9 Things We Learned Watching Southpaw Regional Wrestling
The lost territory shows us how great this business can truly be.
The classic territory of Southpaw Regional Wrestling, once thought lost to the ether of fading memories, has now been blessedly unearthed from deep within the bowels of the WWE archives by some Howard Carter-esque intern on a mission to save the dying business of professional wrestling by allowing fans a glimpse into the glory days of the sport we all love.
SRW was a haven of grappling talent during its 1980s heydey. Anyone with a name spent time plying their trade between the ropes there, vying to wrest the title from the rigid, charismatic grasp of champion John Johnson.
Thus far only four episodes have been uploaded, with WWE wisely choosing to hold back unleashing more of the footage to avoid the collapsing migration of the entire Raw and SmackDown audience. But that quartet of programming has set the fanbase on fire, demanding the release of the entire SRW library on the Network, or else we'll be forced to get #CancelWWENetwork trending once again.
For those of you who've read this far and aren't in on the joke, forgive me for shattering kayfabe, but SRW is actually a parody YouTube series put together by the WWE talent themselves, and it's utterly brilliant.
Check out the best stuff we learned watching these all-too-few episodes.
9. Anderson & Gallows Are Now Permanent Faces
Now that we've got the intro out of the way, it's necessary to abandon the escapism for a bit to delve into what makes SRW so great. To do that, we must start by recognizing the talent of Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows, two men who reportedly helped give birth to the entire idea.
If you're familiar with the friends... the compadres... the amigos... the hermanos... outside the context of their current characters you're no doubt aware how gut-busting hilarious the two can be. For proof, just go listen to their "Talk'n Shop" appearances on Talk is Jericho, where the Raw tag champs sit down with host Y2J as well as the likes of AJ Styles and Braun Strowman and cut loose.
Between absurd tales of their travels throughout the zany world of wrestling and their spot-on imitations of iconic figures of the business, both Anderson and Gallows are some of the funniest men to ever grace the squared circle.
You wouldn't know it by watching them on Raw. In fact, their attempts at humor - no doubt written by an entire "creative" team instead of the performers themselves - have been anti-funny. Look no further than the "Old Day" skits as evidence.
Now that Tex Ferguson (Gallows) and Chad 2 Badd (Anderson) have taken SRW by storm as two of the most standout characters, it's going to be hard to take them seriously as hard*ss tough guys.
What's more likely to happen is the crowd turns them babyface, and WWE either ignores the reaction entirely and stubbornly forges ahead with them as heels - something they've shown a fondness for doing, although usually with the opposite alignments - or they react accordingly and let the guys set their true personalities free.
Hopefully it's the latter, because that's where the money is.