The Midnight Express (professional wrestling)
This group disbanded in 1983, but later the same year a new version of the Midnight Express was formed in Mid-South Wrestling by teaming up Condrey and Bobby Eaton, with Cornette as their manager.
After leaving Mid-South, the Midnight Express competed briefly in WCCW (Dallas) before moving on to Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP).
In 1998, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) teamed up Bob Holly and Bart Gunn as "The Midnight Express", who were also managed by Jim Cornette.
[1] Norvell Austin adopted the masked persona of "The Shadow" and teamed with Brad Armstrong to defeat Condrey and Rose for the title on May 4, 1981.
[4] The Midnight Express lost the AWA Southern tag team title to Bobby Eaton and Sweet Brown Sugar before returning to SECW in the spring of 1982.
Condrey and Eaton won their first tag team championship when Mr. Wrestling II turned on Magnum T. A. and attacked him during a match, allowing The Midnight Express to walk away with the titles without much opposition.
Collectively Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton held 53 tag team titles, setting the record in all of professional wrestling.
This team was The Rock 'n' Roll Express (Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson), with whom they started a long-running series of matches that would last well into the 1990s and span several wrestling promotions.
The two Expresses had a series of matches which differed from the way tag team wrestling was presented at the time and drew attention both locally and nationally.
The Midnight Express had a short stay in World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas where they feuded mainly with The Fantastics (Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers).
Bubba Rogers worked a few dates to fulfill obligations, but Dusty Rhodes made the decision to pick Stan Lane who was a singles star in Florida at the time.
The Midnight Express's title run only lasted a little over a month and a half before the Road Warriors (who had recently turned heel on Sting) took the gold from them in a brutal match.
The unit won the AWA World Tag Team Championship in October 1987 after defeating Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee, then “lost” the titles to The Midnight Rockers in December.
Due to various differences over the direction of the Midnight Express, Cornette, Lane, and Eaton also left JCP briefly, a few months after Ted Turner purchased the company and it was renamed World Championship Wrestling (WCW).
Jim Cornette duped the Dudes into thinking he wanted to be their manager but then turned on them during their match against the Midnight Express at Clash of the Champions IX in New York.
Cornette, already frustrated over what he perceived as the burial of Lane and Eaton by WCW President Jim Herd, discovered the next day that the Express was booked for four matches at the October 30 World Championship Wrestling TV tapings in Atlanta, Georgia, and they were to lose all of them.
