May 04, 1987
- Memphis is about to put on a unique stipulation match on April 27. It’ll be hair vs. hair in a steel cage between Jerry Lawler and Austin Idol. That doesn’t sound terribly unique, and even seems obvious that Lawler would win and Idol will have his head shaved, but the unique part is that if Idol loses, the fans will have their admission refunded. Dave isn’t sure yet how they’re rationalizing this one (they have a history of rationalizing weird stipulations well), but he figures there’s no way in hell they give refunds so Lawler must be getting his head shaved. Dave’s hoping to get results in an update before this issue goes to mail.
- Dave’s fear for WCCW’s show came to pass and it is now being billed as the David and Mike Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions. They’ve got Kevin Von Erich vs. Nord the Barbarian for the WCCW Title (potential issue: probably best not to pin Nord the way they’ve been building him, but Kevin kind of has to win by pinfall since he’s the last Von Erich left in wrestling). Bruiser Brody and Jeep Swenson will have a match, and Red River Jack (that’s also Brody) and Spike Huber will wrestle Eli the Eliminator and Abdullah the Butcher where if the heels win Jack unmasks and if the faces win Jack gets five minutes to beat Gary Hart. There’s the mud battle royal with the ring girls, GLOW girls, and Candi Divine and Moolah defector Susan Starr. Brian Adias was originally slated to face Mike Von Erich, so he’ll wrestle Skip Young now and Young gave a promo blaming Adias for Mike’s suicide. Early contender for most tasteless Promotional tactic of the decade.
- There was some concern on Dallas area radio that World Class might be glorifying Mike’s suicide and could cause a rash of imitation suicides. About two years ago there was a bunch of teenage suicides, and the local media is concerned about the possibility that another rash of suicides could follow.
- UWF will have tapings on May 2 and 3, and then go dark until their May 16-17 tapings. There will be another taping two weeks later and they’ll go dark in between again. No word on when regular shows will resume, but Big Bubba Rogers beat One Man Gang for the UWF Title on April 19. Details to come when Dave gets them. Otherwise, Steve Williams is staying and One Man Gang and Sam Houston appear to be WWF-bound, while Ted DiBiase remains a wild card. Also heading to WWF is one Bruce Prichard, who used to do the interviews for UWF.
- WWF returned on April 23 with a sold out show in Worcester, Massachusetts. They debuted a new tag team called The Shadows (Dave thinks maybe the Moondogs under hoods and expects to know in a week or so), as well as Ken Patera and Killer Khan. Missy Hyatt did another set of Missy’s Manor tapings, though these too are not planned to air. They’re still positioning her as a babyface (they had both her and Elizabeth playing face to Macho Man’s heel during an interview). Patera’s debut comes five months after a lengthy time in prison and he reportedly looked terrible, unlike Chris Adams who had the benefit of his ring for training. Brutus Beefcake debuted his shears and started using the sleeper hold, so he’s fully become that barber character.
- Watch: Macho Man and Elizabeth in Missy's Manor
- More on Jim Neidhart’s acquittal. Only one witness was in support of the prosecution, while Neidhart’s defense had 17 other passengers testifying to his version of the story. The jury reached a verdict in 90 minutes.
- Interesting development in the world of Olympic wrestling. Yoshiaki Yatsu attempted to qualify for the 1988 Olympics in amateur wrestling, and the Japanese Olympic committee ruled him eligible since amateur wrestling and pro wrestling are different sports. The International Olympic Committee, however, turned down this ruling on the basis that Yatsu is a professional athlete, so the Japanese Amateur Wrestling Association has asked him to coach the team for 1988. Yatsu is well qualified, being Japan’s top amateur heavyweight in 1980 but he couldn’t compete that year due to the U.S. and Japan boycotting the games. He got back into amatur wrestling after six years off and three weeks after picking it back up he shocked everyone by winning the Japanese freestyle nationals in the 286 pound weight class by scoring 5 fast pinfalls.
- Dave reviews JCP’s latest San Francisco show from April 23. The matches were pretty solid, but none of the matches were standout. A surprise was Brad Armstrong, who managed to draw the hottest reaction in his match even when his team included the Road Warriors (against Rick Rude, Manny Fernandez, and Paul Jones), who basically just made cameos while he worked almost the entire match. The crowd didn’t care about him at first, but he made his opponents look great and got a bunch of cool moves in himself.
