[1992-10-24-SMW-TV] Tracy Smothers feature

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Tracy Smothers shows up. He explains why he was a Young Pistol in WCW, and also has one of my favorite lines ever: "I never been to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and I don't reckon I'll ever go."

[Matt D]

I can't even begin to tell you how much I loathe this interview.

 

"Things got right out of hand thar. I'm mighty sorry for being so goldurned awesome in WCW at the end. hayuck."

[Loss]

I will give them credit with both Smothers and Morton for trying to explain why they were heel instead of just having them show up and pretend it never happened.

[Matt D]

I think it's an effective promo. It just goes against my personal sensibilities and love of heel Young Pistol Tracy.

[Cox]

If I ever won a ridiculous amount of money in the lottery, I will run an indy show in Cheyenne, Wyoming and pay any price to bring in Tracy Smothers as a "hometown" babyface just to prove this segment wrong.

[Tim Evans]

Yeah I like this promo with Smothers proving to be the ultimate southern boy. I don't think they ever did this for Steve Armstrong though.

[shoe]

A good intro to get Smother's over and explain why he was a heel on National t.v.

[El-P]

I thought it was the perfect interview for Tracy, and I love the continuity that Cornette showed with his product. Instead of bringing Smothers as a face like WCW just never happened not only it gets referenced by also gets a logical explanation. I'm really enjoy this, and Tracy sounded really genuine. Good stuff.

[Kevin Ridge]

It feels like they are putting too much effort into trying to explain Smothers past but I can appreciate them trying to introduce the guy regionally as their new face and acknowledging his past in WCW. Smothers does a good job of trying to explain his past faults and who he really is.

[PeteF3]

Tracey laments the corporate, non-wrestling people at Turner who wanted the Southern Boys to drop the non-flashy redneck gear in favor of shiny cowboy gear. This rambles a bit, but it's an effective way of hitting the reset button on Smothers' heel turn.

[WingedEagle]

Smothers talks about a big contract in WCW, then the corporate execs telling their team to be less redneck. Says theyre're not pistols from Cheyenne, WY. Bob Armstrong brought him to SMW. American by birth, Southern by the grace of god.

[GSR]

Smothers says that for the past two and a half years he's competed in WCW and we all know for the past year and a half which side of the fence he's sat on. When he first came in to WCW he was one half of the Wild Eyed Southern Boys and signed a contract for money than he had ever seen in his life. Things were going great, but after about a year the corporate people approached them and said we don't really want the redneck country boy style and we would like you to change your name and brighten up your outfit. It was as if they didn't like that we were from the South and represented the South, they even wanted to change where we were from to Cheyenne, WY. We did that and changed out name to the Young Pistols, they then started to send us to these towns up North but they just didn't take to us. Then we would come back down South and they couldn't understand why they were calling us the Young Pistols and that we weren't the Wild Eyed Southern Boys, they felt we'd abandoned them. We soon started to get these bad vibes off folk and eventually began hollering back at them, we forgot where we came from and changed everything about us. One day Bullet Bob Armstrong called him up and said you're like a fifth son to me but you're heading down the wrong road, everything might look good now, but when that changes see how many people you've got standing by you. Well now he's on his own and started to see that he wasn't being true to himself, his family or his friends so he left that situation as no amount of money in the world was worth it. Now he's in SMW and is going to do the best to show everyone that he wasn't raised to be the type of person you've seen for the past year and a half.

 

Good interview and I like the continuity in how they are trying to explain why he was a heel in WCW, as opposed to just bringing him into SMW as a top face. Felt it dragged slightly and he could have probably cut some of the interview out, but all in all good stuff.

[garretta]

They needed to do this because everyone in the SMW area had seen Tracy and Steve (who wasn't mentioned, by the way) turn into the Young Pistols. If Corny wanted to use him as a top face, a thorough explanation and mea culpa was in order, and Tracy delivered. The only place he'd be a heel after this interview was Cheyenne, Wyoming, which was just out of SMW's footprint.

 

I liked him bringing Bullet Bob into this as well; the commissioner was SMW's top face almost by default, and getting the rub from him was important. He was most likely singing Corny's tune a bit when he talked about the corporate suits in WCW, but the Young Pistols never impressed me much; I could tell just how legitimately uncomfortable Tracy and Steve were in that gimmick.

 

In one interview, Tracy has supplanted Horner as SMW's number one wrestling babyface. I know he gets into the ring with Anothiny soon, and I recall enjoying their matches very much on Will's SMW set. I sure hope they hold up on a second viewing!