[1990-09-29-USWA-Memphis TV] Jerry Lawler, Bill Dundee & Jeff Jarrett and Eddie Gilbert

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Lawler, Jarrett and Dundee are out for an interview. The three of them - and Eddie Gilbert - are going to be in a round-robin tournament on Monday night where they all have to face each other. Fun lineup! The winner of the round robin tournament gets a first-round bye in the USWA title tournament the week after. There's a little friendly dissension between the babyfaces. They all do a great job of hyping this and announce all of the names that will be participating in the USWA title tournament. Gilbert doesn't really get time to talk until the very end of this, but gets great heat.

[PeteF3]

I like how Dundee doesn't dance around his past history with Lawler, bringing up the Bill & Buddy run as it relates to both Lawler and Jarrett. Lawler recites his Unified title/company-champions spiel and recites the list of participants, which is quite the who's-who of quality non-Big Two talent. Despite all the trash talk things are kept pretty civil, even with Gilbert. I wonder if the more low-key and downright lighthearted last two weeks was a conscious reaction to the failure of the car angle to draw (in fact attendance went down).

[soup23]

The round robin tournament is a neat idea and builds anticipation for the title tournament. Good promos by all and I loved how they didnt shy away from past histories.

[Kevin Ridge]

Four way round robin between Jarrett, Dundee, Lawler and Gilbert to determine who gets a first round bye for world championship tourney. Nice split screen USWA. Dundee and Lawler give their histories. Jarrett doesn’t really want to talk about the past. The round robin it set up well.

[garretta]

A different type of interview segment here, as Lawler and Dundee each bring up their heel pasts to illustrate what they'll stoop to in order to gain the number one seed in the title tournament. Jarrett can't top that, so he just says that he'll be ready for anything.

 

I like the subtle divisions that are made not only between the three faces, but between the veterans (Lawler and Dundee) and the youngsters (Gilbert and Jarrett). Gilbert and Jarrett each dismiss the past as irrelevant and claim to be the future of Memphis, which is what you'd expect. You get the feeling that Jarrett's not too keen on having to fight either Lawler or Dundee, both of whom are not only his friends, but have been regular partners this year on both sides of the USWA. Lawler and Dundee are long past caring one way or the other, of course, and all three want to feast on Eddie, who only gets a few seconds at the very end, but still manages to make his point.

 

I wish some footage existed of this tournament; it would have been something to see what the three face/face matches were like.

 

It sounds like the winning wrestler has to beat all three of the other guys in succession to win, and that the whole thing resets once someone loses. In other words, the same two guys can wrestle each other multiple times in the same night until one guy wins three straight matches. Interesting way to run a tournament, but a straight round robin would only have six matches, which is kind of short for a card unless all the matches go twenty minutes or longer. Does anyone know if any other matches were booked for that night?