Search - Giants, Midgets, Heroes & Villains on DVD

Old School Goodness Marred By A Major Omission

Weston C. Childers | San Angelo, Texas United States | 09/01/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Mid-South Wrestling: Giants, Midgets, Heroes & Villians is ideal for the wrestling fan that is quickly tiring of the "sports-entertainment" palette served up by the WWE/TNA's of today's wrestling world. Featuring over twenty matches with clear quality, this piece of wrestling nostalgia would normally be worthy of five stars. However, the first segment on the DVD automatically lowers the rating by committing the equivalent of wrestling sacrilege:

Ric Flair (or "Rick" Flair according to the graphics department) vs. Ted DiBiase is an absolute bloody classic that culminates with a great angle involving a violently jealous Dick Murdoch. Unfortunately, the match is not included on this DVD. Rather, we are treated to the angle preceeding the match where DiBiase is busted open by Murdoch while a supercilious Flair looks on before eventually walking out of the ring altogether. And that, as they say, is that.
Forget about a bloodied DiBiase doing a Spirit of '76 impression by returning to the ring with a stained bandage wrapped around his head. Forget about Bill Watts warning the viewers of the impending graphic melee (and taking a few potshots at boxing in the process). Forget about a newly face-turned DiBiase taking Flair to his limit in one of the most emotional, exciting, blood-soaked battles ever witnessed. Nope, it's not here.

The Flair/DiBiase match is easily one of the best to ever emerge out of Watt's Mid-South area, so unless the match is being saved for future releases (which is really a crummy practice), the fans are being robbed of witnessing this wrestling marvel. And despite his caricature dominating a good portion of the DVD cover art, this is all the Ric Flair you're going to get in this collection.

The rest of the DVD, however, is a smorgusboard of the major players involved in Mid-South Wrestling. From a young baby-faced "Dr. Death" Steve Williams,a heel "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, a skinny and uncharasmatic (Ravishing) Rick Rude, and a svelte Jim (Good Ol' JR) Ross, this collection allows us to see the genesis of many stars that would eventually go on to populate the bigger federations of the 80's and early 90's.

Mid-South Wrestling: Giants, Midgets, Heroes & Villians acts as a window to the past vis-a-vis wrestling territories and how certain wrestlers were marketed. For instance, the WWE would have us to believe that Hulk Hogan was the first man to slam Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III. However, a segment on this DVD shows the "Ugandan Giant" Kamala effortlessly slamming Andre with a fully-executed bodyslam (as opposed to Hogan's more famous half slam).

With over 2.5 hours of old-school wrestling goodness, Mid-South Wrestling: Giants, Midgets, Heroes & Villians is available at a great price and worthy of inclusion in any wrestling collection. This DVD may, in fact, be one of last remaining independent territorial releases before the Mid South tape library is purchased by McMahon & company (which is inevitable at this point). It's a shame that as good as this DVD is, it could have been made so much better by the inclusion of one certain match."

Great Old School Footage...And That's It!

D.P. | California | 11/29/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'll be honest from the start & let you know that I never saw Mid-South Wrestling growing up and the only exposure I had of them was "The Missing Matches" VHS series that came out close to 20 years ago that had footage of both Mid-South & Memphis Wrestling. But I'll tell you that this was good look at wrestlers (and Jim Ross himself) in their early days before the went to the big time stages of "sports entertainment" in the NWA/WCW & WWF. And this is footage that your getting direct & don't have to wait for WWE to put out on their various DVD sets because they don't own it.

The DVD itself is nothing but archival footage from the territory. It's not a historical look of the promotion or anything of that nature & the matches are not even in chronological order. None of the matches or footage goes longer than around the 10 min. mark. Most things here are actual complete matches but there are around 2-3 cases where the footage is just a segment that happened such as Flair's only appearence where he's suppost to face Ted Dibiase but a short fight breaks out between him & Dick Murdock so Flair doesn't end up wrestling afterall. Besides these things, you get Hall Of Famers (Andre, Junkyard Dog, Bob Orton Jr., Paul Orndorff, Dusty Rhodes, Wild Samoans, Tony Atlas, Nikolai Volkoff, Jim Ross, Ernie Ladd) & other popular wrestlers of the past & present (Butch Reed, Jim Niedhart, King Kong Bundy, Kamala, Jim Duggan, Magnum T.A., Rick Steiner, Rick Rude, "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, One Man Gang, Tully Blanchard).

Various Matches Include:
Nikolai Volkoff vs. Terry Taylor
King Kong Bundy vs. Junkyard Dog
Ted Dibiase vs. Paul Orndorff
Butch Reed vs. Rick Rood ("Ravishing" Rick Rude)
Junkyard Dog vs. One Man Gang
Tully Blanchard vs. Paul Orndorff
Butch Reed & Jim Niedhart vs. Dusty Rhodes & Jim Duggan
"Dr. Death" Steve Williams & Rob Ricksteiner (Rick Steiner) vs. Jim Duggan & Butch Reed
Dusty Rhodes, Junkyard Dog, Andre The Giant vs. Ernie Ladd & Wild Samoans

In the end, this is a good DVD for old school professional wrestling (not "sports entertainment") fans & being a old school wrestling fan, I highly recommend."