February 02, 1987
- Rewinder note: Thursday's Rewind will be going up about an hour early because I have an eye exam.
- Jim Neidhart has been accused of punching a flight attendant. Supposedly she asked him to pay for the beers she served him and he punched her arm several times. He missed a show, but is back on the loop after posting bond. If convicted, he faces a $10k fine and up to twenty years (We’ll get to the resolution of this eventually, but he’ll be acquitted and countersue for defamation. Bret’s book says Jim blew most of the money from the countersuit on coke and a motorcycle).
- Wrestlemania 3 will come from just one location rather than three like last year. The Pontiac Silverdome will be the arena. Turns out there were a lot of problems with trying to run from three sites, though it was a lucrative model (Wrestlemania 2 took in $1.1 million at the gate, which Dave says, I shit you not, “saved the show from being more of a holacaust [sic] than it was.” Wow, that’s a pretty fucked up metaphor). Dave says that for wrestling the Silverdome should hold around 85,000 fans, which would make the potential gate over $2 million. Lots of good reasons to run Detroit, including the February 21 Saturday Night’s Main Event tapings being there, Ontario being one of their hottest cities and right across the border, and avoiding the double whammy of Canadian taxes and the US/Canada exchange rate (an August show in Toronto took in $1.2 million Canadian at the gate, which converted to $650,000 after conversion and taxes).
- The main event of that upcoming SNME taping will be a battle royal featuring Hogan and Andre. Dave speculates that, given the closest Hogan will come to jobbing is being thrown over the top, Andre will win by eliminating Hogan. (Not quite, Dave. Hercules will win this one). They’re also doing Savage vs. Steele with the winner getting Elizabeth.
- Roddy Piper said he’d retire from wrestling after his Wrestlemania match with Adrian Adonis. This was in the January 24 edition of the Toronto Sun, and Dave notes this is early for Piper’s usual attempt to get leverage for a fatter contract heading into the summer. Maybe he really does mean it because he has been saying since he was 25 that he’d retire by 35 (nope). Maybe it’s just hyping the gate for the February 15 Toronto show, since WWF is billing it as his last live appearance in Toronto (he’ll have a few more before he hangs it up for good, including at Wrestlemania 6).
- With two months out until the show, Dave runs down what the Wrestlemania card will likely entail. Andre vs. Hogan (check), Savage vs. Steamboat (Dave guesses a cage, but that’s wrong), Hart Foundation vs. Can-Am Connection for the tag titles (Dave notes this might depend on how Neidhart’s legal issues go; he winds up way off here), Piper vs. Adonis (check), JYD vs. Harley Race (check), Butch Reed vs. Tito Santana (Santana winds up on the side of the Bulldogs vs. the Hart Foundation and Reed wrestles Koko B. Ware), Hercules vs. Billy Jack Haynes (check, though Dave speculates a chain match and is off there).
- Dave’s been asked a lot about tv ratings recently, so we have numbers. JCP’s Saturday evening WTBS show had plummeted 35.5% from November 1985 to November 1986. The numbers are really concerning, and the decline has been ongoing for the past 4.5 years. The steepest part of the decline began in June, when Dusty went to the well of short matches and more talking. Weirdly, live attendance is way up while ratings are dropping. Their Saturday morning TBS show is holding steady, though. The highest rated syndicated wrestling show going is WWF Superstars of Wrestling, ranking 56th among all syndicated shows (UWF’s Tulsa show ranks 88th and UWF’s Fort Worth show is in 94th. GLOW, which Dave dismisses as not really wrestling, is the next highest). WWF likes to tout 8.5 to 9.9 ratings nationally, but they get those numbers by adding together the shows they have in different markets and using that combined rating. Interestingly, all wrestling ratings are down a bit, but Dave suspects this is more due to oversaturation than loss of wrestling’s popularity.
- With Duggan officially gone from UWF, he managed to do no televised jobs on the way out. The tag titles (which he held with Terry Taylor) are now vacant, and there will be a tournament spread over a few weeks of Power Pro episodes. Dave lists the teams in the tournament and predicts Sam Houston and Terry Taylor to win because they seem the least likely to win and UWF is basically unpredictable (Terry Taylor and Chris Adams wind up winning the final despite not being a team. More on that when it comes up).
