Terry Gordy vs Mitsuharu Misawa
Champion Carnival 1993 Match
taped 04/14/1993, aired 04/25/1993
Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium, Nagoya, Japan
(reviewed 04/23/2024) Oh thank god it’s the last Terry Gordy match of this review series. He lays around on the wrong end of a headlock for eight billion years until hitting two powerbombs—one on the floor—as well as a lariat for the win. It STINKS. There’s some other moves in there, including Gordy landing on Misawa’s face in an attempt to break up a German suplex that really gets the crowd going, but so much of it is dry and derivative that I can’t say anything more than good riddance to bad rubbish. Gordy was certainly better earlier in his career before he began popping up in this review series but he was never the same after that initial overdose, which sadly wasn’t his last. Later this year he’ll overdose again on the flight over to Japan for the August/September tour, slipping into a coma for five days in what I assume was a Japanese hospital before returning to Chattanooga. Reportedly suffering some brain damage, this second overdose basically ends his career. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter initially claims that Gordy will be back in time for the Real World Tag League, then a brief run in January that is announced and canceled at the last minute. Finally he returns to the ring at a GWF show in April ‘94, clearly not the same after his coma, and that seems to put an end to any talk of another meaningful AJPW run. Gordy makes a surprise return at AJPW’s Bruiser Brody memorial show in July ‘94, sticking around for undercard tag matches through the end of the month. Perhaps not unrelated is the fact that, at the end of that tour, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams defeats Mitsuharu Misawa to finally end the latter’s two year Triple Crown title reign. It would appear that Doc’s vouching for Gordy was the only thing that kept him from being banned from AJPW after this second overdose—and perhaps what kept him from being fired after the first—so it’s not hard to imagine that he did whatever was necessary to get his friend to Tokyo for the biggest win of his career. A happy moment, hopefully, in what was otherwise a sad end for him in AJPW. Gordy continued to bounce around from promotion to promotion throughout the decade before finally suffering a heart attack in 2001, passing away at the age of 40 a few weeks after his son Ray got a tryout with Pro Wrestling NOAH.
Brock Hates Wrestling 