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With the passing of Beautiful Bobby Eaton last week, professional wrestling lost one of its most acclaimed, yet also underrated performers. If you worked inside professional wrestling or were a true discerning fan of what made professional wrestling tick in the best way possible, you probably loved the hell out of Bobby Eaton.
However, there are many of you too young to have seen or watched the Midnight Express in their prime or perhaps you just weren't lucky enough to witness Bobby Eaton, the performer, live or on television in the moment.
So, here are five great Bobby Eaton performances worth tracking down on the WWE Network/Peacock in my humble opinion. I won't go too much into spoiler territory here to try and not ruin the matches for you if you've never seen them.
My criteria here was very simple - I disqualified matches against the Rock N' Roll Express. Everyone knows they were Eaton's greatest rivals in the ring and it's too easy to just point to them. We know those matches are great and you can find them and enjoy them.
Instead, These are the matches personally I chose to go back and watch the day after I learned of Eaton's untimely passing beyond his bouts against Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson because these were some of the matches I remembered loving growing up. Hopefully you will as well, especially if you haven't seen them before. God bless Bobby Eaton.
The Midnight Express vs. The Fantastics - March 27, 1988 - NWA Clash of Champions I
This day will always be remembered as the day Randy Savage won the WWF title at Wrestlemania on PPV while Sting was becoming a legitimate star on national TV the same afternoon, but one of the real gems of that day is this match for the NWA United States Tag Team Championship. The feud, rekindled from their run in World Class and elsewhere, saw Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers at their hottest on a national level tear Greensboro, NC down with one of the wildest, hottest brawls of that time period. Bobby Eaton was in his bumping glory here while also showcasing one of the all time best right hands ever. He and Stan Lane were tremendous heels here, knowing when to be utter a-holes and when to scamper away in fear without losing an ounce of credibility. Everyone here takes the time they had and makes it work, starting out with an out of hand brawl all over ringside before settling into a more traditional tag bout.
The Midnight Express vs. The Fantastics - July 10, 1988 - NWA Great American Bash 1988 - The Price for Freedom
A rematch featuring an excellent Jim Cornette performance as he's tied up in a straitjacket and hung above the ring (no one has ever pulled this deal off better in my opinion) even before the bell rings, at which point Lane and Eaton vs. Fulton and Rogers pull off one of the most perfect back and forth examples of tag team psychology, taking a very game Baltimore audience on a tremendous ride. Everyone who wants to claim tag team wrestling can't work in 2021 should be forced to watch this match over and over, it's that great.
The Midnight Express vs. Ric Flair & Barry Windham December 7, 1988 - NWA Clash of the Champions IV - Season's Beatings
Four of the best in-ring performers in their prime go for 20 minutes on national TV. In another universe, these four would have been the continuation of the Four Horsemen after the departure of Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard from Jim Crockett Promotions. Instead, this match pretty much closed the book on the Horsemen vs. The Midnight Express in stellar fashion, showing the world how superior, at the time, the NWA's in-ring product was over the WWF. Eaton's chemistry with Ric Flair here is absolutely fun to watch and their singles bouts on NWA TV (none of which currently available to stream on WWE Network/Peacock but can be found on YouTube) are equally great, especially a NWA Main Event episode headlined by the two in early 1990.
The Midnight Express vs. The Southern Boys - July 7, 1990 - NWA Great American Bash 1990 - New Revolution
One of the best matches of that year anywhere, this match completely stole the show from Sting's first World title win later in the evening. If there was a textbook on how to take a younger upstart team and give them great credibility over the course of a match, this would be the accompanying video. Without giving anything away, Eaton and Lane pretty much give the early portion of this bout away to make the audience believe Steve Armstrong and Tracy Smothers are as legit as can be. There's a great mini-karate showdown in this as well that's tons of fun. A great accounting for The Midnights as one of the best heel teams of all time here.
Bobby Eaton vs. Arn Anderson - WCW Superbrawl '91
In the wake of the end of the Midnight Express when Jim Cornette and Stan Lane exited WCW, Bobby was the last man standing. Arn Anderson, in many ways, was a similar survivor, remaining with WCW for eons as other members of the original Four Horsemen exited, some returning, some never appearing consistently again for the promotion. With the exposition from years ago that they were "best friends" outside the ring ingratiated in the minds of long-time fans, what this bout presents is a great, old school pro wrestling story with an Anderson working over an extremity over babyface Eaton, who has to fight from behind in his quest to win the WCW World Television Championship. This is a moment in time where two of the best blue-collar workers of any era had the chance to steal the show and then they go out do just that.
Obviously, all of this is subjective, but I stand by my five choices here. It's rare that anything from your childhood holds up when the veil of nostalgia is ripped away but these bouts, all of them, hold up as great examples as to why Eaton was so great at what he did inside the ring and I sincerely hope this opens the doors for everyone to fall down the rabbit hole of all things Beautiful Bobby and of course, The Midnight Express.
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