"Butch Reed is going to start looking out for Butch Reed!"  He challenged JYD to a match for the North American title and said his loyalty to the Dog was over. 

"Friendship ain’t putting no food on my table," the "Hacksaw" declared.  Junkyard Dog came to the ring, to respond to the challenge. JYD pointed out that he had gotten Reed into Mid-South, set him up in an apartment, bought him some furniture and even got his water turned on!  JYD eventually called Reed trash, and a brawl erupted between the two. DiBiase came in, and Reed wasted no time in double-teaming JYD with the hated Rat Pack leader.
The turn transformed Reed. The fiery babyface vanished, replaced by a perpetual motion insult machine. Reed the heel was arrogant, brash and always talking trash. He even talked trash during ring introductions.

Reed and the Dog went at it in a variety of stipulation matches, and on July 16, 1983, Reed took the North American belt from his friend-turned-foe. Reed was an arrogant, trash-talking champion, and in October of that year, his mouth cost him his belt.  Reed offered to let the fans pick his challenger for a televised title defense, to show he was the "people’s champion." He would, however, reserve the right of "final acceptance." Later in the same show, he and Jim Neidhart would challenge Magnum TA and Hacksaw Duggan for the Mid-South tag titles. Reed had brought Neidhart in, saying he needed someone to watch his back.
The choices for North American title challenger were powerful newcomer Krusher Darsow, skinny newcomer Magnum TA (whom Reed had cleanly defeated a couple of weeks earlier), Hacksaw Duggan and Junkyard Dog. Duggan got a lot of support, forcing a runoff, but the fans eventually chose Junkyard Dog by a respectable margin.
Showing himself to be a better man than Reed in terms of accepting the crowd’s decision, Duggan graciously supported the Dog’s bid to become champion again.  Reed, however, had other ideas.

"I knew all these people would choose the Junkyard Dog," Reed said, adding that he would not defend against JYD because he was an underserving candidate. Reed said he had beaten the Dog on numerous occasions, rendering him an unworthy opponent. He also said JYD lacked the character needed to be champ, citing JYD’s involvement in a Reed-Duggan match from weeks earlier.  "To drop down as low as he has done, to sucker punch me, he stole on me on national TV," Reed said.

Reed went on to say Duggan didn’t deserve a title shot either, as "I done beat him in every battle of the Hacksaws."  Darsow was "too green" to get a title shot.  This left Magnum TA. Those whose memories of Magnum begin with the beefy bruiser who quickly dispatched for after foe in seconds, using the deadly belly-to-belly suplex should be aware that in Mid-South, he started as a young, scrappy babyface who never quite won the big one. On July 16, 1983, he was half of the Mid-South tag champions, but Hacksaw Duggan was really the hammer of the team.  Reed, however, declared Magnum the "only formidable opponent with credentials in the wrestling ring" and told Bill Watts, "If you or Mid-South don’t like it, there will be no title match!"

Magnum TA’s challenge to Reed did not look like it would be much of a challenge at all. Reed had handily dispatched TA on more than one occasion, and this match looked like it would end in a familiar manner.  Reed’s plan was apparent – he would destroy Magnum in the singles match, making him easy pickings Mid-South officials, displeased with Reed’s bait-and-switch tactics, had a surprise for him -- special referee Junkyard Dog.  Reed was furious, but Dog called it right down the middle, although he eventually counted three on Reed and crowned Magnum the new champion.  Magnum, however, was so worn from his bout that he was the weak link in the Magnum-Duggan team that ended up dropping the belts to Reed and Neidhart later in the show.

Magnum did not last long as North American champ. Twelve days after his win, Nikolai Volokff beat him for the title before both Mid-South rendered both title changes void. Officials decided that Reed’s vow to defend against an opponent of the fans’ choosing was a binding oral contract, thus negating Magnum’s win and Volkoff’s subsequent victory. Reed suddenly had all the gold in Mid-South, but not for long.  At last, the TV match was set, with the North American title on the line – Butch Reed vs. Junkyard Dog. Oh, but Mid-South wasn’t finished with Reed yet. Once again, it was time for a special referee. This time, it was "American Dream" Dusty Rhodes.

