Are You Ready for Some ‘Rasslin?

Upstart AEW brings their Wednesday Night Dynamite to the Mid-South By Ralph Hardin

Times Editor When you think about Memphis, you can’t help but think about “The King”… no, not Elvis Presley! I’m talking about “The King” Jerry Lawler.

Memphis and professional wrestling have a relationship going back more than 50 years. In the heyday of Lawler and other Memphis wrestling stars like “The Fabulous” Jackie Fargo, “Superstar” Bill Dundee, the Rock & Roll Express, “The Boogie Woogie Man” Jimmy Valiant, “The Universal Heart Throb” Austin Idol, “Dirty” Dutch Mantell, and countless others, it would be nothing for the old Mid-South Coliseum to be filled to the brim every Monday night to see the weekly matches.

If you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, you couldn’t not be aware of Memphis wrestling.

Yes, the Monday night shows, with their $3 general admission, were worth every penny, but the real show was the TV program, which aired on Channel 5 locally every Saturday morning after the morning cartoons (remember when cartoons only came on Saturday mornings instead of having multiple channels dedicated solely to animated programming?). It’s probably pretty hard to imagine now, but back then, once Scooby-Doo and The Smurfs and such were over, roughly 7 out of every 10 TVs in the Mid-South would be tuned to Channel 5 to hear the opening notes of the theme from “2001: A Space Odyssey” and see the statue of the two men locked in mortal combat spin around slowly on the screen.

So, like everything else, times change and the same can be said of Memphis wrestling. In an attempt to compete with national wrestling organizations like the WWF, NWA, AWA, and UWF, Memphis Championship Wrestling partnered with World Class Wrestling to form the USWA in the early 1990s. It was a last-ditch effort that ultimately did not work out, and Memphis, like dozens of other regional promotions around the country, faded away.

But Memphis is still a wrestling town. That’s why the WWE (which is the same WWF of Hulk Hogan and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, only with a new name) still comes to Memphis twice a year as part of their national tour. That’s why they send their developmental league NXT to town twice a year. And it’s why new upstart national promotion All Elite Wrestling is coming to town tonight.

All-Elite Wrestling, or AEW, launched last year, immediately becoming the number-two wrestling (or “sports entertainment”) promotion in the country. You may not know this, but pro wrestling actually has a number of promotions (much) smaller than the WWE corporate giant that have smaller but very dedicated fanbases. Impact Wrestling and Ring of Honor run weekly shows on cable and periodic pay-per-view events. They draw a fraction of what WWE’s Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown do, but the launch of AEW is the first time a wrestling promotion other than WWE has been able to draw more than one million viewers to its show, which airs live on TNT every Wednesday night, since rival promotion WCW was absorbed into the WWE back in 2001.

Wednesday Night Dynamite airs on TNT from 7 to 9 p.m. each week. The promotion, funded by Jacksonville Jaguars owner Tony Khan, was launched by a quartet of pro wrestlers Matt and Nick Jackson (known as the tag team The Young Bucks), Kenny Omega, and Cody Rhodes. Rhodes is the son of wrestling legend “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes.

After running a pair of pay-per-view shows with their own money, Rhodes and the Jacksons partnered with Khan to create their own promotion.

If you ask them, they’re not “competing” with the WWE machine, at least not yet, but rather they are giving fans an alternative to the WWE and putting the spotlight on a new generation of wrestlers, while also giving established veteran performers a chance to shine and share their knowledge with the up-and-comers.

If you’ve followed pro wrestling at all over the past several years, you’ll see some familiar faces, including the current AEW World Champion Chris Jericho, along with some others like Dustin Rhodes a.k.a. Goldust, Jake Hager (who was Jack Swagger in the WWE), Jon Moxley (who was WWE Champion and a member of The Shield as Dean Ambrose), Diamond Dallas Page, and even Tully Blanchard, a founding member of the legendary bad guy group The Four Horsemen.

So, the group is not quite ready to sell out the FedEx Forum, and maybe they never will be, but they are coming to town, just down the road in Southaven at the Landers Center.

The Landers Center is a great wrestling venue. There are no bad seats, and the crowd is right on top of the action. Tickets have sold well, but there are some still available. The show starts at 6:30 p.m., and if all goes well, AEW plans to make Memphis a regular stop.

They’re also paying homage to history. As a second-generation star, Cody Rhodes knows the legacy of Memphis wrestling. As part of tonight’s show, the group is holding a special “Salute to the Legends of Memphis Wrestling” segment.

Many local wrestling legends are expected to be on hand. “The King” is still under contract to WWE, providing color commentary each Monday night on Raw, so he will almost definitely not be there, or if he is, it will be in an untelevised capacity, but many others are expected to be on hand for the show.