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Famed Midnight vs. Rock-N-Roll Express rivalry renewed

Posted: Dec 22nd 2014 By: Mike Mooneyham

Few pro wrestling feuds have lasted as long as the celebrated rivalry between The Midnight Express and The Rock 'N Roll Express.

In fact, it's been more than three decades since two of the greatest teams in the history of professional wrestling first embarked on a journey that would be fondly remembered years later by a generation of fans.

That storied rivalry will be renewed on Jan. 10 in Spartanburg when The Original Midnight Express (Dennis Condrey and Randy Rose) team up for the first time in nearly 20 years to battle The Rock 'N Roll Express (Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson) in a match that is sure to rekindle memories of the glory days of Mid-Atlantic wrestling.

To add even more luster to the Big Time Wrestling event, Midnight Express manager Jim Cornette and longtime Midnight member Bobby Eaton will be in their team's corner, while The Rock 'N Express will be seconded by hall of famers Ricky Steamboat and Jimmy Valiant.

The match holds special significance for Rose, who first formed a stable with Condrey and Norvell Austin known as The Midnight Express in 1981.

The Rose-Condrey team started in the Pensacola, Fla., area where the two won the Southeastern tag-team title on 10 occasions.

Rose (real name Randy Alls), who also held the tag belts with Ron Bass, Jimmy Golden and Pat Rose, was working his way up the card when promoters Ron and Robert Fuller brought in Condrey from Atlanta.

"I had the long blond hair, and I was living on the beach," recalls Rose. "I would get out there in the second match and I would bust my tail. I ended up getting over and having some great matches."

Condrey, who also sported long blond hair at the time, was a good worker and resembled Rose, and the two were put together as a heel team.

"We weren't related, but we did look a lot alike," says Rose. "The Fullers brought Dennis down here and got him started with me. They stuck us in semis and main events. We got over really strong as heels."

Next stop for "Ravishing" Randy Rose and "Loverboy" Dennis Condrey was Memphis where they first began using the Midnight Express moniker. The duo eventually was dissolved when Rose had to take time off for back surgery.

Fate, though, would rear its head when Oklahoma-based promoter Cowboy Bill Watts brought in two young duos that wound up setting his territory on fire.

Virtually untested as a team when they arrived in 1984, Morton and Gibson's Rock 'N Roll Express would become a main-event act as crowds picked up to see them do battle with a team they would forever be linked with - Cornette's new version of The Midnight Express consisting of "Loverboy" Dennis (Condrey) and "Beautiful" Bobby (Eaton).

"Dennis had gone back to Memphis," recalls Rose. "That's when Bill Watts came in and had the idea of bringing Cornette down to Louisiana and teaming them up."

With Condrey and Eaton, a well-oiled team made even better by Cornette's natural ability to infuriate fans, Morton and Gibson found the perfect opponents.

Cornette and his team had arrived in the territory shortly before Morton and Gibson, and were beating opponents on a nightly basis.

The two teams were no strangers.

"I had worked with Dennis and Bobby all my life," says Morton. "Dennis had been with Norvell Austin and Randy Rose. And then he and Phil Hickerson were partners. Bobby and Dennis were both great workers. We had been around each other for years."

The Mid-South territory became unglued when the two "Express" teams first locked horns.

"It went to a whole new level. The time we were there, Bill Watts made more money than he ever did while owning his territory," boasts Morton.

"Watts had never used smaller guys. But we were pushed. There were such great workers at that time. Everybody knew how to do their job and they knew how to get us over. It worked out great."

Rose and Condrey wouldn't team up again until 1987 when they reunited in Verne Gagne's Minnesota-based AWA with an up-and-coming Paul E. Dangerously (Paul Heyman) as their manager.

"We won the world tag belts from Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee," says Condrey, who adds that the promotion's exposure on ESPN gave them national visibility.

The following year, after dropping the AWA tag belts to The Midnight Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty), the two resurfaced in the NWA to do battle with the "new" Midnight Express that consisted of Eaton and Stan Lane.

A feud between the two Midnight teams, one managed by Dangerously and the other by Cornette, was one of the hottest in the NWA during that period, building up to a six-man tag match involving the managers on pay-per-view in February 1989.

For some unknown reason, though, higher-ups cut the program short.

"It was one of the hottest angles going," says Rose. "We had just come in from the AWA, and we had gotten over pretty strong. We went to Vegas every month where we were on ESPN TV. We were really over."

Rose remains puzzled to this day as to why the company didn't push the program harder.

He recalls an event the NWA (which would later morph into WCW) ran in Las Vegas where a year earlier Rose and Condrey had headlined shows for the AWA.

"I think Dusty (Rhodes) and (Ric) Flair were on the card. They had billed us as the main event, but ended up sticking us in the second match. Thirty or 40 people got out of their front-row seats that night and left."

"We were over like a million bucks on ESPN," says Rose. "But in my opinion they didn't know anything about drawing power. I wish we could have went on with that thing. It could have made some money. But the powers-at-be apparently didn't want it to exist. We had some great ideas. You had four good workers in there and two of the greatest managers in the business. It was an opportunity that didn't play out."

Eventually the other Midnight group with Cornette as manager would dissolve as well. Cornette's fiery temper continued to clash with WCW's front office, and he left the company for good in 1990 after a series of disagreements, culminating with a falling out with executive Jim Herd.