- In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a really slow week, so Dave’s decided to write about his own thoughts on Jim Crockett Promotions. He begins by noting that Dusty has proven himself to be a great booker, but between Crockett, Florida, and now UWF he may overextend himself trying to book for three rosters. But that’s something to speculate about later (say, 30 years later, and regarding a guy named Vince instead). Despite Dusty’s efforts, Crockett’s stuff has gotten really stale. Dave says there’s merit to blaming the dwindling attendance figures and the poor local tv situation, but what Crockett needs to do in response is not ignore the message the fans are sending by going away, but realize that they’re going away because Crockett isn’t giving them what they want and like. Dave says he’s a big fan of the promotion and many of the wrestlers, but they just have not been putting on a good show. Out of the last three shows in San Francisco, only one match was won by a heel. The one Dave saw had six matches and only one had a decisive finish, and the main event had a double count out in a no disqualification match that led fans to say this was no better than an AWA show. You may not believe it, but AWA is actually stronger in the Bay area than Crockett, and their show will certainly bring in more than the 1700 Crockett drew to the Cow Palace. And if JCP come back next month, they’ll be lucky to draw that number again. A few months back they sold out the Cow Palace, and the attendance figures show that Crockett has no clue what the Bay Area market actually wants. That sold out show had an absolutely horrible battle royal that came down to the Road Warriors, which got the fans excited to see them fight each other, but instead the Roadies flipped a coin and Hawk jumped over the top rope and Animal won the match, flying in the face of 20 years of tradition for battle royals in the area (Bay area fans love when tag teams slug it out with each other in battle royals) and causing the fans to boo the ending.
- And that’s just the face side, the heel situation in JCP is pretty dire as well. Manny Fernandez, Jim Cornette, and whoever Cornette manages on a given day are the only heels that get any real heat. Blanchard gets great heat in Charlotte, but when he gets pinned by Nikita Koloff or squashed by the Road Warriors in other markets, it just kills whatever heat he’s got with local fans. He got no reaction on the most recent San Francisco show, and Dave doesn’t even want to get into Flair. In December he could have drawn a big crowd in San Francisco by himself, but now he needs the Road Warriors to draw more than 700. Dave can only speak to the San Francisco market (although all indications are that this all holds for LA too), but he thinks this should be an omen for Crockett regarding touring outside the home territory. There were also some last-minute changes to the card (example: Barry Windham was pulled to appear in Florida, but no explanation was given to the audience), and these no-shows only further remind fans of the AWA, which is synonymous to many with ripoff. WWF is rightfully and deservedly the top dog in the area.
- Otherwise, the only real news for JCP/NWA is that they’re holding a U.S. Tag Title tournament over the next few weeks. It’s a ratings ploy. Sweeps to determine the fourth quarter ad rates, which include this coming Christmas, are on for the next few weeks and Crockett figures a tournament will boost viewership enough to make a difference and get extra ad money for the Christmas shows.
- John Tenta, a former Sumo wrestler and world superheavyweight freestyle wrestler, will debut on May 1 for All Japan. They’re putting him against Goro Tsurumi, a former Japanese collegiate amateur champion. It’s been a bumpy road to this point for Tenta since he quit sumo. He broke his leg and Giant Baba demanded he drop to 320 lbs before he’d be allowed to wrestle for him.
- Watch: John Tenta's pro wrestling debut
- New Japan’s IWGP tournament should be real interesting. A lot of egos between Maeda, Choshu, and Inoki. Kerry Von Erich, was originally slotted for the tournament until they changed the advertising. His replacement was supposed to be his brother Mike, who can’t be there due to a case of being dead. No word yet on who will replace Mike.
- Over in AJW, Judy Martin and Leilani Kai lost in the finals of a tournament to crown new tag team champions on April 15. Hisako Uno (19, almost two years pro) and Yumiko Hotta (20, almost two years pro) won the tournament overall, an unexpected pick when the field had many more established teams like the Jumping Bomb Angels, the New Yorkers, and Bull Nakano & Condor Saito (representing Dump Matsumoto’s Gokuaku Domei group). They drew 3500 fans. JWP drew 2000 four days earlier at Korauken Hall, so the state of things in the joshi world is seeming pretty healthy.
- Since Jimmy Snuka hasn’t shown up in Memphis in forever, they phantom switched the International Tag Titles to a new team. Paul Dangerly’s Mercenaries are the new International tag champs and they defend their belts on the same show as the Lawler/Idol hair/cage match that’s coming up.
- The National Wrestling Federation is a unique little group. They don’t do house shows, preferring instead to only tape for television by selling their card to local promoters for a guarantee. So, basically a sold show. Anyway, they pay their big stars $750 for a show and guarantee them that much whenever they get a local promoter to book one of their shows. Anyway, they taped a tv show on April 11 in Bricktown, New Jersey with 1700 in attendance. Cousin Luke, Afa and Kokina Anoa’i, Abdullah the Butcher, and more were on the card including NWF Champion D.C. Drake, NWF Women’s Champion Wendi Richter, and Americas’ Tag Team Champions The Motor City Madmen (managed by Paul E. Dangerly).
- AWA tag tournament notes. They did a tag team tournament on April 19 where the Russians (Soldat Ustinov and Boris Zhukov) beat the Midnight Rockers in the finals. Zhukov pinned Michaels relatively clean, which in a reasonable promotion would probably mean the Russians should get a title shot against the Midnight Rockers soon.
