March 16, 1987
- The Crockett takeover of Florida has begun. Details are still being worked out as the takeover occurs, but Florida will persist in some form as a satellite promotion it seems. Kind of like their failed experiment with Kansas City, but with better talent and (likely) more visits from Dusty and Flair to bolster cards. Kevin Sullivan will remain as the day-to-day booker and top heel, and Dusty will have final say. Looks like fewer Florida guys will remain than expected, but Scott Hall, Ed Gantner, Kevin Sullivan, and Ron Simmons are all locks. This should be more successful than their attempt to run Kansas City as a satellite promotion, and certainly more successful than Florida was independently. Crockett will get 10% off the top for booking, and the remaining 90% of gate revenue will be split among Crockett and the old owners of the territory, who I guess are now subsidiary owners or something.
- Riki Choshu has resurfaced after disappearing right before All Japan’s latest tour started. He gave a press conference, explaining that he’s been very ill and in no condition to wrestle, citing a bad infection in his hand that will require surgery. He avoided questions about jumping to New Japan, but did comment on having personality clashes with Yoshiaki Yatsu. Choshu claims Saito was on loan for a single match against Inoki, and that in exchange Tatsumi Fujinami will wrestle Choshu on April 2 for All Japan. The feud between Baba and Inoki is intense, but their mutual concern for good business and likely fear of the idea that WWF may make moves on Japan do seem like credible reasons for them to attempt a working relationship. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
- Wrestlemania ticket sales have gone past 70,000, making it the largest live crowd for wrestling in North America. The previous recordholder was 69,400 tickets sold for a Hogan/Orndorff match on August 28, 1986 in Toronto. At this stage, it looks like WWF will sell out the Silverdome (roughly 90,000 for a $2 million gate). With ppv (the price for ppv has been upped to $19.95), Dave is expecting roughly 500k ppv buys ($10 million right there), and that’s not even factoring the 166 closed-circuit locations Dave’s told will be airing Wrestlemania. Wrestlemania is looking to be a monster of a moneymaker.
- Bum Bright, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, may be getting involved with World Class. Dave’s heard from some non-wrestling contacts that Bright is claiming to have bought the promotion, with word of a possible collaboration being done to syndicate WCCW tv out of a new building with free admission to ensure a full house at all tapings. Bright is worth $550 million according to the Fortune 500, so if he’s serious about getting into wrestling, he has the potential to outspend everyone.
- With Piper heading out, it looks like Missy Hyatt is the top candidate to take over the Pit. The tentative plan is for her to do “Hyatt’s House,” but details are still in the works. Hyatt’s husband Eddie Gilbert will be staying with UWF. (We’re going to be covering this for a bit. Bumpy ride ahead).
- The mayor of Philadelphia will present Hulk Hogan the key to the city on March 20th. Also, Hogan made the Winnipeg papers because a reporter was shooting him while training, which pissed Hogan off so he grabbed the camera and exposed the film (for the young folks here, film was stuff that you had to put in the camera to take pictures, and if exposed to light it would ruin the photos before you could develop it in a dark room. If you’re still confused, I recommend the 2002 documentary film One Hour Photo which will explain things better than I can. If you’re confused by Robin Williams being in it, don’t be - he’s supposed to be there).
- Sting is out injured. He hurt himself on February 20th doing a flying clothesline to Jeff Gaylord, who was out of position. It’s unclear whether it’s a tear in the bicep/pec/shoulder, but something’s torn and he just had surgery to fix it. He should be back on tv by the end of the month, but probably not 100% for a while. In other UWF injury news, the hope is that Dark Journey will be back in a limited role soon.
- Dave gives a passing note while covering the UWF show from February 20 about Chavo Guerrero (we’re talking Chavo Classic here). He had a match against Bill Irwin, and Dave pauses to comment on Chavo’s “flip splash off the top ropes.” He’s not sure what to call it, but it’s the best move in wrestling today. Well, 80s Dave, we call it a 450 splash these days and complain when people can’t do it.
- Speaking of Guerreros, Hector Guerrero just won the NWA Jr. Heavyweight title over in Crockett country. Of course, he’s under a mask as Lazertron (a Martian gimmick?), but fans know who he is and they were chanting “Hector Guerrero!” at him. Once he gets used to the mask he should be the best NWA Jr. champion since Tiger Mask.
