The Midnight Express (professional wrestling)
| The Midnight Express | |
|---|---|
| Statistics | |
| Name(s) |
The Midnight Express The Original Midnight Express The New Midnight Express |
| Former member(s) |
Randy Rose Jack Victory Norvell Austin Bombastic Bob Bodacious Bart Rikki Nelson Stan Lane Dennis Condrey Bobby Eaton |
| Debut | 1980 |
| Disbanded | 2011 |
| Promotions |
AWA ECW JCP WCW WWF WCCW CWA SECW |
The Midnight Express is a name used by a number of different professional wrestling tag teams over the years, starting in the early 1980s. The original group consisted of Dennis Condrey, Randy Rose and Norvell Austin. Over the years members have left or joined the team including Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane all under the management of either Jim Cornette or Paul E. Dangerously. In the late 1980s Condrey and Rose wrestled as "The Original Midnight Express" and even worked a storyline against the then Midnight Express team of Eaton and Lane. In the 1990s the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) took two of their wrestlers and turned them into "The New Midnight Express", Bob Holly as "Bombastic" Bob and Bart Gunn as "Bodacious" Bart. A combination of Condrey, Eaton and Lane occasionally compete as the Midnight Express on the independent circuit.
In 1980 a new team was formed in Southeast Championship Wrestling (SECW) when Dennis Condrey’s previous partner Don Carson retired. Condrey teamed up with Randy Rose and won the NWA Southeast Tag Team Championship shortly after they started teaming up. The team started a storyline feud with Norvell Austin who was one of the regulars in SECW. Austin recruited various partners such as Paul Orndorff, who were successful in briefly capturing the Southeast tag team gold. In an attempt to throw Rose and Condrey off Austin would adopt the masked persona of “The Shadow” and together with Brad Armstrong defeat the team for the titles on May 4, 1981, holding them until July 27, 1981 before losing the belts back to Condrey and Rose. After the title loss Austin turned on Armstrong and joined up with Condrey and Rose to form a stable (group) known as The Midnight Express. In the book The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Tag Teams Condrey explains that the name did not stem from the movie Midnight Express (although later versions of the Midnight Express would use the film’s theme by Giorgio Moroder as their theme music) but from the fact that they all dressed in black, drove black cars, and were out partying past midnight. Together the three men would win the AWA Southern Tag Team title in the CWA and invoke a rule that’d later be referred to as the Freebird Rule which allowed any two of the three men to defend the titles on a given night so that their opponents never knew what combination to expect. The Midnight Express would lose the AWA Southern tag team title to Bobby Eaton and Sweet Brown Sugar before returning to SECW in the spring of 1982. Upon their return to Southeastern Championship Wrestling the Midnight Express would quickly regain the Southeastern Tag Team title from Robert Fuller and Jimmy Golden on September 27, 1982. The Express then became involved in a feud with the Mongolian Stomper and his storyline son “Mongolian Stomper Jr.” whom they would lose the Southeastern title to but ultimately regain as they sent Stomper and Stomper Jr. packing. After having dealt with the Stompers the Midnight Express’ next challengers came in the form of the odd duo of ”Dizzy” Ed Hogan and local workhorse Ken Lucas. Hogan and Lucas won the tag team title in June only to see the Midnight Express use their 3-on-2 advantage to regain the titles. Despite holding the titles once more in July 1983 it was not long until the Midnight Express finally got the better of their challengers by reclaiming the titles for good by the end of July 1983. The Midnight Express’ final feud in the SECW was with the local heroes Jimmy Golden and Robert Fuller who managed to drive the group out of SECW, at least in storyline terms. After dropping the Southeastern Tag Team titles to Brad and Scott Armstrong, Austin, Condrey and Rose went their separate ways.
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