June 29, 1987
- Update on the Terry Taylor car accident. Last week Dave mentioned that Taylor was injured, but didn’t have much in the way of details other than the story that they were side swiped. We now know that he was riding in the back seat and Gilbert slammed the brakes when the car pulled out in front of them. Gilbert hit the brakes so hard that the seat belt around Taylor’s waist cut him from the impact (Dave says he “was literally cut in two by the belt around the abdomen”). The shoulder straps on Gilbert and Hyatt kept them from suffering similarly, and it’s likely if any of them hadn’t been wearing their seatbelts they would not have survived. He spent the past week in a New Orleans hospital and had part of his intestine removed, as well as his appendix, in addition to the repair work on his abdominal muscles. His earliest return date is speculated to be September, but November is much more likely. UWF plans include several interviews and promos to keep him fresh in viewers’ minds. What’s going to be tricky is that he had just made a major heel turn (Dave would say his newly turned character was the hottest act in UWF), but coming back from an injury like this is going to mean he’s an automatic babyface upon return. So that’s going to be a hell of a needle to thread. Taylor’s surgery required 18 staples in his stomach, and if the injuries had been even slightly more severe his career would be over.
- Also in a car wreck last week were the New Breed, Chris Champion and Sean Royal. Dave only has sketchy details on that. The accident happened about a day or two after Taylor’s and was in North Carolina. Initial estimates had Champion out for at least a year and Royal out for a minimum of two months. After a few days of recovery, Champion’s estimated return is as early as the end of August. Both men went through the windshield of their car, and fire was involved somehow as well. Both were treated for cuts, bruises, and burns (3rd degree in Royal’s case).
- Continuing the theme of motor vehicle accidents, Kerry Von Erich had his bad ankle (from a motorcycle accident last year) fused about a week ago. Doctors couldn’t do much beyond basically weld the joint into walking position. There’s no flexibility or dexterity left in that joint, and Dave sees this as the end of Kerry’s career for all intents and purposes. No doubt he’ll have comebacks and gimmick matches, but a full recovery is out of the question enough that Dave never sees him resuming a legitimate wrestling career. Just wait until Dave learns Kerry doesn’t even have a foot.
- New Japan has a whole lot of weird stuff happening in the wake of Riki Choshu’s June 1 return. They did three shows in 12 days that grossed $190,000 gates each and Antonio Inoki pinned Masa Saito on June 12 at Sumo Hall to win the IWGP tournament. After the match, Choshu stormed the ring with Tatsumi Fujinami, Akira Maeda, Super Strong Machine, and Kengo Kimura to announce they were forming a new group (a new faction, not a new promotion, Dave clarifies). So all the Fujinami/Choshu matches they’d built toward aren’t going to happen. Why would New Japan drop all the hot angles they’d built up and knew would draw massive gates for an angle that will work, but probably won’t draw nearly as much? They’re still in a weird position, too, as TV-Asahi hasn’t broadcast any match involving Choshu for fear of legal retaliation by Nippon TV, so all Choshu’s appearances at tv tapings have been in dark matches after the taping, which has the additional effect of bumping Inoki’s matches from “main event” status for the live crowd. So while gates are booming, tv ratings are still poor due to no Choshu.
- Dave spent the weekend in Houston, Texas with a few readers at Crockett’s Western States tournament card on June 20. The show drew about 3,400 fans for a $20,000 gate, and the show was good, but UWF is hurting for main event heels without Taylor. Black Bart of all people was in the finals. Dave thinks Crockett should make a play for the Midnight Rockers and turn them heel. By the way, Dave didn’t mention it last week, but the Rockers don’t have jobs anymore. He makes a joke about it when talking about Shane Douglas (who was in the opening battle royal on this show), and says that Douglas in two years might end up where Shawn Michaels is now (not out of a job, but as a star teenybopper babyface who puts on good matches). Anyway, he reviews the rest of the show as well and the final of the tournament saw Barry Windham beat Black Bart in a match where 20% of the crowd left before it even started. Surprisingly the match wound up really good anyway.
- There’s a tape called “Secrets of Pro Wrestling” that came out last week. The brochure for it says two ex pros who got a raw deal from promoters are going to expose the business. Dave hopes nothing comes of this.
- A judge overturned the ruling in the Big Daddy (not the UK Big Daddy) vs. Dusty Rhodes lawsuit. This is the suit where Big Daddy claimed his career was ended by being told by Dusty to bump over the top rope, whereupon he broke his ankle. He won the initial ruling on the grounds that Dusty’s response to the court’s attempts to reach him were completely uncooperative. But about a week ago a judge ruled that the ruling was too harsh against Dusty when Dusty didn’t have a chance to defend himself, so it’s been overturned.
- Iron Sheik will get a year of probation for cocaine possession. All charges will be dropped upon completion of probation. No word on how his career will be affected, but he’s still officially “suspended” by WWF.
- WWF injury updates: Jake Roberts is back early. He’s in great pain, but he got back in the ring on June 19. Harley Race still wrestled Hogan on June 6 and is making his dates, despite tearing knee ligaments. Dave believes he’s going to be taking a break in about a week.
- WWF debuts: Chavo Guerrero is set to debut at the June 23 tv tapings. Billy Graham will be on the following tapings on July 15-16. Jack Hart will be coming in from Memphis in mid-July, but since they have Bret and Jimmy, they’ll probably want to give him a new last name. Dingo Warrior is in WWF on the c-team level (more on him when we get to World Class).