- A new promotion has sprung up in Florida called World Organization Wrestling. They’re aiming to compete with Deep South in some of the smaller Georgia towns and have Stan Frazier, Bob Sweetan, and a few other names.
- [NJPW] In a case of life imitating art, Bam Bam Bigelow and Larry Sharpe had a legit falling out. So Sharpe is out as Bigelow’s manager, all over terms of the contract with Inoki. About six months ago they ran an angle in Memphis between these two with them splitting up for the same basic reason, and now they’ve worked themselves into a shoot, brother.
- NJPW’s IWGP tournament this year promises a bit of intrigue. Steve Williams and Kevin Von Erich have both been announced for it. Williams is a top star for UWF, while Kevin Von Erich is WCCW’s world champ, so the fact that it’s a round-robin tournament means they will wrestle at some point. The politics will be similar to figuring out the finish to a hypothetical Hogan/Flair match in Japan or something like that.
- Scratch last week’s announcement of Shinobu Kandori defending her title on the March 26th New Japan show. She won’t be appearing. Instead we'll get Miss A (Dynamite Kansai) vs. Jackie Sato.
- [AJW] The Crush Gals had their big match on February 26th. It went to a 35 minute draw with Lioness Asuka getting the victory by decision, so she gets first crack at the Red belt and Chigusa Nagayo will face the winner. Dave hasn’t seen the match yet, but you won’t have to wait as long as he did because I’ve got it for you. Remember what Dave said about the crowd reactions for Chigusa a couple weeks back? Watch this match. Also Leilani Kai and Judy Martin will return to Japan, so Kai will defend her All-Pacific championship against Nagayo (they had a match of the year candidate last year where Kai won the title). Oh yeah, Judy Martin and Leilani Kai are legitimately great wrestlers when they come over to Japan and get to wrestle other people who have talent. Crazy, right?
- Watch: The Battle of the Crush Gals
- With the takeover of Florida and Crockett invading Alabama, Adrian Street is probably no longer going to be Ed Gantner’s mystery dream date. Street works in Alabama, and relations between Florida and Alabama are nonexistent now. They’re still plugging the dream date angle though.
- An occasional recurring theme in letters has been that Owen Hart should have won rookie of the year in the 1986 Observer awards. One letter today proposes that if more readers had access to Stampede, he would have been a shoe-in over Bigelow. That’s not to take away from Bigelow; the letter writer this week says Bigelow should have been WCCW World champion when he was there. This letter writer wrote in before the Florida buyout, and was hoping there was a slim chance still of Florida, Alabama, and WCCW merging. If they don’t, he fears they’ll each die one by one. Dave notes that with Florida selling to Crockett, there’s no chance of that ever happening for any of the smaller promotions, as all the talk of cooperation was coming from one of the Florida stockholders: Duke Keomuka.
- I’m just going to copy this letter, entitled “The Love Connection.” If these crazy kids can do it, there’s hope for the rest of us weirdos too.
- We began exchanging letters and wrestling tapes through the Observer last October. Our friendship grew into a very special relationship. In February, Debbie moved from Binghampton, N.Y. to relocate to Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. We have since gotten married and are extremely happy.
- We owe it all to our love of wrestling and to our enjoyment of the newsletter. Anyone who has the September issues of the newsletter, please let us know. We want to have a copy of the issue in which we met.
- We are also interested in buying and trading wrestling tapes. Anyone interested, please contact us.
- Very interesting letters this week. One poses the question of whether or not wrestling should be regulated. California has a bill going at the moment to deregulate wrestling. The writer is opposed for two reasons - nobody would be there looking out for the best interests of wrestlers and fans, since promoters only care about money. Secondly, the state would lose money due to fees and taxes. Dave says he needs more space to fully dig into the topic. On the one hand, he believes there should be some regulations, especially to protect fans from promoters who blatantly lie in advertising. On the other hand, Dave doesn’t see much benefit to commissions at the moment other than being a way to collect taxes and add bureaucracy.
- Crockett just got tv in the LA area. It’s an expensive time slot for the promotion ($8000 per week), which means they’re going to have to try and draw big enough to make it worth it. That means they’ll need to cycle heavy hitters into the area at least every 3-4 weeks to capitalize live off the reach of the tv, which should mean some really good cards coming to the LA and possibly San Francisco areas.