Andrew Lutzke
We start with the same angle I covered in part one where Tommy Rich and Eddie Gilbert brawled in the studio after winning the tag team of the year award after already having broken up as a team. Good angle, but I’m not thrilled that they duplicated something from their own compilation rather than presenting something fresh.
Tommy Rich and Jackie Fargo vs. King Kong Bundy and Rick Rude (Memphis, 1984)
We are clipped to the end where Eddie Gilbert runs in and attacks Rich as he has Bundy pinned. This allows Bundy to steal the win. Rude and Bundy then batter Fargo and Rich. Gilbert comes in and assaults Rich with a cowboy boot. Rich is just drenched in blood by the time Eddie’s attack is finished. Tojo Yamamoto finally comes in to scare Gilbert off. You have to love a good blood soaked angle!
Cactus Jack vs. Eddie Gilbert
I’m guessing this is from 1991 and perhaps from the Tri-State Wrestling group? No commentary as this may be a “fan cam”. This is in a high school. Jack attacks Gilbert in the aisle and batters him up the stands. The attack continues as Jack flings Eddie into the wall and then a chain link fence. Gilbert is busted open. Cactus attempts to piledrive Gilbert on a table, but Gilbert flips him over on it instead. This leads to the match returning to the stands as Jack and Gilbert toss punches back and forth.
After five minutes or so of brawling around the gym the men finally make it to the ring. This lasts all of thirty seconds as Jack clotheslines Gilbert to the floor and batters him with the rubber trash can of infinite destruction. He tries the diving elbow on the prone Gilbert, but lands on nothing but basketball court as Eddie scoots out of the way. This gives Gilbert the chance to get his licks in.
The men take it back to the ring for more punching. Gilbert takes a good looking bump back to the floor off of a punch. He retaliates by choking Cactus with a belt. More trading of blows leads to the ref getting shoved and THAT earns Jack a DQ after all the other plunder and mayhem. The men fight all the way to the back. Jack returns and asks for five more minutes.
This would have been pretty insane to see in this era, and even today to some extent it holds up fairly well.
Eddie Gilbert Promo (SMW, 1995)
Gilbert runs down the legends that recently appeared at a SMW nostalgia show. No one tried to honor his father Tommy. Jim Ross refutes that. Gilbert then moves on to Ricky Morton’s father Paul. Morton’s dad received a plaque, which appalls Gilbert because Morton is a drunk. That draws out Ricky and a quick challenge leads straight to a match. I liked the edgy personal tone this took.
Ricky Morton vs. “Hot Stuff” Eddie Gilbert
Morton controls early with arm drags. Gilbert struggles to gain any traction and he begs off and avoids contact. The announcers dance around Gilbert’s mental health issues. Gilbert gains control with a power slam and eats some time up with a headlock. Morton fights out but ends up pinned as Gilbert uses the ropes for a dirty win.
Gilbert cuts a swarmy promo afterward before the Rock and Roll Express confront him and they set up a tag match for the next week. Gilbert has a mystery partner.
Another promo sees Gilbert with Les Thatcher. Gilbert is darting his eyes all around as he thinks he’s being set up by persons unnamed. Good promo to show that Gilbert is wacked out in the head.
Yet another promo with Gilbert, this time with Jim Ross. Apparently we aren’t going to see the match with Gilbert and the mystery partner vs. the Rock and Roll Express as this promo skips ahead to Gilbert already being aligned with Unibomb (Kane). More craziness from Gilbert here, as he talks about beating 16 men in one match – Ross points out there were only 3 men in the ring. Eddie rants and raves. Fun promo, wish the matches were included.
Memphis TV Shoot Interview (Late 1999)
We skip past Eddie’s death and move on to “Power Pro Wrestling” in Memphis. Over the past several weeks Brian Christopher and the Spellbinder have been mocking Doug Gilbert and Tommy Rogers. First dressing up like them, with Rich being a drunk and Gilbert being a whiner. The following week they dressed up like Doug’s parents. Tommy (Dad) had an inflated ego and Momma was sleeping around. They followed that up by holding a mock funeral for Gilbert and Rich.
Doug and Tommy responded with their own “shoot” promo. Rich accused the muscle bound Spellbinder of doing roids, but Doug takes things WAY over the edge by accusing promoter Randy Hales of being a crackhead, revealing Christopher is Jerry Lawler’s kid and screaming out that Lawler raped a 13-year old girl.
