This is the first in a (possible) series of blogs about World Championship Wrestling’s 1990.

Backstage turmoil, mismanagement and a complete lack of attention to detail were commonplace in World Championship Wrestling during its nearly 13-year existence.

The fellas at the Between the Sheets podcast have long referred to the company’s many embarrassments as “WCW, everybody” moments (and boy, are they plentiful). When the promotion wasn’t busy committing unforced errors, it often – despite itself – found a way to deliver some seriously entertaining in-ring wrestling.

The promotion had one of its more interesting, wild and, to me, enjoyable years in 1990. Ole Anderson returned as both an in-ring performer and booker, the promotion really tried to freshen itself up with a more modern appearance, the uncrowned NWA World Heavyweight Champion blew out his knee in February (three weeks before the pay-per-view title match), tons of new (and returning) talent showed up on the scene, some notable names said goodbye and the year ended with one of the most baffling uses of Ric Flair one could imagine. WCW was all over the place, all year long.

Two of the new names in 1990 were Steve Armstrong and Tracy Smothers, collectively known as The “Wild Eyed” Southern Boys. Smothers and Armstrong had teamed for several years at this point – with stints in Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and Japan – and were an excellent, experienced tag team. Debuting in April, the duo added depth to an already very good tag team division.

Shortly after arriving, The Southern Boys – dressed in their Confederate soldier cosplay gear (jackets, hats, Confederate battle flag and more flags on their trunks) – were paired with another team that really loved them some Confederate imagery, The Fabulous Freebirds. Luckily for WCW, Sgt. Slaughter became an Iraqi sympathizer in the WWF and Atsushi Onita attempted to run a stabbing angle with Invader I two years after Bruiser Brody’s death. So, two teams battling over who loved the Civil War-losing Confederacy the most didn’t come close to being wrestling’s most problematic thing in 1990.

Having seen all the major televised matches (Clash of the Champions and pay-per-views) between the teams many times, I set out to watch every televised match featuring these guys that I could find (YES, I willingly set out to watch a bunch of Jimmy Garvin/Michael Hayes Freebirds matches). Finding accurate WCW TV results from this era isn’t the easiest thing in the world due to the sheer volume of television the promotion produced, but I found pretty much everything.

First things first, this feud went on for well over a year in some form. The Southern Boys even got a gimmick change in early 1991, relocating to Wyoming from “The Heartland of the South” and becoming The Young Pistols. While these Freebirds were very ungood (they were painfully uncool and their babyface run toward the end of their time together is as cringe as it gets), Armstrong and Smothers proved to be really good opponents for them.

Putting these teams together gave WCW a solid lower-card feud. They could (and often did) plug a match between these teams into any show – be it a bigger event or weekly television – and count on it to be entertaining. The Southern Boys always showed a ton of fire and The Freebirds (especially Hayes) could deliver all the silly bullshit that makes rasslin’ great. I love flips, man, but give me fewer flips and boring technical wrestling and more guys who strut, gyrate, cheat, yell at the crowd and whose actual wrestling skills can best be described as “bowling shoe ugly” (thanks Jim Ross). That’s about all The Birds were good for at this point and it worked here. It also cannot be overstated just how much the NWA/WCW crowds of the ’80s and early ’90s boosted their televised product. Hot crowds elevate everything and they absolutely did with these matches.

One of the more fun (but also disappointing) things to come out of this feud was the Best of 3 series for the “Southern Tag Team Championship.” The Birds claimed to have defeated The Southern Boys in Tupelo, Miss., to win this made-up title and they carried a big trophy around to prove it. When the tournament kicked off on the 8/4/90 edition of NWA Pro, Garvin claimed Smothers and Armstrong were phony Southerners and were “stinkin’, stinkin’, stinkin’ Northerners,” which they, naturally, did not like. Lance Russell reminded us that The Birds also claimed The Southern Boys were from Green Bay, Wisc., and were born in Canada.

The Southern Boys took the first match, while The Freebirds won the second. That match was a departure from pretty much everything else these two teams did together, as Garvin faked an injury the entire match and was only involved in the finish (he kept his sunglasses on the whole time on the apron and repeatedly told us just how hurt he was).

On the 8/19 edition of The Main Event, the third and deciding match in the series saw original Freebird Buddy Roberts run in and shove Smothers off the top rope before hitting Armstrong with a Confederate flag, giving The Southern Boys a DQ victory. This brought out Armstrong’s father, “Bullet” Bob Armstrong, who was tossed aside, but then grabbed the trophy and destroyed it after clearing the ring. Ross said that The Birds retained their Southern Tag Team Championship due to the DQ.

All of this was supposed to lead to a 6-man tag match at Clash of the Champions XII on 9/5/90, but Roberts claimed to be hurt and “Bullet” Bob came out in street clothes. A terrible bait and switch that robbed us of a nationally televised Bullet match. We ended up getting a regular tag match that ended with a Southern Boys victory following botched Roberts interference. The post-match here saw The Freebirds hit maybe their best double DDT ever on The Bullet.

Unfortunately, there was very little follow-up to this. The Freebirds added Little Richard Marley (longtime enhancement talent Rocky King) as their roadie and on the 9/15 edition of NWA Pro, took on Barry Horowitz and another Armstrong brother – Scott. Ross and Paul E. Dangerously talked about the post-match attack from The Clash and The Birds cut an inset promo bragging about it. After the match, they beat on Scott until The Southern Boys made the save.

This could’ve been a good time to freshen things up with some 6-man tags with The Southern Boys teaming with Brad Armstrong to take on The Birds and Marley, but it never happened. The teams didn’t square off again until Clash XIII on 11/20 (which was, again, supposed to be a 6-man with The Birds and Bobby Eaton against The Southern Boys and El Gigante). By that time, the angle was pretty much forgotten about, as Hayes and Garvin were feuding with Ricky Morton and Tommy Rich on television.

Funnily enough, Brad eventually became the masked third Freebird (Fantasia and later Badstreet) in mid-1991, with the trio taking on The Pistols and partners like The Z-Man and Dustin Rhodes. We did also get an odd tag match between The Freebirds and Smothers/Brad on the 1/5/91 episode of Pro with no mention of Steve’s absence.

By the end of 1991, The Pistols were heels and The Birds were faces, giving us one match between the flip-flopped teams on the 11/23 edition of World Championship Wrestling and a Garvin/Marcus Bagwell vs. Hayes/Smothers Lethal Lottery tag match at Starrcade on 12/29 (heel Pistols also meant some tremendous Smothers dance moves).

Armstrong would leave WCW in the spring of 1992, with Smothers having a couple of additional televised tags against The Birds with Tommy Rich and former Freebirds associate “Diamond” Dallas Page.

The feud was ever-so-briefly rekindled on 7/11/99 as Hayes, prepping for his 7/25 3-on-2 match with The Hardy Boyz against The Acolytes at WWF Fully Loaded, took on Smothers on WWF New York. In a sign of how times had changed, Hayes hit the DDT 30 seconds in and treated it as just another move, eventually winning with a Twist of Fate in 4 minutes.

I’m not going to tell you to seek out everything, but there’s plenty of fun stuff throughout the entirety of this start-and-stop, neverending feud. Some of it is perfectly fine, while much of it is good to extremely fun. The Best of 3 was an entertaining little TV series, though I wish we had gotten more of The Bullet in 1990 WCW.