- [JCP] Ric Flair and Barry Windham had an absolutely fantastic match recently. It took up an entire episode of Worldwide without a winner. Dave saw a truncated version that aired on WTBS and it was so stellar that he and some friends were jazzed to watch more classic Flair and put on a 1982 Flair/Steamboat match. No comparison, this Flair and Windham match blew it out of the water and Windham and Flair today are just leagues beyond 1982 Flair and Steamboat as wrestlers.
- Watch: The finish of that Flair/Windham match
- Crockett is giving up on the bouncer they hired to be a Russian. New hype is for a Russian they’re calling “The Big Red Machine.” Guess Kane is actually a communist and not a libertarian. Word is this new one will be John Nord.
- Luger starts with JCP soon, and Dave doesn’t want to give away the angle. He just says that it’s going to take two months to play out and people are guessing pretty much what’s likely to happen. Dave says Luger will probably jump Windham in a few weeks to start his first singles feud.
- [WWF] Hogan has sold out MSG for the third time in a row here as of the January 21 show. Hogan beat Kamala for that one.
- WWF has a tv taping the night after this issue is printed and rumor has it they’re going to do a tag title switch. Supposedly they’re bringing in Dynamite to stand in the corner while Davey Boy loses to the Hart Foundation, but who knows how the Neidhart situation could complicate that.
- [Memphis] Jerry Lawler did a stretcher job on January 11, and they then announced on tv that he had groin surgery and would be out for a few months. Looks like a total work, but Dave has two sources who say Lawler did in fact have minor surgery and this angle was designed to cover for his absence. Right as Memphis is gaining momentum, they lose Lawler right in the middle of it.
- WCCW is headlining their January 30th show with Tony Atlas & Dingo Warrior & David Manning vs. Percy Pringle & Matt Borne & Master G. I’m just in awe of the fact that I wrote a sentence where Paul Bearer and Doink are teaming against Saba Simba and the Ultimate Warrior.
- Dave pretty much shits on Verne Gagne and says he has no clue anymore. AWA is doing a battle royal at the Cow Palace, which will draw, but the names they’ve announced so far are uninspiring and they’re hinting that local football legend Leo Nomellini might be in the match. It’s not 1962 anymore (and in the case of Leo, it’s not the 50s anymore when he was a first round draft pick). Also there was apparently a really great Rockers & Candi Divine vs. Doug Somers & Buddy Rose & Sherri Martel where the heels double suplexed Candi after the match.
- In Alabama, Buddy Landel is replacing Kevin Sullivan as the manager of the Headhunters. They’re kayfabing this as Landel winning the contract in a poker game.
- Fujinami and Kimura’s feud in New Japan has been going real well. As part of their latest match, Kimura vowed to retire from wrestling if he lost (Fujinami submitted him), so if Kimura is working under a mask in UWF as Dave suspects, word will get out sooner or later and the Japanese magazines will all be reporting on it.
- [AJW] The Crush Girls have reunited. A lot has changed since their heyday of 1984-1985, but Dave notes that they used to get crowds hot like you’d never see in the U.S. Even Hogan can’t touch the reactions Chigusa Nagayo could out of AJW crowds.
- Watch: The Crush Gals vs. the Jumping Bomb Angels from their 1984 heyday
- The answers to the last Observer trivia contest have been published. These used to happen, back before the ability to just google everything would have rendered it moot. Some neat stuff here, but I’m amused by this note: “Who is the oldest man ever to hold a major World title? This was almost a freebie as the answer is Verne Gagne, who held the AWA title until May 10, 1981--when he was either 55 or 56 years old, depending upon which birthday you accept as legit.” Fun facts based on updating to the present day - Verne still holds that record. Vince McMahon’s WWF Title reign happened when he was 54. If you count the WWE version of the ECW belt as a world title, then Vince holds the record because he was 61 when he won that. Of course, Moolah (fuck Moolah) takes the cake if you remove the “man” stipulation, with her 1999 reign as WWF Women’s Champion taking place when she was 76.