Supposedly Lawler was watching this live from his house and drove over to the studio to get a copy of the tape in order to sue Hales and Gilbert. No lawsuit was ever filed though. Gilbert ended up fired and Power Pro Wrestling died soon after.
Road Warrior Hawk vs. “Hot Stuff” Eddie Gilbert (Minnesota indy show)
Gilbert brings out a large Hawk doll and puts the boots to it. Hawk comes down and attacks his own doll before throwing it out of the ring. Gilbert runs away. Hawk chases him down, chucks him into a wall and cracks Gilbert with a chair. Gilbert is bleeding. Hawk drives his head into a table. Gilbert manages to crack Hawk in the ribs with the table edge several times. He piledrives Hawk on the CEMENT floor. Hawk no sells it. The small crowd doesn’t react much to that. Eddie is then piledriven on the floor. Those spots take me right out of the match. Way too absurd.
Gilbert’s not down for long as Hawk drags him in the ring for a press slam. Gilbert manages to take control by choking Hawk with a cord. Hawk misses a charge and falls to the floor. Gilbert beats on a photographer before trading blows with Hawk. Promoter Dennis Coraluzzo goes by the commentary booth and rants about how crazy this match is. Gilbert ends up throwing a fireball at Hawk, hitting the ref instead. Hawk takes advantage of this and nails Gilbert with a flying clothesline. Caraluzzo crawls in the ring and counts the finish. Hawk walks off and Gilbert attacks Caraluzzo. Hawk makes the save. A garbage brawl that wasn’t all that good.
Gilbert comes back out after the show’s closing announcements. He rants and raves on the microphone, then starts to attack the ring crew. Gilbert demands a rematch, with Terry Funk as his partner and Hawk picking a man of his own.
Gilbert delivers a promo in the back. He does a Terry Funk impression and rants about Dave Meltzer, Wade Keller, Vince McMahon and all the other critics and power brokers in wrestling.
Global Wrestling Federation
Bruce Pritchard announces a video recap of Eddie Gilbert recently having a match where the fans were allowed to inspect him for foreign weapons. Gilbert tries to run off but the promoters make him continue to be searched. The first fan finds an object in his tights by his boots. The kid is into this hunt. The second fan is a woman and she is laughing at this farce of a sporting event as she finds a rope hidden in his elbow pad. The third fan is a grown man who enthusiastically goes after Gilbert’s boot and finds a chain. That leads to….
Eddie Gilbert vs. Terry Garvin
We cut to the third fall as Gilbert is sneaking around ringside, trying to hide a gimmick. After some stalling, Gilbert goes to work on Garvin’s knee. After driving his knee into the post, Gilbert locks him in a half crab, using Garvin’s boot laces to pull his ankle at an awkward angle. Garvin survives and next endures a figure-four. He again uses the boot lace to help keep his opponent trapped. Garvin is in the hold for several minutes, and the crowd is hot for this nonetheless. Garvin finally reverses the hold and escapes. Garvin starts a comeback, but the ref is bumped and Gilbert fires off a fireball. This gives Gilbert the win. The announcers don’t play up Garvin’s injury for long and move on to the next segment. I was somewhat bored by this as their pace was slow and I haven’t seen Garvin enough to have any investment in him.
The Handsome Stranger vs. Eddie Gilbert (GWF)
The Stranger is Marcus Bagwell. Gilbert struggles to deal with his stronger opponent. He lures in the rookie and cheap shots him. Gilbert is able to lock in a figure-four. Scotty the Body (Raven) comes down to ringside. The ref is bumped and Stranger’s pin attempt is missed. Gilbert tosses Scotty a foreign object, and he places it on the Stranger’s hand. Gilbert pretends to be hurt as the ref finds the object and disqualifies the Stranger.
I’m not sure who invented that finish, but the first time I remember seeing it was in WCW during a Jim Garvin vs. Rick Steiner match. Anyone have an earlier incident? Bagwell was green here, so this was what it was.
Final thoughts: A pretty big step down from volume one, as their are better Gilbert/Jack matches out there from the same era, and the Global stuff did nothing for me. I’ve also seen the Gilbert shoot video several times before and that was probably the best thing we had on here.
