Norvell Austin - Career - The Midnight Express

The Midnight Express

In 1980 a new team was formed in Southeast Championship Wrestling 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 Austin who wrestled as "The Junkyard Dog" before the more famous version of the Junkyard Dog used the name in wrestling. Austin recruited various partners such as Paul Orndorff, who were successful in capturing the Southeast tag team gold briefly. 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 Southeast tag team gold on May 4, 1981 and held onto the gold until July 27, 1981 where Condrey and Rose regained the titles. 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 as their own 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 would 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.

In Southeastern Championship Wrestling, the Midnight Express would win the NWA Southeastern Tag Team Title a further six times. The Express won and lost the titles to such teams as Jimmy Golden and Robert Fuller, Mongolian Stomper and Stomper Jr., ”Dizzy” Ed Hogan and Ken Lucas and Brad and Scott Armstrong.