Lord Steven Regal and Belfast Bruiser Brawl in an Albany Parking Lot

400 years of British/Irish tension have brought us here: a Waffle House fight in a parking lot.

In my collection of wrestling photography, there’s a series of snapshots taken at a USWA spot show at the grand opening of a used car lot. There has never been a more perfect match for the great sport of professional wrestling than the gala affair of a small town auto dealership’s invitation to browse a selection of low milage Oldsmobiles, but while the ring looks great — correct, even — underneath the tinsel overhang, there’s something decidedly off about the presence of the wrestlers themselves. Garishly overmuscled and wearing wrestling trunks under the sweltering sun, the cartoon forms of “Gentleman” Chris Adams and the assorted misfits I can’t quite make out feel oddly fragile, as if the violence they’re meting out to each other for the assembled dozens could turn really ugly out on the asphalt.

We’re inured to this sort of spectacle now — some combination of backyard wrestling’s ubiquity, elaborate shows in odd places, cinematic matches, and hardcore handicap matches against the APA in the fucking parking lot in WWF No Mercy have killed the shock of the setting — but for a very long time the spaces televised wrestling existed in were as follows: the television studio and the arena. To go out into a space like the parking lot meant that your name was either Jerry Lawler or Eddie Gilbert, and some shit was going down. To agree to a match out there? You’d have to be blind with hate for your opponent.

On February 9, 1996, the IRA broke a seventeen-month ceasefire by detonating a truck bomb in London, which is important because, during this time, World Championship Wrestling had a British wrestler and an Irish wrestler on their roster, which meant they had a natural feud on their hands. Lucky them that those wrestlers, Lord Steven Regal and Fit Finlay, also happened to be masters of their craft — the real-life bloodshed overseas was an easy means of introducing Finlay to American audiences, however odd it seems to have a wrestler make his debut by yelling about 400 years of English oppression on an episode of WCW Saturday Night.

WCW

This match ostensibly ended the Regal/Finlay feud. It’s probable that it takes place in the parking lot as a kind of labored pun on car bombs. It whips an unreasonable amount of ass in its brief runtime, though as we’re joined in progress there’s really no way of telling just how long Finlay and Regal have been trading shots in the parking lot of the Albany Civic Center. Finlay immediately slams Regal’s head into the hood of a beater, his punches and headbutts positively lethal. 30 seconds into this thing, Finlay kicks out the back window of a car.

Regal is more than willing to meet Finlay where he is, gouging his eye and grinding his face into the asphalt. He is the hero of this match in the sense that he really gets his ass kicked — Finlay throws a tire into his gut and caroms him off the bumper of a pickup truck with enough force to knock the bumper off, which he then uses to further assault Regal — but finds ways to turn things to his favor where others would buckle. Situational awareness is one of the stronger aspects of Regal’s game. Here you see it when Finlay bodyslams him onto the hood of a truck, which puts him just about level with Finlay’s head. When he kicks it, he does so with a desperate viciousness.

If the match is flawed, it’s not for reasons that are under Finlay or Regal’s control. After watching a few parking lot brawls this week, I think what doesn’t work about all of them is the imposition of a proper wrestling finish, wherein a uniformed referee declares an end to the unsanctioned, off-site fight with, of all things, a three count. This is fine for the goofy environs of the WWF and WCW’s later hardcore divisions, but this is just two dudes busting each other up in the parking lot of a civic center in Georgia — Regal should have won by stuffing Finlay with a piledriver on the roof of a car, getting into that pickup truck, and driving down the road a piece to the nearest Waffle House, Real Man’s Man-style.

They also can’t help that Eric Bischoff is on the call. There are worse play-by-play broadcasters in wrestling history, probably, but not many, and not by much. I feel like a lot of people have come around on Steve McMichael’s commentary in the early days of Nitro because there’s a real charm and genuine enthusiasm about him, like if David Crockett was an NFL Hall of Famer with just the right mix of cowboy charm and Texas energy, and Bobby Heenan is Bobby Heenan, who is especially enthusiastic about a fight. Sitting between the two, Bischoff calls wrestling in the tenor of a weatherman explaining the lore behind the Boss Baby float at a Thanksgiving Day parade. He interjects himself into the fabric of this match often and obnoxiously, directing the cameras to stay wide because things are out of control.

On that end of things, it’s a violent match, but I don’t think anybody’s bleeding, and, really, I don’t think it’s that much more violent than a regular match between the two. It doesn’t need to be — Regal and Finlay are extraordinarily snug and ruthless with their offense, and the camera doesn’t stay wide until the very end. The opening shot of Regal getting thrown into a car door is magnificent, and the setting, though spare compared to its predecessors, amps things up a bit. as nothing about an outside-the-arena brawl on this scale has been codified to the extent that seeing Finlay wield a truck bumper remains fresh. Anyhow, they get one more match on WCW Saturday Night and then Finlay’s off WCW television for more than a year. For Lord Steven Regal, the troubles were over.

Rating: ****