February 16, 1987
- With Crockett expanding its schedule to compete with most of the remaining old NWA territories, there are talks of a “new” NWA forming. Several promoters are talking about the possibility. At the forefront is Florida’s Duke Keomuka, who is trying to get the Pacific Northwest, Central States (Bob Geigel is bringing it back as an independent entity on March 1, y’all), Continental, and WCCW offices to join up with him. If history teaches us anything, cooperation is not something wrestling promoters are good at, so Dave doesn’t see anything substantial happening. Sure, they could trade talent and recognize a single world champion and assist each other against threatening WWF/JCP/UWF cards, but looking at what Florida/PNW/WCCW/Continental/Central States have, it’s not much. If Florida needs help running a show against Crockett, what in the world can PNW/Central States even offer? And no way will Fritz Von Erich get involved if they don’t recognize Kevin as the world champ, but would he really be willing to send Kevin to Kansas City for a show with only 200 people? Dave’s skeptical about anything real coming out of this, but he does figure we’re likely to see some talent trades between Florida and Alabama and maybe Brody and Kevin Von Erich will work the Florida territory now and again.
- Wrestlemania hype is in full gear now that Andre vs. Hogan has officially been announced. Dave should have a complete card in a week, but he knows there will be twelve matches and eleven of them will be announced by February 21st. The last one announced will be a gimmick match of some kind (and before anyone suggests it involves Vince wrestling, he’s got more important things to do on a show of this magnitude). The show should be about 3 hours long and the names of the celebrities involved should start coming in soon. You can bet all but a few of the wrestlers will be paid less than any of the celebrities.
- UWF did their tag team tournament and Chris Adams & Terry Taylor won the belts. The show was really good, but the crowds are still suffering in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Adams returned to the ring on this taping just two days since getting out of prison, and somehow managed to look in better shape and hadn’t missed a beat in the ring. So Chris Adams and King Parsons teamed together and after their semi-final victory they did an angle where Adams didn’t want to win by countout and the team split, with Parsons yelling at Adams “What’s the problem with you? Have you been in the slammer too long?” Anyway, in the other semi-final, Sting & Rick Steiner beat Terry Taylor & Sam Houston. Because of the split in the Adams/Parsons team, they did a coin flip where the winner of the flip could choose a new partner. Adams wins the flip and picks Savannah Jack (Dave quips that Adams has definitely been in the slammer too long) and Parsons assaults Jack and slams him into the ring post, so we have to start from scratch. Anyway, Adams picks Terry Taylor now, and this is how we get Taylor & Adams winning a tournament where they were not teaming together. The final was said to be a first rate match.
- After the WTBS special Crockett put on for Feb. 7, there can be no doubt why WWF is number 1 over JCP and why Hogan is a bigger draw than Flair. Dave just rips this show to shreds, saying that while he’s a fan, it was a waste of two and a half hours aside from the Magnum T.A. interview. The Crocketts didn’t hype this on their regular WTBS show, so they probably weren’t super high about it. Everything about this was just horrible. “Superstars in Supertowns on the Superstation” is a terrible name and makes you sound low-rent no matter how much it’s wrestling and carnival vernacular to call a city a town. Frankly, it’s insulting to the average viewer living in the cities to hear their city called a town. Just shows how in the bubble of the business the Crocketts really are. Commentary wasn’t good either. Nor were the matches. The best match on the 7 match special was Ric Flair vs. Nikita Koloff in a no DQ match, which Dave rates 3 stars and says he had no problems with...until he got some phone calls from people in Baltimore and Richmond who saw the exact same match with the exact same finish and the exact same moves in all the exact same order the night before the special. You can’t say McMahon is exposing the business and then turn around and do that.
