Aired October 8, 1990Reseda Country Club, Reseda, California
Recorded at the Universal Wrestling Federation's first set of TV tapings on September 24, 1990, UWF Fury Hour aired a few weeks later as part of SportsChannel's Feet, Fists, and Fury programming.
This week, Herb Abrams continued his cheap jab at Dave Meltzer, B. Brian Blair continued to sell T-shirts like his life depended on it, and Cactus Jack continued to be the best thing on the show.
Elsewhere, we'd see Col. DeBeers taking the show down an unnecessarily racist path in his main event clash with Billy Jack Haynes.
Speaking of Haynes, I mentioned last week that I wrote these first few UWF reviews long before he was charged for second-degree murder. I also said I wasn't going to edit my original comments about Haynes. That's more relevant for this episode than it was last week's.
You'll see what I mean once we get into it.
Fury Hour is On the Air!
The second episode of UWF Fury Hour began just like the first:
A growling welcome over the UWF logo, shots of the LA faithful, and a rundown of the card by one of the worst announcing duos in the history of pro wrestling, Bruno Sammartino & Herb Abrams.
Look, I hate to speak ill of a legend like Sammartino, but the commentary was clearly not his forte.
On last week’s episode, he spoke in an almost entirely monotone voice all the way through, only changing his inflection at all when his son David was mentioned.
Meanwhile, Abrams' habit of exclaiming ‘WOW!’ whenever something mildly interesting even looked like it might happen had gotten old fast last week, but no doubt we were in for more of the same tonight.
Maybe that’s why he was voted Worst Wrestling Announcer two years running by the Wrestling Observer.
Or perhaps this was the reason:
Cactus Jack vs. Davey Meltzer
Yep, Abram’s bizarre jab at dirt sheet writer David Meltzer continued, with his namesake jobber getting the same treatment from Cactus Jack as he had from Dr. Death Steve Williams the week earlier.
In other words, Cactus destroyed him instantly, could’ve beaten him inside a minute, but toyed with him for four or five before giving us the first Cactus Jack Elbow off the Apron on UWF TV.
After rolling Meltzer back in the ring and covering him, Cactus was victorious.
Your Winner: Cactus Jack
After a commercial break, it was back to the action.
Scott Cole vs. Dangerous Dan Spivey
Spivey made light work of Scott Cole, a man about whom nothing seems to exist on the Internet outside of mentions of this match.
Seriously, was this it for Cole? His one and only wrestling match?
If you’re out there Scott, get in touch and let me know what happened to you!
Anyway, Cole lost as expected. The match was fine.
Your Winner: Dan Spivey
Up next, Mr. Wonderful
The Black Knight vs. Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff
Sammartino claimed that he didn’t know much about The Black Knight, which, as we learned last week, was code for “this dude’s a jobber and thus not worth knowing about.”
If only the Internet had been around back then. Bruno could have done his research and found out that The Black Knight was Big Bill Anderson, who appeared multiple times for the WWF as an enhancement talent and had his longest run as Mercenario II in FMW back in the early 1990s.
Of course, Knight was just there as a warm body for Mr. Wonderful to throw around until he was ready to piledrive his way to victory.
Paul looked great here, which I suppose means the squash match achieved its purpose.
Your Winner: Paul Orndorff
Side note: Shouldn't a wrestler called The Black Knight be wearing a black mask rather than a red one?
Promo Party 1
Next, B. Brian Blair wanted us to buy some UWF t-shirts and caps before Captain Lou Albano told us to watch UWF wrestling, which is precisely what we were doing anyway.
The show then ran the exact same Billy Jack Haynes promo as the previous week.
Haynes boasted about being in the best shape of his life and coming to the UWF after wrestling all over the world.
Then he said something I’ve listened to six times now and still don’t understand:
“I still love ya little kid, but Billy Jack Haynes came here to win."
Maybe you’re thinking that it only doesn’t make sense because it’s out of context, so here’s the promo transcribed in full:
“You know, I’m in the best shape of my life right now, and I’ve gotta be.
“I’ve wrestled all over the world, all over the globe, and now I’ve come
To the UWF, the Universal Wrestling Federation.
“I still love ya little kid, but Billy Jack Haynes goes in that ring to win. And I know the toughest completion is here, in the UWF, so no matter what goes down, the full Nelson is ready and I come in that ring to do one thing, to fight, and to win.”
I’m still bothered by the inexplicably random “I still love ya little kid,” line.
What little kid?
Who are you talking to?
Anyway, if you haven’t bought a UWF baseball cap yet, B. Brian Blair was going to wear you down until you did because here he was again with the same merch commercial we’d just seen a minute or two back.
Blimey.
Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Larry Ludden
Up next, Steve Williams gleefully murdered enhancement talent Larry Ludden in another squash.
So far, we’re a little under halfway through a show that has no storyline progression or character work or anything, just multiple squashes interspersed with another message from B. Brian Blair: Cap Salesman of the Year.
Your Winner: Steve Williams
After a break and a quick post-break boast that the Universal Wrestling Federation was the “ultimate in sports entertainment,” Colonel. DeBeers wanted to talk to us about respect.
Respect for whom?
Himself, of course, and South Africa.