To the surprise of just about no one, Reed was without a North American belt a few minutes later.  Reed and Neidhart kept a chokehold on the tag belts, however, at least until a hungry Magnum TA came back for some vengeance. This time, he had as his partner the legendary Mr. Wrestling II, who had been training the youngster from Virginia Beach.  The feud between the four culminated in a cage match in New Orleans on Christmas 1983. Reed and Neidhart put up their belts, and II vowed to unmask if he and Magnum lost.

II didn’t unmask.

In a classics locker-room interview, Reed and Neidhart blamed each other for the loss and went to war on the spot. Their feud was brief and did not seem to have a clear-cut face. Watts even referred to Neidhart as a "man without a country."  The final matches between the two men involved a football helmet on a pole. Neidhart got the helmet first, but Reed got it from him, and beat him senseless with it, continuing the attack after the match until Terry Taylor came in to save Neidhart from oblivion. Reed relented and left the ring, but as Taylor checked on Neidhart, Reed leaned in and cracked Taylor on the head with the helment before walking off.
The incident showed Taylor’s character, as he put himself in harm’s way to save a despicable heel.  Taylor and Reed’s feud occupied the Hacksaw during the spring, a time during which Reed would find a new tag team partner, "Nature Boy" Buddy Landel.
Landel had been a dark-haired, preliminary babyface, but was reborn as the bleached-blond punk who was convinced he as the greatest wrestler and baddest man around.  Taylor was an odds-on favorite to win the tournament that would crown the first-ever Mid-South TV champ. He was to face Reed in the semifinals, but Reed came out with his arm in a sling, claiming Taylor had injured him by running him into the ring post during an out-of-ring altercation earlier in the show.  When Taylor looked away, Reed took his arm out of the sling and nailed Taylor, while wearing the dreaded coal miner’s glove. The glove contained metal studs that made any punch deadly.

Taylor vomited in the ring from the stomach blow he took with the glove, and the match was called off. A week later, Mid-South officials ruled the match was a disqualification win for Taylor, because of the attack. Reed was so furious that he destroyed a box of flowers Taylor had received from a fan, just prior to Taylor’s tournament final match against Krusher Khruschev (Darsow, who had become a Soviet sympathizer).  Taylor went out of the ring and seethed over his flowers, but Reed ran back and attacked Taylor, piledriving him on the floor.  The heinous attack gave Taylor a major neck injury, but he came back for his final match against Khruschev. Taylor was far from 100 percent, however, and Khruschev put him away with only token resistance.  The Taylor-Reed house show matches that ensued ended in many victories for Taylor, establishing him as a major star in Mid-South.

Reed’s losses would quickly become distant memories, as he was about to ignite Phase Two of his most heated feud – the war with Junkyard Dog. The opening salvos in this battle spanned wrestling promotions. Dog had revived his masked Stagger Lee persona for a feud with the freshly turned heel Mr. Wrestling II. During a match, Reed and Landel came in and attacked JYD, painting him yellow.  Soon after, JYD appeared on Memphis TV (he was still sitting out 90 days after dropping a loser-leaves match), only to find Tennessee would hold no refuge against the big Hacksaw and his bleached, motormouthed sidekick.
The diabolical duo repeated their Mid-South attack, painting the Dog and leaving him lying.  Soon after, the 90 days was up. JYD’s first matches back were ghetto street fights against Reed at house shows. It took interference from Landel and the returning Ernie Ladd, but Reed won the matches. Landel usually paid in pain or humiliation after the match, courtesy of JYD and returning legend Sonny King. Tag matches with JYD & King versus Reed and Ernie Ladd followed. Then came dog-collar matches, "hospital elimination" matches and more. As the feud seemed to hit its apex, half of it vanished.

JYD bolted to the WWF without notice, leaving Mid-South honcho Bill Watts furious and Reed without an arch-rival.  Mid-South tried to plug in journeyman wrestler George Wells into JYD’s spot, as Master G, a wrestler determined to take up for JYD’s good name. He and Reed battled around the horn, but the feud never really sparked. As Watts looked around for a charismatic, athletic African American to fill the Dog’s niche, he saw that everything he was looking for was right under his nose.  Watts and booker Bill Dundee in Fall 1984 crafted an angle that would seek to catapult the hated Reed into top babyface status. Ironically, the angle that would turn Reed into a top babyface would focus on the same prideful arrogance that had made him so hated for so long.
But we’ll get into that next month.

NEXT MONTH: 

Part two of the Butch Reed story, with the war against Devastation, an unfulfilled quest and an ignominious exit.