Cornette took Lane with him, but Eaton decided to stay.

For the first team in a decade, there was no Midnight Express.

"We never even fought with Herd about the money. We just fought with him about the fact that he was wiping his feet on us when we could still outperform everybody else on the roster. It didn't make sense," says Cornette.

The contentious Cornette was the glue that held the rivalry together over all these many years and different incarnations of Midnight Express teams. And the focal point more often than not was Cornette's "Louisville Slugger" tennis racket.

Cornette figures the two teams locked horns on several hundred occasions, and that's probably the number of times he whacked his duo's archrivals over their heads.

"I don't know that there might have been a match where I didn't slap one of them with the racket," he laughs.

Morton, 58, and Gibson, 56, still team up on occasion. While the former teen idols maintain a sizable following, their fan base now consists mostly of an older demographic that fondly remember the days when Rock 'N Roll locked horns with the likes of The Road Warriors, The Four Horsemen and, of course, The Midnight Express.

Morton and Gibson were The Beatles of the wrestling scene as they combined sex appeal with high energy and talent in the ring.

More than 30 years later, their hair is thinner and those adoring teenybopper fans have children of their own, but Morton and Gibson are still entertaining wrestling crowds and keeping the memories alive.

Rose also fondly looks back at his days in the business.

"All the way back to doing to the old jobber thing in Atlanta on Channel 17," he laughs. "One of my buddies, Gary Hart, said, 'You've got to get out of here kid,' so I took off from Georgia and in my second year in the business I went to Australia, New Zealand, Japan a couple of times, and Korea. I did a lot of other stuff than just the Midnight."

Rose won his first major title, the Central States heavyweight championship, from Dick Murdoch in 1979.

Rose, who says he got a lot of help along the way, credits the late Bruiser Brody (Frank Goodish) with taking him under his wing and helping guide his career.

"He taught me a lot of things. He took no crap from anybody. He was one tough dude."

Rose, who wrestled full-time from 1977-94, runs a successful business in the Atlanta area, R&R Lifts, and attends major car shows around the country where he sells automotive equipment.

It's been a dozen years since Rose worked his last match, but he is eagerly looking forward to Jan. 10 when he steps back into the ring and renews an old rivalry - and some old friendships.

"I think it will be great. When Dennis and I started and we went to Memphis, one of the guys in the business that I really idolized was Ricky Gibson (Robert's older brother). The matches he and Bobby Shane used to have at the (Atlanta) Municipal Auditorium were great. He and Bob Orton Jr. helped me and stretched me. We went to Memphis and worked with Ricky and Robert up there. I guess we've come full tilt."

Rose says the upcoming show in Spartanburg may be the last battle between the two Express teams.

"I never had the great Rock and Roll (program) like they did, but one of the greatest angles that we ever had was against Cornette and those guys. The opportunity to be in there now with those guys may be the last time you ever see Midnight against Rock 'N Roll, especially with Cornette in our corner."

While Rose is rightfully proud of his many accomplishments in the wrestling business, perhaps his greatest moment came a few years ago when he was indirectly responsible for saving Johnny "Mr. Wrestling No. 2" Walker's life.

Walker suffered a heart attack during the final day of the 2010 Fanfest event in Charlotte, just two days after being inducted into the Mid-Atlantic Legends Hall of Heroes.

"It was the first heart attack I had ever had, and I didn't even know I had it then," Walker recalled. "I had a hard time breathing, but I didn't have any pain."

Walker, who was in his mid-'70s at the time, says he was sitting on the edge of his bed when Rose called to say hello and ask how he was doing.

"He was up there in Charlotte with you guys, and I had just come back from church that morning," relates Rose, who lives in Kennesaw, Ga. "I was coming down Interstate 75 back from church when I called him. I asked him how he was doing."

"I'm doing fine except for the fact that I can't breathe," Walker told Rose, who immediately went into action.

"He kept telling me that he couldn't breathe," says Rose. "I pulled over on the side of the road and told him to get the number to where he was at the hotel and what room he was in. I called straight to the front desk. I told them to not send a security guard up there, but to call the hospital and the EMS right away. They shot straight up there and took him to the hospital. Praise God."

Before Walker knew it, he was being carted off to a medical facility across the street.

"You've had a heart attack, young man," emergency technicians informed Walker.

"I had never been ill in my life ... at least not that kind of ill," said Walker, who thought the EMTs had to be kidding.

They were deadly serious, though, and Walker spent the next few weeks hospitalized, waiting for a kidney problem to clear up before he could undergo a triple bypass.

Rose says he can't take credit for saving his friend's life.

"I didn't do it. I think the good Lord did it. Timing is everything. I had just happened to call him to see how he was doing."

Walker, who is now 80 and living in Hawaii, flew to Atlanta to attend Rose's wedding two years ago.

"What a great guy. And the fans still love him."

Also on the show

Matt Hardy will face hardcore legend Sabu in a Tables, Ladders and Chairs match in another featured match. Also scheduled to appear are Barry Windham, Ron Simmons, Mickie James vs. Tessa Blanchard (Tully's daughter) with guest referee Melissa Coates, special BTW Commissioner Teddy Long, BTW champion Flex Armstrong, plus others.

Bell time is 7:30 p.m. A meet and greet is slated at 5:30.

Tickets are available at the Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium box office, BTWTickets.com, Ticketmaster and area Publix super markets.