- So the big news with the Midnight Rockers is this: they got fired after just one match. That’s gotta be a new record. Apparently they and McMahon didn’t see eye to eye and got let go after a week. They were demanding money and the tag titles, it seems, and McMahon just didn’t want the headache. So out they go. Guess we’ll never know what they could have been in WWF. I bet that Marty Janetty could have become something. Michaels could make a good heartthrob, but I just don’t see him going beyond that level.
- [WWF] Ted DiBiase has made some c-string appearances for WWF already, working as a babyface. But he’ll be pushed when he gets to television in early August as a heel with some kind of rich playboy gimmick.
- So Dingo Warrior is out of WCCW. He went to the Von Erichs and demanded a guaranteed contract and something like $1500/month (hardly unreasonable) but was turned down. He went to UWF, but they didn’t want him. He finally settled on the WWF c-string deal where he’s not on tv and not getting a push. He was supposed to have a world title match with Kevin Von Erich, but that’s been scrapped and World Class has announced that Al Perez beat Dingo Warrior “in the Carribean” for the Texas Title.
- World Class shows their class, double hitter. First, they did a lumberjack match at a recent show where Brian Adias beat Al Madril following a punch to the neck, with all the babyfaces rushing in to try and revive Madril (recreating the scene from a few weeks back where Kevin Von Erich legitimately passed out). On commentary they were acting like they were in fear for Madril’s life. And coming up on June 26 in Dallas, they’re giving away free posters of Mike Von Erich to attract fans, as well as letting all fathers in free (they’re now doing a gimmick each week where all fathers/mothers/kids/teens/whatevers get in free in an attempt to get enough of an audience for the show to look remotely good on tv). Attendance is higher with the free admission, but the gates aren’t growing at all.
- Watch: the lumberjack match.
- Oklahoma newspapers were saying Jim Ross offered Brian Bosworth $25,000 to be in Steve Williams’ corner for a match in UWF. No doubt UWF would love to have Bosworth, but Dave doubts they’ll do it because they already have an Oklahoma University tie-in happening for the July 11 Oklahoma City show (Barry Switzer’s doing stuff with Williams then).
- New Japan is doing good business with Choshu able to actually wrestle. Nothing really new from last issue on this front, but they have pretty much eliminated comedy from their tv.
- All Japan’s next tour begins July 3 and ends July 30, but the big show on their current tour on June 9 was announced as a sellout in Budokan Hall (should be a $400,000 gate if legit). But All Japan announces a sellout in Tokyo any time they come near 4000 seats sold, let alone the 12,000 they’d need for Budokan Hall. Dave hopes to have real numbers in a week or two. That featured Giant Baba vs. Rajah Lion lasting 1:44 with Baba securing a submission and having Lion request that Baba train him so he can be the tallest pro wrestler in the world. Dave’s not seen the match, but going by photos he estimates Lion to be five or six inches taller than Baba, who is legit around 6’8” or so.
- [AJW] The Crush Gals had another match on June 13. Lioness Asuka beat Chigusa Nagayo here, and Dave notes that their matches are the best there are in wrestling, with Flair/Windham not even a close second.
- [AWA] A couple trivia notes: Sheik Adnan al-Kaissey placed in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics in Greco-Roman wrestling in the 198 lb weight class. He didn’t represent the U.S. or Iraq, though, but Greece, where he was born. Wahoo McDaniel’s little league coach when he was a boy was current Vice President George Bush.
- A while back, Dave said something about wanting Crockett to not focus the cameras on Magnum T.A. while he struggles to get into position for interviews. A letter writer takes exception to that with what Dave agrees is an excellent point: we should be applauding Magnum’s struggles rather than turning our heads and pretending they don’t exist, as this “is a classic example of the general public’s tendency to have the physically impaired heard, but not seen.” Crockett has an opportunity to make its audience face what has happened to Magnum, and hiding it does nothing good for anybody.
- In the letters, Mike Lanzalotti comes in with what seems like a preposterous take: WWF will be the only game in town. He writes that it’s looking more and more like this will be the case, but he does think it’ll kill Macho Man to turn him face (see how well it worked in Memphis). As for Crockett, what Lanzalotti thinks is necessary for them to compete, is to offer something completely different and also combine Florida, JCP, and UWF into one big promotion - it’s an insult to Ric Flair and even Hulk Hogan to call Big Bubba a world champion. Combining all three into one thing wound up being part of the transition to WCW, and WWF eventually does become the only game in town, so maybe Lanzalotti was on to something.
- [WWF] Dave thinks this is kind of an amazing statistic. At the June 16 Albuquerque card, they had only 1705 fans. When they announced Hulk Hogan would appear on July 20, more than 2000 tickets were purchased within 30 minutes of the announcement. Curious.
- Details on the split between Dave McLane and GLOW. McLane and the guys in charge of GLOW had a disagreement on the content. The financial backers wanted more T&A and comedy, while McLane felt the show would die on tour if it continued like that. So he left and took 21 of the 26 wrestlers with him to form POWW. And they’re teaching them how to actually wrestle. They had a date scheduled for Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden for June 20, but canceled it until October, citing a lack of exposure in the area. POWW is scheduling a show in Miami for August and will start syndication in September (most of the women in POWW will also be on GLOW in September because they’ve already filmed season 2 of GLOW). So in case you get confused, remember that the GLOW tapings were last year when none of them knew how to wrestle. Same women on both shows, but different names. Dave saw a demo tape for POWW and while the wrestling isn’t good, it’s much better than GLOW and some of the promos are actually good (and it shows that a lot of the wrestlers did high school drama).