In a promo that I doubt would fly today, DeBeers called future Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela a terrorist, ranted about Americans being terrible, and promised to beat Billy ‘Jerk’ Haynes.
Debeers then signed off by saying something about Haynes being the commander of the little people, so maybe that’s what Billy was talking about earlier.
Before we could see that match, however, Bruno’s boy was back in action.
David Sammartino vs. Houdini
David Sammartino looked reasonably impressive here as he quickly disposed of his opponent, taking him down in a short but well-performed display of technical wrestling before locking in a figure four that Houdini ironically couldn’t escape from.
Your Winner: David Sammartino
Next, we went to Captain Lou’s corner for an interview with Dan Spivey.
After a lot of talk about seemingly nothing, Spivey was asked why he attacked Brian Blair at a press conference ages ago.
His answer?
Because Blair ran his mouth too much.
Or because Spivey felt like it.
Or both.
I don’t know, this promo wasn’t very clear.
Fortunately, Big Dan would have a chance to redeem himself as, after yet another merch commercial, he was back for a second promo, albeit without Captain Lou.
This time, Spivey told us to watch him compete in the UWF on the SportsChannel; which, as I said earlier, is exactly what we were doing in the first place.
Chief Jay Strongbow is Here
For the first time on this week’s show, we met a star we hadn’t already seen the previous week, Chief Jay Strongbow.
Strongbow was glad to be “back in the territory” even though this was a new company that he hadn’t wrestled for before.
He also wanted us all to do the war dance all over the country and ended with the line “I’m ready, please come out and support me.’
That may be the sweetest ending to a promo I've ever heard.
Guess what we saw next?
Another B. Brian Blair merchandise commercial. I wouldn’t mind if they did different commercials, but it was the same “CHECK OUT THESE HATS!” one over and over again.
Even Abrams joked about it.
“Here comes B. Brian Blair,” he said. “He just sold two hundred t-shirts and now he’s on his way to the ring.”
I laughed way too much at that.
B. Brian Blair vs. Spitball Patterson
Blair didn’t get too far into his match before Dan Spivey sauntered to the ring, where the announcers took a good few minutes to even acknowledge him.
The crowds certainly acknowledged him, breaking out in a chant of “Spivey! Spivey!”
Since Dan was supposed to be a heel here, the announcers dismissed the chant as the fans' attempt to annoy him.
If that’s what it was, it didn’t work and only went to prove that Dan was very similar to his Skyscrapers partner, Sid Vicious, in that no matter how much or a heel he was supposed to be, people still loved him.
In the end, Blair rammed Spitball Patterson’s face into the mat and finished him off with a scorpion death lock that Abrams mistook for a Boston crab.
Your Winner: B. Brian Blair
Post-match, Spivey predictability beat up Blair and then stormed off while Sammartino begged the referee to do more.
Finally, it was time for our main event;
Col. Debeers vs. Billy Jack Haynes
Before the match could get underway, Debeers, whose whole gimmick was based on the race relation problems in South Africa, insisted that he had a problem with Larry Sampson, the young black man assigned as the official.
There was nothing subtle about this either.
Debeers grabbed the microphone from the ring announcer and proclaimed:
“That’s a black man! I will not have my matches refereed by a black man!”
Ouch.
Basing your gimmick on political events is one thing, and I get that Debeers was going for heel heat here, but there are ways to do that without blatant racism.
The referee was replaced by Jesse Hernandez while Abrams told us how unacceptable this whole thing was.
Yeah, it really was.
At that point, Billy Jack Haynes made his way to the ring, grabbed a microphone, and petitioned for Larry to be reinstated. The crowd were fully behind him with their own chant of “We want Larry!,” but it was no use, DeBeers attacked and the match was on.
Not that it was anything to write home about.
A basic, by-the-numbers heel-versus-face match, this one ended with the exact same “these guys hate each other so much that they’re going to brawl to the outside and get counted out” finish that we’d seen in last week’s main event.
Double Countout
After our final commercial break, Dr. Death Steve Williams cut a lively promo against his rival Paul Orndorff.
As the show came to a close, Abrams promised that we’d see the two compete in next week’s main event.
Don’t be too surprised if that ends in a count out too!
The previous week’s episode hadn’t been amazing, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt due to the whole thing being new and storylines needing to be set up.
This week, however, the cracks were already starting to show.
UWF Fury Hour Episode 2 was a boring 60 minutes of television with an unnecessary racism angle and the same main event finish as the previous week, showing that Abrams was already running out of ideas before this thing even got off the ground.
As with the previous week, Cactus Jack was the most entertaining wrestler on the card, managing the impressive task of wrestling a jobber and making the whole thing a blast to watch.
Join me next time for more Fury Hour!
Other UWF Fury Hour Reviews:
Other 1990 pro wrestling reviews:
- WWF Royal Rumble 1990
- WCW Clash of the Champions X: Texas Shoot Out
- WCW Wrestlewar 1990
- WWF Wrestlemania XI
- WCW Capital Combat 1990
- WCW Clash of the Champions XI - Costal Crush
- WCW The Great American Bash 1990
- WWF Summerslam 1990
- WCW Clash of the Champions XII - Fall Brawl '90: Mountain Madness
- WCW Clash of the Champions XIII - Thanksgiving Thunder
- WWF Survivor Series 1990
- WCW Starrcade 1990
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