UWF Fury Hour #1 (10.1.90) review 

 

October 1, 1990 (Taped: September 24, 1990) 

 

I’ve seen this before. I watched the first couple of blocks of Fury Hour and, I have to tell you, I don’t think we’re in for a good time here. However, there are 55 episodes, they’re all on YouTube so FUCK IT, we’re doing it. We’re ALL IN, baby. Herb Abrams UWF was a promotion created to compete with the Big Two North American promotions. Seeking to slot into the AWA void and swiftly become the #3 NA promotion.  

 

God bless Herb, he was a mark and a cokehead. A fantastic combination for a promoter. In 1989, Herb’s dad passed away. Abrams Senior had run clothing stores and generally Herb had, to this point, worked in the garment business. Herb had ZERO wrestling experience, but he sure loved the boys. And cocaine. Somehow, he managed to talk SportsChannel into giving him one million dollars (/Dr Evil) to produce a wrestling show for them. He spent the million on cocaine and hookers and slapped together a TV show with what was left over. Failing to pay the venue he taped this show at because he couldn’t snort a venue.  

 

Herb decided he could do it all. He would be the owner, producer, booker and commentator. He was good at none of it. We’re in Reseda, California at the ‘soon to be owed a lot of money’ Reseda Country Club. Hosts are Herb Abrams and Bruno Sammartino. How Herb talked Bruno into doing this is anyone’s guess, but Sammartino was fuming at the fed for booking a bunch of roided up guys. Revenge? I guess.  

 

 

Steve Williams vs. Davey Meltzer 

We start with a rib as the jobber is named after dirtsheet journo Dave Meltzer. “I don’t know much about Meltzer” says Bruno. *WINK*. Doc runs through his stuff and finishes quickly. Meltzer got nothing. Total squash. Neither commentator knows that Doc’s finish is called the Oklahoma Stampede, which is worrying. “Almost like a powerslam” says Bruno. 

 

Cactus Jack vs. David Sammartino 

What a weird matchup this is. Bruno’s motivation for signing up suddenly becomes apparent. This is David’s last shot at impressing the wrestling world. Spoiler: it doesn’t pan out for him. I can only assume Bruno adopted him because there’s no way he’s got Bruno’s genetics.  

 

David tries to work the arm, and Bruno justifies putting rest holds on a TV show that’s an hour long. Your boy is shitting the bed, mate. He’s got no talent. We cut away in mid-match so B. Brian Blair can shill UWF merch. Predictably the merch was horrible. We come back and Cactus is working a chinlock. This is legitimately the most boring Mick Foley match I’ver ever seen*. 

 

Bruno, perhaps predictably, praises his son’s lithe look. He dropped a load of muscle after leaving the WWF. Now Bruno is all anti-roids. Cactus gets bored with sitting in rest holds and headbutts the referee for the DQ. I would have also headbutted the referee to avoid wrestling David Sammartino. This was horrendously boring and awful.  

 

*David talked about this in a shoot interview where he claims he had good matches with Foley. Which is funny because a) it just wasn’t and b) David didn’t have good matches with anybody. He’s absolutely deluded and a complete failure in wrestling. If he didn’t have his dad’s last name, he would have been a career jobber and been lucky to get that.  

 

Billy Jerk Haynes vs. Spitball Patterson 

SPITBALL Patterson! He’s WWF jobber Tim Patterson. I thought I was done with Billy Jerk but he even goes to WCW next year as “Black Blood”. Anyway, this match is really boring, but Billy Jerk does pop off a nice German suplex. Full nelson puts Spitball away. HAK-PUTUEY. Total squash.  

 

Video Control gives us clips from the press conference when Herb Abrams announced the UWF’s formation. B. Brian Blair suggests Dan Spivey is useless without Sid and Spivey attempts a retort, forgets how to conjugate a sentence, and attacks Blair to set up tonight’s MAIN EVENT. Herb calls it an “act of disgrace”.  

 

Captain Lou’s Corner 

This isn’t even in the ring. It’s pre-taped. His guest is B. Brian Blair because apparently the company is being built around him. I can think of a fair few guys I’d go with before resorting to Blair as my #1 babyface. I went to see who they eventually put their strap on and couldn’t figure out what the hell title was the top one. Here’s a list of them: 

 

Billy Jerk Haynes gets a promo saying he’s wrestled “all over the world”. Fuck off mate. You’ve wrestled in Portland, wherever WWF was touring and NJPW. Zero matches in Europe.  

 

Colonel de Beers vs. Michael Allen 

Yep, it’s another squash. To be fair to Herb, this is how wrestling TV used to be. De Beers has never been much of a worker and gets by on being racist. There’s no heat to this and no point.  

 

Paul Orndorff vs. Riki Ataki  

Herb dubs this the “return of Paul Orndorff” as if his work on the Indies this year didn’t exist. Nor his brief WCW run including an appearance on Clash of the Champions XI: Coastal Crush*. Riki Ataki, another WWF in house jobber, is just here to count lights. I was critical of Orndorff in WCW in 1990. It looked like he’d not got the same passion as before. He does look a little more fired up here. Piledriver finishes.  

 

The angle here is that Doc Death wants a piece of Orndorff, so he comes out here to bark at him post-match. They’d end up feuding for most of the UWF run. They have the face-heel alignment completely wrong. If Doc was the fiery babyface and Orndorff the chickenshit heel it would make way more sense.  

 

*Vs. Arn Anderson, **½  

 

B. Brian Blair vs. Danny Spivey

Credit to Herb, he put on two competitive matches on the opening show. This is supposed to be ‘heated’, but Spivey just doesn’t have the emotional range for it. They quickly resort to a bearhug, and I lose interest. Spivey is rotten here. Unable to manifest the monsterous heel the company needs. Instead running through a series of rest holds and poorly executed basic spots. They brawl outside for a bit and both get counted out. After this taping Spivey didn’t work UWF again until the PPV in 1994. So, that should tell you how well this went. 

 

The 411:

 

UWF could heve re-defined what wrestling TV was. They had no house shows, no PPVs to be building up to. They could have just put on great TV and proved there was a different way to approach wrestling. Instead, we get this bland half-soaked copy of 1984 WWF. A bunch of jobber matches and angles that don’t go anywhere. At least the WWF model resulted in hot houses and ongoing storylines. McMahon’s run on booking in the mid 80s resulted in one of the hottest spells for pro-wrestling. Herb Abrams shitty promotion? Less effective.  

 

And of course, to save money, the shows were taped in these huge blocks that burned the crowd out. The first three Fury Hours were taped on the same day in the same building. How bored would you get of jobber matches under these circumstances? Especially as some of them were just repeats. Spivey has two more matches on this block and they’re BOTH squashes. I’m bored just thinking about it. I can’t bring myself to do two of these in a row and I routinely smash my way through 4-5 AJPW TV shows in a day.