After a couple brief teasers got everyone fired up for it over the past couple of days, WWE today unleashed four episodes of their Southpaw Regional Wrestling parody series on YouTube and their own website. You can check them all out in the above playlist.
If you’re wondering what exactly this is, it’s basically a WWE version of something Highspots did called 5 Dollar Wrestling. Luke Gallows even reprises his role from that (with a PG-ified name... Sex Ferguson is now Tex Ferguson). The Good Brother explained the idea to Fox Sports:
Southpaw Regional Wrestling is a concept of this … basically 1980s southern regional wrestling promotion or territory, and it’s a lot of stuff that the guys have been doing for years backstage to entertain each other. I know my character in particular has been an ongoing thing for the better part of a decade.
It was really us getting to kind of take the gloves off and use our… comedic style, if there is one. You’ll get the chance to judge for yourself, but you’ll see a lot of people step outside of the realm of what you’ve seen them do, character-wise, and as in-ring performers as a part of WWE. So it’s kind of a chance for everybody to let their hair down. I didn’t get to because I don’t have any, but everybody else. And we had a blast doing it, man.
It’s pretty darn fun. At a little more than five minutes each, they’re in the mold of the late, great JBL & Cole/Renee Young Show... and just about as irreverent, and hit or miss. My advice from my initial run-through is to hang in there, as the first episode is a lot of set-up and heavy on John Cena as the Lance Russell-meets-Ron Burgundy host Lance Catamaran, and he’s probably my least favorite character.
But by the time we meet Tyler Breeze’s Mr. Macklemore, the Banker (and his secret weapon) and his rival, Rusev’s Big Bartholomew & his little lady, Lana’s Christian Joy, and once Tex starts listing all the bigger wrestling stars SRW can’t afford who his former tag partner Chad 2Badd (Karl Anderson) has sent to attack him off camera... well, the proverbial business picks up. I can’t even talk about Heath Slater.
So have fun spotting all your faves - I think I got them all, but I need to give it another look to be sure - and get your closed circuit television system ready for Lethal Leap Year!