Championship Wrestling from Florida
July 31, 1982
Tampa, FL
(Taped on 7/28/82)

The NWA & CWF champions were as follows:
NWA World Heavyweight Champion: Ric Flair (9/17/1981)
NWA Southern Heavyweight Champion: Sweet Brown Sugar (7/25/1982)
NWA Florida Heavyweight Champion: Brian Blair (7/11/1982)

Your host is Gordon Solie.

• NWA Southern Heavyweight Champion Sweet Brown Sugar vs. Derek Draper
  

The match has already started when the show begins. Sweet Brown Sugar spends a lot of time stuck in a front headlock. He reaches a corner for the break and punches Draper back. Draper stays on Sugar though and tries a hiptoss, which is countered into a backslide battle. Draper flips Sugar over his back, but gets caught in an inside cradle for 1-2-NO! Sugar tries a leapfrog, but Draper lifts his head and catches Sugar in the inner thigh. Now Sugar mounts his comeback with a series of headbutts. He tries a piledriver, but Draper finds solace in the ropes and they brawl until they reach the 10-minute time limit. (6:48 shown) Kind of boring by today’s standards. Nothing wrong with it though. ¾*

Steve Keirn is coming back to Florida!

They show us arena footage of the ending of a recent Dusty Rhodes v. Terry Funk bunkhouse match. After bloodied and trading finishing holds, JJ Dillon jumps the ref and starts stomping Dusty. Of course Dusty won’t stand for that and starts dropping JJ with bionic elbows. That brings Kendo Nagasaki into the fray. Nagasaki sprays the GREEN MIST, but Dusty ducks and Terry Funk takes the mist in the face instead. Whoops. Dusty covers Funk for the win. Now Dusty is beating up both JJ Dillon and Nagasaki. King Kong Tonga (Haku/Meng) makes the save for JJ and Nagasaki. As they go to mist Dusty, of all people Dory Funk Jr. attacks Kendo not to help Dusty but to get revenge for spraying his brother. Despite their different reasons for doing so, they clean house on the heels. Dory tends to his brother while Dusty’s arm is raised in victory.

Over at ringside, Barbara Clary is with JJ Dillon who compares his man Big John Studd as superior to even Andre the Giant. Studd then picks up Clary and tells her that if she wants to be a fan of a real man instead of that Dusty Rhodes guy, come and see Big John Studd. Well, that’s AWESOME.

Now inside the ring, JJ Dillon tells Butch Reed that if he wants a chance at body slamming Big John Studd for $5000, he’s going to have to first slam his man Bruiser Brody. Brody hammers him down a few times, but Reed still gets the slam in about 20 seconds. Studd gives Reed two chances. He doesn’t lift him on the first try. The second time it looks like Reed might have budged him up off the mat, but then Studd also starts to hammer on Reed. Reed punches back and picks Studd half way before Brody attacks from behind. Together, they put the boots to Reed. Dusty Rhodes tries to make a save and they all end up in a big brawl as we go into commercial. Let me ask you this: should Butch Reed have been the first African American NWA world champion?

• Bruiser Brody vs. Denny Brown
  

Brody gets all kinds of violent with Denny Brown. The highlights being slamming Brown into the ringpost and then dropping the big running knee on him for the win at 1:26.

• King Kong Tonga & Kendo Nagasaki (w/JJ Dillon) vs. Tommy Wright & Rick Zorta
  

If you missed what I said before, King Kong Tonga is the future Meng/Haku. Tonga looks MUCH smaller than he does in the WWF and has a cool afro, but looks exactly the same in the face. Lots of ASIAN VIOLENCE here complete with chops and nerve holds. Kendo chops Zorta while Tonga comes flying off the second rope with a headbutt for the win at 5:36.

Barbara Clary sets up a great video montage of the returning Steve Keirn. He looked real good in Memphis.

• Barry Windham & Terry Allen vs. The Alabama Chain Gang
  

It’s not what I thought at first. The ACG is just WHITE dudes in prison stripes from head to toe. Windham and Allen control mostly with armbars. When the ACG gain control, they concentrate on Allen while bugging the heck out of Windham. Nobody wins as the TV time limit expires around 8:22. It seemed like it was just going to be a simple squash for the good guys to me. Afterwards, one of the ACG guys kicks Allen in the throat with a loaded boot, so Windham scares them away with a chair before they do anything else.

That’s all for now, folks.