- AWA is also joining up for a combo card with Don Owen in Oregon on May 8, with Nick Bockwinkel scheduled to face Col. DeBeers. Since DeBeers is gone, that kind of puts some unlikelihood on this happening as scheduled. On the other hand, DeBeers actually lives in Oregon, so maybe it will. Either way, Dave’s heard it’s a stupid idea to bill Ed Wiskoski as DeBeers in Oregon since he spent much of the last decade there as a main event heel using his real name and everybody will recognize him and know he’s Wiskoski.
- WCCW’s title situation is a mess. You have Kevin Von Erich as the World champ, but there are no other champions. The six-man title hasn’t been mentioned in months, and was last held by Kevin, Mike, and Lance. With Mike dead and Lance out of wrestling for a few months, it’s up in the air and who knows if they’ll even bring it back. It was mostly a promotional thing to give the Von Erichs and the Freebirds something to feud over. The Texas title was held by Dingo Warrior, but they fired him last week. The Fantastics are still around, but their tag titles have been held up due to a fucky finish on the April 6 Fort Worth show that set up a tag title scaffold match for the big Texas Stadium show coming up. Tony Atlas is gone from the area, and so they’ve just quietly phased out the TV title.
- [WCCW] BRUISER BRODY DID A JOB (kind of). Sorry, the caps are mine, but Dave notes this is the first time he knows of in probably 6 years that Bruiser Brody has laid down and taken a three count. It happened on April 10 in Dallas, and Black Bart got the pin. He used his branding iron to win the match against Red River Jack, and the stipulation was that the winner would then saddle up and ride the loser around the ring. Of course, it’s Brody, so the loss didn’t stick and they had a ref come out of the dressing room to reverse the decision since Bart used an object, so Red River Jack wound up riding Percy Pringle around the ring.
- Speaking of Brody, they’ve been unmasking him a lot lately when he's Red River Jack. He’s always got a way of avoiding being revealed as Brody, though. Sometimes it’s a towel or Gary Hart’s jacket, other times it’s a second mask, but Jeep Swenson and Nord the Barbarian keep trying. They’ve done interviews with Brody and Jack together, and they just put a big guy under a mask for those. As Brody is making his return as himself at the Texas Stadium show, expect them to phase out the Red River Jack persona over the next month or so.
- WCCW’s Bill Mercer may be the worst announcer in the business. During a Nord match recently he got to rambling about vikings and called him Nord the Norwegian who “comes from that fine country Norwegia.” During a Lance Von Erich match he started rambling about Finland, Sweden, and other Scandinavian nations. Not to be outdone, Floyd Creachman referred to the New Guinea Head Hunters as cannibals he found in the jungles of Africa.
- Lots of letters reacting to the UWF buyout, with one on some of the antitrust implications. There have been more challenges to acquisitions like this recently in the Department of Justice, especially in fairly concentrated industries. The letter writer is currently involved in a case similar to this, where the second largest producer of a product bought the third largest, leaving the two remaining biggest producers with a 90% market share. It’s a smaller business than wrestling ($5 million total market last year), but it was challenged by the Department of Justice. So any acquisition that will “probably lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly will violate Section 7 of the Clayton Act.” They look at market share and ranks of the purchaser and purchasee, ease of entry into the industry for new competitors, concentration within the industry, etc. If the antitrust division considers wrestling a nationwide business, that would mean entry barriers are high and the acquisition would make them higher. Factoring in television, this could get thorny. On the other hand, if they determine that it’s not television but local promotion of shows (which they could do if they look at wrestling historically rather than consider current trends), it may be a different story. WWF’s strength is Crockett’s best defense, as smaller companies can appeal to doing what they must to “compete against a giant.” This is all speculative of the idea that wrestling would even be considered important enough for the Department of Justice to look into the matter and challenge the acquisition.
- Lots of other letters on the buyout. One notes that all the rest of the promotions probably couldn’t stand a chance even if they band together, but the best chance would be if they did so under AWA since they have tv through ESPN and could push Curt Hennig as a young world champ. Another says the sale of UWF proves that workrate and ability are meaningless and that Watts made the right decision between selling out or nosediving. One is optimistic that the buyout could give us some of the best matches in American history if Ric Flair can work with Ted DiBiase, Steve Williams, Chris Adams, and Terry Taylor now. Another echoes the sentiment and says it’s helping Crockett’s NWA feel more like the old NWA and suggests WWF buy out a smaller group or two to create farm territories where they can ship some stale talent while also developing future talent.
- Over in Florida Scott Hall knocked out Colt Steele with a stiff elbow to the jaw. Dave remarks that Hall is dangerous when he doesn’t know what he’s doing, which is apparently quite often.
- Steve Wiliams has canceled his participation in the IWGP tournament.
- A giant Pakistani kickboxer has gotten some publicity in Japan by challenging Giant Baba to a match. His name, near as I can tell from the somewhat smudgy letters, is Riox Ahose. He’s 31 years old and billed at 7’5” and 374 lbs. His name returns next to nothing on Google.
- Dave did get a result on Lawler/Idol before this issue hit the mail. Lawler lost his hair and was then “injured” by Idol, Tommy Rich, and Paul Dangerly and the match was even wilder than it sounds.