Talk about it here.

This is a recap of the Freebirds/Rock & Roll Express feud from earlier in the year, which only aired on the non-Chicago version of Pro. The Freebirds and Lance Russell hosted that version of Pro, which I vividly remember being a great combo every week. There is some funny stuff included in this. I'm too burned out on posting to recap this at this point, so someone else can do it. But we get the legendary appearance of Charles and Lido, apparent poor immigrants that Lance Russell hired to impersonate the Freebirds in a video where they were caught paying people off to pretend to be their fans. Michael Hayes even accuses Lance Russell of pedophilia. I remember Charles and Lido hosting a full episode of Pro in 1991 when the Freebirds were "on tour".

Recap of Ricky Morton swiping a gold record from Jimmy Garvin. He teases Frisbee-ing out into the crowd before crushing it. He does the same thing to a tape of the Freebirds' tour of Germany. A week later Garvin has what is apparently the master film footage handcuffed to him for Lance to give to the guys in the truck, but has tragically misplaced his key--"You got a bobby pin or something?" Footage of the 'birds bringing out the Southern Tag Championship trophy. Um, Michael, the Detroit Tigers cap sort of undermines the whole Southern heritage thing. They suffer yet another personal loss when Bob Armstrong trashes the trophy. The 'birds are then shown in Hollywood showing begrudging contempt for the mob of fans who greet them, which is pretty funny. Lance produces GTV-esque footage of the 'birds prepping their "fans" about greeting them at the limo. The Freebirds strike back at Lance (who's "always around young girls" per Hayes) by paying off doubles to claim that Lance put them up to the surveillance footage. How meta! God I wish we had the whole years' worth of Lance & the Freebirds on Pro.

Lance Russell and the Freebirds go over what has happened for them in 1990. Morton was a thorn early. Hidden video footage of the Freebirds staging the fans getting crazy for them. Garvin seemed like he was really cold the whole time. This segment was out of nowhere as far as their yearbook involvement. Seemed like Freebirds/Russell had some fun.

These guys were having fun being around with each other. Garvin loses his shit when MOrton breaks the gold record and the concert footage. These clips added a good bit of context to their earlier feud. We also get a cameo from Bob Armstrong. This looks fun as hell and a good merge of WCW and Memphis.

Charles and Lido look strangely familiar. Plus, they looked like they were just dragged out of the Spahn Ranch.

Seeing this gives me a new appreciation for Hayes and Garvin. They're still not the classic Freebirds, but they have their own kind of sleazy charm. I loved the Monsoon/Heenan vibe between them and Lance, and just like with Gino and Bobby, you can tell that they liked being around each other off camera as well as on. These were well-done comedy segments, and whoever thought of them should have been put to work making the Black Scorpion watchable, if such a thing was possible.

 

Just checking: Charles and Lido are Hayes and Garvin respectively, right?

 

Why was it necessary to have a different announcer on the Chicago feed? I get why WCW would want to have special features and/or matches for such a big market, but why have Tony as the announcer instead of Lance? Was Lance thought to be too southern to get over in Chicago? Could it have had something to do with the fact that WGN was a superstation, and thus the Turner suits thought that Tony would project a more "national" image? In any case, they definitely made a mistake; Tony was solid, but nowhere near as fun and watchable as these three.

I'd agree that these 3 were a blast to listen to. You can always tell when people are having fun with something like this, and it makes it all that much more enjoyable.