- Dave has a correction. Last week he said Dynamite was literally taken from traction straight to Tampa for his tag title loss. Apparently he had been out of traction for a week and was able to take “brief walks” but was still in no condition to wrestle. It’s clear WWF wants the Bulldogs out of the spotlight. If they wanted to keep the Bulldogs in the spotlight they could have done an angle where a doctor refused to clear Dynamite, leading to the titles being stripped. That gets you an emotional scene, a tournament, a lot of heat behind a return push for the Bulldogs when Dynamite can wrestle again, and the sympathy angle with the fans knowing they never lost the titles to begin with. Compare that to what actually happened, Jimmy Hart tapping Dynamite and him falling to the ground for the whole match, and yeah.
- Mike Von Erich is on trial on charges of assaulting a doctor in 1985. If convicted he faces a $1,000 fine or a year in jail. The prosecutors claim Mike punched the doctor in the face, breaking his jaw and two of his teeth. The defense claims Mike accidentally hit the doctor when the doctor threatened to kick him out of the hospital and punched Mike in his injured shoulder. This trial is getting daily coverage in all three major Dallas-Fort Worth papers and on tv at a time when the Von Erichs can ill-afford to have their image tarnished further.
- JCP and WWF will be running shows against each other in Ontario on February 15. This will be JCP’s big debut in Ontario and they’re set for a big gate. Angelo Mosca managed a $150,000 gate without tv last year, and they’re billing this show as Moscamania II. Only issue is they forgot to run it by the Ontario Boxing and Wrestling Commission. In response, Jack Tunney booked a show for that afternoon for WWF and a Toronto show for that evening, clearing everything with the Commission. The Commission didn’t approve Moscamania II until Mosca went to the media and started making noise, after which the commission backed off and approved the shows JCP will be running from the 15-17th. Very interesting to see how this turns out.
- Hulk Hogan has issued a correction on his life story. He currently claims to be a finance graduate from the University of South Florida, and says that he worked at a bank and decided to become a wrestler when he saw how big the checks were the wrestlers had him deposit. USF folks do say a Mr. Terry Bollea attended the university, but he dropped out after his sophomore year. Dave remembers before this most recent revision how Hulk claimed that he graduated from USF and when called out by a reporter on there being no record of him graduating, Hulk claimed he finished three credits shy of graduating. Say your prayers, eat your vitamins, and lie through your teeth, little Hulksters.
- With all the focus on Wrestlemania, expect WWF live crowds to be lower leading in and coming out, unless Duggan really takes off. Hogan working fewer shows will be a blow, and Piper looking like he’s at least going to actually take the summer off doesn’t help either. On the plus side, Bruno Sammartino just sold out Boston Gardens for WWF. First time WWF has sold out the Gardens since 1985; the closest since then has been a Hogan vs. Savage headline that came real close but didn’t do it. If they’d put it in the Gardens, the Hogan/Orndorff and Hogan/Kamala programs would surely have sold out.
- Crockett is mounting invasions of several territories, including Pacific Northwest and Alabama. Dave wonders if everyone who called Vince a bad guy for running shows in other people’s territories two years ago will say the same about the Crocketts. As far as Dave is concerned, neither of them are bad guys for expanding into areas that want to see what they’re producing. Alabama should be interesting, since fans there have been told for months now that Bob Armstrong is suspended for life (which is why he wrestled under a hood as “The Bullet”) but will now be wrestling without the hood on tv and in Alabama under JCP.
- Art Barr, the son of Sandy Barr and little brother of Jimmy Jack Funk, has begun wrestling in the Pacific Northwest territory. This is two months earlier than Wikipedia has his debut as, for the record.
- [WCCW] Dave’s been trying not to make fun of Dingo Warrior, but he had to share this. On Pro Wrestling This Week, Dingo showed a new level of skill in a match with Al Madril. Warrior threw the first bolo punch Dave has ever seen that had no shoulder rotation whatsoever.
- [Memphis] Jerry Lawler should be back in March. His surgery was minor and unrelated to wrestling. They’re coming up with an angle for him to return with, but all the guys he wants to team with against Tommy Rich and Austin Idol are currently signed to other promotions.
