Talk about it here.

This is Kessler's Korner with Cornette, Rich and the Punisher. Landell wants a cage match with Rich, and Rich says if he wants a cage match, he can have it, as he made his name and fought the best in cage matches, namedropping Buzz Sawyer. They are also having some other gimmick matches around the loop -- barbed wire match, first blood match, falls count anywhere, etc. Wow, they must not have been drawing at this point at all, because that seems amazingly desperate.

 

Cornette makes me laugh when he points out that people turn to the Lord when no one else will talk to them. He gets personal with Buddy Landell, saying he lost his career and family, but he says he's a compassionate guy and he presents him with some liquid courage in the form of alcohol. This is pretty much the Jake/Lawler feud a year early in the WWF.

 

Buddy finally has enough and comes into start clearing the ring, going after Rich and Punisher. He even decks Cornette, but Rich ends up hitting him with the racket and then hits him with a slapjack. The announcers point out that no one makes the save because Buddy has no friends in SMW. Cornette ends up pouring the alcohol down his throat!

 

If Buddy was cool with his alcoholism being used in an angle, so be it. I just hope the bottle was gimmicked with something that wasn't water. I'm sure it was.

So I guess this was Lawler/Roberts before that feud even started? Good promo by Cornette but I'm not sure why he needed to manage Rich? It's not like Rich was a bad talker.

Cornette was on the booking office in 96, so I guess we know where Jake vs Lawler comes from. Yeah, the overbooking of gmmick matches reeks of desperation at this point, although they did it before in SMW.

They're bringing back the Four Faces of Fear between Rich and Landell--a Tennessee chain match, a falls-count-anywhere match, a first-blood match, and a barbed wire match. It doesn't seem quite as desperate to me as it did to the others, since as El-P mentioned they ran this series once before. But the Rock 'n Rolls and Heavenly Bodies was a much longer-established rivalry, whereas here Landell has just turned babyface. Cornette takes a shot at religion in the process of running down Landell, much to Chip Kessler's disgust. He then offers up a bottle of booze so Landell can muster up the courage to face Rich! Yep, it's Lawler vs. Jake a year early, but Cornette's cutting this promo with a lot more venom and hatred than Lawler ever was in that program. That draws Landell out, but he's quickly overwhelmed by the Militia, and Cornette tops this off by pouring the beer down his throat.