UWF Blackjack Brawl (September 1994)

Last week, we looked at Herb Abrams' UWF's Beach Brawl PPV event, which was... something. This week, we're looking at their 1994 event, Blackjack Brawl.

Technically speaking, Blackjack Brawl is not a PPV. It's more of a television special that they put on free television... because god forbid the world be subjected to another Herb Abrams-promoted PPV event that people had to pay for. But, yes, kids. We are doing the OTHER UWF supershow thing that was also on Youtube and I made a recording of for future reference... although much like the previous show, the show is still on Youtube for the world to suffer through.

Well...

I guess the first thing we should talk about is the ring announcer; a guy by the name of Steve Rossi, a comedian and singer who had made a number of appearances on the Howard Stern show... that's about all I can gather. I've heard people talk about how he was terrible at the ring announcing gig and... god bless the guy, he tried to get the audience to react to this stuff, really did. And no, he wasn't particularly successful nor was he particularly any good... but if I'm going to be honest, I thought the guy was probably the most entertaining aspect of this show and given my subterrainean expectations that won't be matched, I'll take whatever I can get.

Then he mentions that there will be ELEVEN championship matches... I figured, "My god, has Herbie spun his Herbie Cookie magic and got champions from other promotions to defend their titles in a failed attempt to boost interest in his show?" But no, it's to crown a whole bunch of NEW CHAMPIONS while only a couple get defended... so a company that everyone shits on for being shit thinks the best solution to their woes is to INTRODUCE MORE CHAMPIONSHIPS NOBODY CARES ABOUT... so that's where Vinny Mac got the idea.

So forgive me if I just blow through these matches quickly because for the most part, I've got very little to say. I do wish to give a special shoutout to Wikipedia for making it easy to copy and paste results and keeping track of which championships are what because... dude, this show gave me a fucking headache.

Dan Spivey defeated Johnny Ace (with Missy Hyatt) via submission to win the inaugural UWF America's Championship. This was a thing that happened.

Jack Armstrong defeated Mando Guerrero to win the inaugural UWF Junior Heavyweight Championship. This was also a thing that happened.

Sunny Beach defeated Dr. Feelgood (with Missy Hyatt) to win the vacant UWF SportsChannel Television Championship. This was the drizzling shits and I don't feel good.

The UWF Southern States Championship match between champion Cowboy Bob Orton Jr. and challenge Finland Hellraiser Thor (a.k.a. Ludvig Borga) to a double-DQ due to fighting outside too much. Oh god, it's getting worse.

Little Tokyo defeated The Karate Kid (no, not Ralph Macchio) to win the inaugural UWF Midget World Championship... their words, not mine. The crowd is so dead that poor Steve Rossi is trying (and failing) to bring some life back into this audience. Bless him; he tried.

Samson defeated The Irish Assassin... I'm practically zoning out at this point.

Tyler Mane defeated Steve Ray (not Stevie Ray of Harlem Heat fame) to win the inaugural UWF MGM Grand Championship... holy shit, how many fucking titles does this company have? Anyway, Tyler Mane is probably better known for playing Sabretooth in the very first X-Men movie from 2000. That factoid is more intriguing than anything in this match, by the way.

Candi Devine defeated Tina Moretti (a.k.a. Ivory) to win the vacant UWF Women's World Championship... Ivory will see better days, I promise.

The Killer Bees (B. Brian Blair and Jim Brunzell) defeated The New Powers of Pain (Warlord and some guy called the Power Warrior... I guess the Barbarian was too expensive to sign) to win the inaugural UWF World Tag Team Championship.

Cactus Jack and Jimmy Snuka fought to a double countout... in a lumberjack match... where the whole point was to keep both guys in the ring... what the fuck, dude?

UWF World Champion Dr. Death Steve Williams defeated Sid Vicious via DQ due to... why am I even bothering? This show sucks.

You know... I'm having a hard time figuring out if this is the absolute worst wrestling show that I've ever seen. There have been plenty of awful, AWFUL shows that I bore witness to...  and this certainly ranks high on that list. The wrestling was bad, the booking was worse, the production was low-rent, the commentary was subpar without Abrams and intolerable with him, the already small crowd didn't help matters with their lack of energy, the fact that every other match was for a vacant championship didn't help matters, and the atmosphere was just dirty. You look at the quality of wrestling that you got from the WWF and WCW around that same time, the kind of top-notch matches they were putting out... and then you turn around and you see this show, which feels like amateur hour.

Blackjack Brawl... wow. That is all I could really say on the matter.