PWTorch.com - RADICAN'S KAYFABE COMMENTARIES REVIEW SERIES: "Back to the Territories: Mid South" - Watts as a leader, expansion of territory, grueling road schedule, road stories, more

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RADICAN'S KAYFABE COMMENTARIES REVIEW SERIES: "Back to the Territories: Mid South" - Watts as a leader, expansion of territory, grueling road schedule, road stories, more

Jan 27, 2015 - 6:28:40 PM

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By Sean Radican, Torch columnist

RADICAN’S KAYFABE COMMENTARIES REVIEW SERIES
BACK TO THE TERRITORIES: MID SOUTH STARRING JIM DUGGAN
RELEASED IN 2014
BY SEAN RADICAN, TORCH COLUMNIST

The latest brainchild of the folks at Kayfabe Commentaries is the Back to the Territories series hosted by Jim Cornette. Cornette is the perfect selection to host a series like this given his knowledge of wrestling history and his vast experience in wrestling during the territory days. The inaugural edition of the series features Cornette with guest Jim Duggan talking about Bill Watt’s Mid South Wrestling.

The series has a Back to the Future theme. The footage grabs you right away, as Cornette introduces Duggan and then pitches to a narrated segment about the beginnings of Mid South Wrestling featuring photos from Cornette’s collection to begin the show. It is touches like this that separate Kayfabe Commentaries from the rest of the filed. The production makes this release feel more like a production than a shoot interview with a static camera on the subjects.

One of the main strengths of this release is Duggan and Cornette talking about Watts as a strong figure behind the scenes in Mid South Wrestling. They take the viewer behind the scenes and talk about how hands on Watts was when it came to storylines and promos even though he operated with various bookers under him while operating the company. Watts operated the company like it was real and made things believable, which is something Cornette and Duggan hammer home during the early going.

Cornette and Duggan talk about how Watts was obsessive in his attention to detail, which made Mid South Wrestling a great breeding ground for talent. They point out how Watts gave the wrestlers the bullet points for their promos, but let the wrestlers be themselves and develop their verbiage by tapping into their own characters, as opposed to the way things are done in WWE now with wrestlers reciting their promos word for word as written by the creative team.

Watts started Mid South Wrestling by running in Louisiana and Mississippi. Eventually the territory expanded as Watts acquired the Oklahoma and Arkansas territory in 1982. Duggan and Cornette’s in-depth discussion about the touring schedule for Mid South Wrestling is another strength of this release. Cornette runs through an entire two week timeline in which the company ran a show in every market on loop with TV tapings every Wednesday in Shreveport in addition to the shows that they ran every day during the week and twice on weekends.

One thing that comes out of this discussion is how Watts had to book each market to match what had aired on TV, as the TV aired on a loop, which meant that one market might be behind another, so they would have to stick to the point in the ongoing storylines that had aired on TV depending on where they were. Watts had a penchant for paying attention to detail, which is something that rubbed off on Cornette and Duggan as well during their time under him. The TV did big numbers in each market and Cornette talked about how it didn’t take long for a wrestler to enter the territory, get on TV, and be recognized by the public in the markets they ran.

Cornette and Duggan talk about the stars that were born in the territory like Junkyard Dog, The Fabulous Freebirds, Ted DiBiase, and Butch Reed amongst others. Although there isn’t footage from Mid South Wrestling on this release, Cornette and Duggan do a great job of painting a picture of the level of heat the heels had. Cornette tells a story about the angle where The Fabulous Freebirds blinding JYD with hair cream. They ran an angle where JYD was sitting in the crowd watching the show acting like he had really been blinded and The Freebirds isolated him in the crowd with no defense, so a man in the crowd pulled a gun on him and The Freebirds didn’t know what to do because they had to make a split-second decision between breaking kayfabe and trying to help JYD or keep the angle going to where it needed to get to in the end.

The travel stories are simply fantastic here, as Duggan and Cornette go into great detail about the exhausting schedule of touring and how difficult things could get if a car broke down or someone got into an accident. There’s also a number of good bar fight stories, many which have probably been told before, that detail just how tough the wrestlers were in Mid South under Watt’s leadership. Duggan talks about how Watts told the wrestlers if they lost a bar fight, they would be fired. Needless to say, Duggan claims nobody ever lost a bar fight. It isn’t shocking to learn that Dr. Death Steve Williams never lost a bar fight.

Cornette and Duggan discuss WWF’s national expansion and Watt’s attempt to keep pace with them by changing the name of his company to UWF to take the company national with syndicated TV. The problem was that at the time the economy got bad in the gulf coast area that was financing the expansion and Vince McMahon was taking the best talent in the company and bringing them to WWE. Duggan remarks that he could see the writing on the wall before he left for WWE with other names like JYD, Jake the Snake Roberts, and Ted DiBiase being plucked from Watts by WWF. In the end, Mid South Wrestling came around at the perfect time and did great business because “Everything was believable,” according to Duggan.

Overall score: (9.0) - This release is well-worth going out of your way to see because Cornette and Duggan take you inside Mid South Wrestling and paint a complete picture of how Bill Watts due to his forceful personality was able to take a group of strong personalities, keep them in line, and move them in the same direction. “It was a snake pit of tough guys,” said Duggan of the Mid South locker room, but everyone got along and moved in the same direction because when the company was running hot, everyone made money.

You can purchase “Back to the Territories: Mid South” on DVD by clicking HERE or by visiting KayfabeCommentaries.com. You can also purchase this show on VOD at WWNLive.com, which is now available on Roku. For more information on other Kayfabe Commentaries titles visit KayfabeCommentaries.com.

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