was unearthed and a bunch of us on PWO did a bulk buy of the Memphis TV discs, eager one and all for a brand new Lawler v Dundee match, unedited and in pristine quality. How it's taken me over 10 years to watch the thing I'm not sure, but either way it was worth the wait.
This iteration of the Lawler/Dundee feud - and there have been many of them - is my favourite. The build up from the October angle on TV to the first blowoff a week after this is just magic pro wrestling, then they keep Lawler off TV for three months and he comes back with a vengeance for the full blowoff later in the year. I watched that whole October angle the other night and no joke, it might be the best bit of TV wrestling ever produced. Dundee had only been back in the territory for a minute, having spent the last couple years in Mid-South. He'd been teaming with Lawler since returning and on this particular episode he was fired up to the moon and back. He had it that he and Lawler were the best tag team in the country, then the Fabs objected on account of them having the title belts that would say otherwise. Dundee wasn't ENTIRELY a dick about it, but he figured it might be worth having a match then and there to see who was right. Lawler tried to diffuse the situation and ceded that the Fabs technically do have a point. They're the tag champs so they'd have the best claim to being the #1 tag team...just like he'd have the best claim as #1 singles wrestler, on account of him having the southern heavyweight title. You know, if he or anyone else wanted to make that claim. Obviously that didn't diffuse shit and Dundee intimated that Lawler was maybe dodging a match with the Fabs because he was a little scared. "If you're scared all you need to do is say it." Lawler was ready to be done with their short-lived team then and there, so Dundee swung at him, then swung and Keirn and Lane, then hightailed it. Later on the show Dundee goads Lawler into defending the southern title there on TV, then uses a chain to beat him and win the thing, then refuses to sign on for Lawler's rematch. Dundee cites that he doesn't need to defend the belt for 30 days, and it just so happens that the world champion is coming to town in *29* days to wrestle the southern champion...who now happens to be him. So Dundee won't just give Lawler a title shot in a month, he'll hand the belt to Lawler personally, since he'll have his hands full with the world title. Dundee was incredible through all of this, just the most obnoxious annoying little prick imaginable, and Lawler finally getting Dundee to agree to a title shot by threatening his car with a ball bat was doubly great. Of course Lance was absolutely perfect holding everything together, the best straight man in the history of the game.
And then eventually we come to this. Dundee had lost the belt to Koko at some point (which led to Koko v Flair in November) and then evidently won it back later, because now it's Dundee's southern title on the line against Lawler and his wife Paula's hair. Dundee was a terror here, possibly even more so than a week later where he spent about 60% of the match punching Lawler in his partially blinded eye. Lawler wasn't blinded at this point but Dundee took even more of the match. This was like 90% Dundee; by far the most I've seen him take against the King. Luckily Bill Dundee beating the brakes off someone works a treat and just about everything he did here looked amazing. Obviously the punches were spectacular, but there were little vicious moments on top of the punches that elevated this to another level. At one point he hit a running double stomp that looked fucking brutal, and then later he hit one off the middle rope that I thought ruptured Lawler's spleen. Anything Lawler tried in response was promptly shut down and once or twice Dundee did it by doing the exact same thing Lawler had originally tried, only better and with more venom behind it. Lawler goes for an armbar early in the match and Dundee immediately reverses it into a hammerlock, then gets Lawler on the mat and repeatedly stomps on the arm. Lawler finds himself standing on the apron after Dundee had chucked him over the ropes a minute earlier, so Dundee just runs over and bounces him off, Lawler flying into the announce desk and ringing the bell with his forehead. Dundee tries to choke the life out of Lawler with the security rope, throws him sternum-first into the stanchions that hold those security ropes in place, then picks one of them up and smashes it into Lawler's kidneys. Dundee even takes a second to climb the turnbuckles and do his little jig on the top rope, then as Lawler climbs back in the ring Dundee walks along the top rope like a trapeze artist before dropping down and clobbering Lawler yet again. While Lawler was woozy on the mat Dundee even took the opportunity to stomp on his fingers. Every chance he had to inflict some sort of punishment he took it.
With Dundee taking so much of the match on offence it naturally meant Lawler spent the majority of it selling and bumping and absorbing all of that offence. If it wasn't for his performance a week later it might've been my favourite Lawler on the back foot performance ever. He was getting rocked from word one, selling the beatdown even in those fleeting moments where he was able to mount something resembling a comeback. When he hit the piledriver he couldn't even capitalise, had to take a beat just to gather himself before covering, and by then Dundee had recovered. It was practically Lawler's first serious offence in the whole match so it made sense that Dundee wouldn't stay down for long, and shortly after that Dundee was back to cleaning his clock. The way they flipped the big Lawler comeback was amazing and maybe the best part of the match. Lawler had gotten next to nothing so when he whips down the strap you think things are going a different route. But then Dundee fucking drills him with a haymaker and Lawler's right back on the canvas. He wrestles about half the match with the strap down getting pummelled. When he tries his next big comeback towards the end, strap already down, Dundee reverses it again and dumps him over the top rope.
I guess I could go either way on the finish, but taken in context, given what they were building to a week later, I think it works. Dundee had taken multiple swipes at referee Jerry Calhoun throughout the match and Calhoun had taken his licks like a trooper. When Lawler finally builds up some proper steam Dundee tries to get ahead of it, pulling a chain out of his trunks, knowing that even a little momentum for Lawler could go from snowball to avalanche. He comes flying out the corner to hit Lawler, but Calhoun grabs the arm mid-punch and that allows Lawler to roll Dundee up for the 3. I guess it was a banana peel, but at least there was a nice bit of comeuppance leading to it. It's about as close to payback as you'll get for a referee without going full Gene Kiniski. And if they were to use it to set up an even better match a week later, well, who am I to argue?
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