- Kevin Sullivan is doing some funny stuff down in Florida. He’s been feuding with Badnews Allen and his interviews have been off the wall. He’s saying promoters are prejudiced against Kareem Muhammad because they’ve discovered he and Muhammad are cousins, that Muhammad has “almost natural” 24 inch arms, and that Badnews Allen is really an American Indian. TV announcer John Heath is unintentionally hilarious in his role as interviewer, making everything that much better. They did a skit where Sullivan wanted to visit where Allen grew up, so he and Muhammad are standing by a highway with a sign reading “Harlem” trying to hitchhike. Nobody was giving them rides, so Sullivan was flipping off and trying to kick the cars as they drove by.
- Sumo wrestler John Tenta will debut in All Japan in March or April. He was supposed to debut in December, but broke his leg training. There’s also a complication because he broke up with his girlfriend (who is Japanese). He had been engaged to marry her, and that would have allowed him to work year-round with no problems, but now he needs approval from the government to work and they haven’t given it to him yet.
- Bam Bam Bigelow has debuted in New Japan and is drawing well for them. He and Inoki have been mixing it up, and they’ve even been bringing in Iron Mike Sharpe as a manager for Bigelow.
- Reader Grant Zwarych, who today is the source for most of the really early Observer back issues like the ones I’m citing here, has a correction for Dave. In the January 12 issue, Dave talked about breaking through the ring as something new. Apparently there was a cage match between Dusty Rhodes and either Kevin Sullivan or Purple Haze a few years ago, and Haze or Sullivan broke through the ring to interfere on the other's behalf. It’s a favorite of Sullivan’s booking style. So now we have the direct ancestor to the finish of the Vince vs. Steve Austin match from St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
- Reader Gary Fishman writes in saying there’s no way Vince will “gobble up all of wrestling." He knows Southern fans aren’t going to swallow what Vince is selling, and while he doesn’t expect small promotions to survive, he thinks JCP and UWF will always hold strong in Southern cities. Southern fans are in it for the emotional drama, and that’s just not something WWF will ever provide as long as they cater to children and borderline fans. That doesn’t mean he thinks WWF is in any danger either - the glitz and gimmickry works very well for them. Unfortunately, Fishman doesn't have a letter in any of the 2001 issues reflecting on the buyout of ECW and WCW. Would have been interesting to see what he had to say when Vince actually did gobble up all of wrestling.
- In JWP (Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling, the first joshi promotion to challenge the monopoly of AJW), they’re running an angle where Jackie Sato and Nancy Kumi have broken up as a team and started a feud. JWP doesn’t have tv and is struggling. Doesn’t help that they have very few wrestlers of big name value at the moment. (JWP will have a major shoot incident later this year and mostly be a footnote until they close in 1992 and the company splits into JWP Joshi Puroresu and Ladies Legend Pro Wrestling). Side note, Dave is frustrating in these issues when it comes to referring to joshi promotions because he never names them. JWP is only ever the "new group" and otherwise he doesn't even specify he's talking about AJW because they're the default.
- Dave ranks his top 25 women wrestlers currently, though he lists 26 because although she’s retired Jaguar Yokota will “forever by No. 1 in my book.” He does this for men’s singles and tag teams sometimes as well, but there’s such a dearth of women’s wrestling coverage in the 80s that I want to pull this whole list out so we can see who all were considered good wrestlers back in the day. I’ll just quote the list: “*1. Jaguar Yokota; 1. Chigusa Nagayo; 2. Lioness Asuka; 3. Devil Masami; 4. Dump Matsumoto; 5. Leilani Kai (she’s tremendous when allowed to be); 6. Bull Nakano; 7. Lola Gonzales; 8. Rhonda Singh; 9. Estelle Molina; 10. Noriyo Tateno; 11. Rumi Kazama; 12. Shinobu Kandori; 13. Jackie Sato; 14. Reyna Gallegos; 15. Sherri Martel; 16. Itzuki Yamazaki; 17. Kazuo Nagahori; 18. Yukari Ohmori; 19. Vicky Caranza; 20. Nancy Kumi; 21. Debbie Combs; 22. Despina Montaguas; 23. Yasuka Ishiguro; 24. Condor Saito; 25. Sochi Hamada.”