Looking at the Mid-South DVD

 I purchased one of the WWE's DVD releases, mainly because I still have a love for the old product and enjoy taking a trip down memory lane or in some cases, seeing things that I missed on the first time around.

Growing up here without cable until I was 16 meant only the WWF was a product that I was able to enjoy watching, but my brother and I kept track of the other territories around through the magazines that we faithfully purchased and told us all about what was happening in them.
The magazines were about three months behind in what was in them as the events, but in the non-internet, no mainstream coverage era, they were pretty much all you had to go by as news, and the coverage treated wrestling as a legitimate sport, which sounds ludicrous I know, but made them more of a fun read.

My brother and I spent most of our allowances on the magazines (I bought tons of boxing magazines too) and I remember well a tag team "Match" with Shane and me as "Jesse Ventura & Adrian Adonis" against two friends of mine as "the Samoans", at a time before either Ventura or Adonis had arrived in the local territory.
Without those magazines, we would have no idea who those two gentlemen were!

However, of all the various territories, the one that seemed most legitimate and mysterious was the Mid-South territory comprised of Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and East Texas.
Georgia was the territory we missed out on (no cable), Mid Atlantic seemed to have the best wrestlers (A future post might deal with a rainy vacation that Shane and I spent in Chincoteague VA), Memphis was the wildest gimmicks and Florida had some of the top wrestlers in the game, but Mid South was a different breed.
The company didn't get the attention of others by the magazines, but it seemed to have a more realistic feel, which years later I would find out was by design by owner "Cowboy" Bill Watts.
Watts wanted his fans to think his product was real and he stressed that on his show.

I still recall a 1986 day when either Shane or I (I don't remember which) discovered the Mid South (by then renamed UWF) program on WBFF out of Baltimore on at the same time as the WWF program and immediately being struck even then as so much more gritty and realistic than the more cartoony product of the more mainstream company.
Super memories of that day and the future show that we were able to watch.

YouTube has made many of the clips viewable, but I still wanted the DVD made possible by the WWE purchasing the Mid South library from Bill Watts' ex-wife.
Cleaned up tapes and the always interesting documentaries made this a must purchase.
It was worthwhile, but with a few glitches that I would have changed.

The one thing that I would change by far was this-Original theme music taken away and replaced by generic filler music.
It stands out clearly that this is dubbed in as the fans are piped in and anyone speaking has a lower and dull sound until the music is over.
It just is not the same seeing the Midnight Express without the "Chase" theme or the Fabulous Freebirds without "Freebird" or the Michael Hayes sung "Badstreet USA".
It is visible to the fan and the product suffers for it.
Jim Cornette has said in the past that Vince McMahon hates paying for music rights after watching this, that strikes quite true.

The documentary was done differently from past issues as the documentary was broken up through the three discs instead of the previous releases that would have a documentary on one disc and matches on the other.
I kinda liked it the old way, but it was not terrible in the manner that they did it.

However, the documentary was very well done as they talked to about everyone that you could think of from Mid South. Ted DiBiase, Jake Roberts, Terry Taylor, Michael Hayes, Jim Ross to name just a few, and of course, the mind behind it all-Bill Watts.
WWE even used some old footage of interviews from the now-deceased Steve "Dr. Death" Williams and Freebird Buddy Roberts for their thoughts on the territory along with Jim Cornette from days when he was on good terms with the company.

The matches chosen were very well chosen with several great matches and angles with a Ric Flair title defense against Terry Taylor, a few Midnight Express-Rock N Roll Express matches, and a Terry Gordy vs Steve Williams match among many terrific selections, but my favorite was one that I had only seen on YouTube as Ric Flair took on fellow baddie Ted DiBiase, who was turned "good guy" in one night due to the interference of Dick Murdoch, who always reminded me of my late grandfather "Dukes" for some reason.
It was as good as expected.

The set has some flaws and I would hope that a future second release might correct those, but overall, Mid South Wrestling is well worth your time and if you love 80's "rasslin'" from a more solid angle, give it a shot, I think you'll enjoy it.