July 20, 1987
- WWF has suspended several wrestlers for positive drug tests. This is the same test brought up last week. Dave was going to wait until next week to talk about this in the newsletter because he doesn’t have the complete story yet (he did know about one suspension more than a week ago), but word has already begun to get around. All Dave can say for now is that several guys, including a main eventer, have all been suspended for six weeks and pulled from all bookings and advertising. The test was for stimulants and cocaine and did not cover marijuana, steroids, or painkillers. WWF will be continuing to issue tests and that a first time offense will lead to a six week suspension, with a second offense punished by termination. Dave’s going to go with a policy about not naming names unless it’s a second offense. He spends the most of rest of the page apologizing for giving an incomplete story, but notes that he knows a lot of things about this story that he should not know and knows there’s even more about it that he doesn’t know. He’s not fully convinced about the reliability of drug testing, and wrestling has no union to protect the wrestlers from management just doing this whenever and however they want. Given the realities of what wrestling is, Dave sees drug scandal as a powderkeg liable to go off any time, and it’s only because the media ignores wrestling that the industry is the only sporting industry not to be rocked by a drug scandal. Dave’s personal opinion is that as long as it doesn’t affect their performance at work, what a wrestler or anyone else does with their own free time is their own business.
- Steve Williams won the UWF World Title from Big Bubba in a 20 minute match on July 11 in Oklahoma City. It was less of a brawl than expected, and the match saw Williams on the defensive for most of it. Reports suggest it was a good match and it should hit UWF tv in a week or two. Dusty Rhodes and Scandor Akbar were bullroped to each other outside the ring for the match, and to their credit while they brawled a couple times, they avoided distracting from the spotlight being on Williams winning the title.
- Watch: Dr. Death wins the UWF Title
- Lex Luger also won a title, taking the U.S. Title from Nikita Koloff in a cage match on the 11th as well, in Greensboro. The finish involved a ref bump, followed by J.J. Dillon throwing a chair into the ring, which Luger used to hit Nikita on the head. He then picked up Koloff for the torture rack and the ref came to, calling the match for Luger when he saw Koloff unconscious.
- The Bash tour continues to be a success. Dusty Rhodes deserves major credit for making July, usually a down month for wrestling, into probably the biggest month Crockett will have all year. The Oklahoma City crowd for the Bash featuring UWF and JCP/NWA guys drew even better than Dave expected. Oklahoma has not had big crowds in a long time. Greensboro, though, was nowhere close to a sellout, which has to be a disappointment. The latter is likely due to a combination of a computer issue with the tickets and because the Bash in Charlotte was scheduled for a week later, so those who wanted to go to only one probably picked Charlotte.
- The San Francisco card of the tour, however, didn’t seem to help Crockett’s position there at all. They’re calling it an official sellout with fans turned away at thedoor, but there were hundreds of empty seats, and nobody really cared about the lineup - attendance was solely down to the idea of being at the Great American Bash. Dave covers the show. Interesting to note is that Misty Blue and Kat LaRoux wrestled, and they billed Misty as the NWA World Women’s champion (it was a title match). Big Bubba, still UWF World champion at the time, was in the second match of the card. It was never clear if his match was a title match, but Dave finds it ridiculous they’d put a world champion in the second match of the card. The Road Warriors vs. the Midnight Express was supposed to be for the U.S. Tag Titles but somehow the match became for the International Tag Titles instead, and it was just a bad match because the Road warriors didn’t want to work. But it wasn’t the worst match of the show - that honor goes to Nikita Koloff defending the U.S. Title against Arn Anderson in a match that failed to be good in any way. Dave notes that a kid seated behind him actually fell asleep during this match. -1.5 stars. Flair and Luger lost their attempt at the tag titles by DQ against the Rock & Roll Express in the match of the night, after which more than 1000 people left before the Tully vs. Dusty cage match which was not good. On the whole, the show was fine, buoyed by the Rock & Roll vs. Flair/Luger match, but mostly disappointing.
- If you’re thinking the success of the Bashes compared to weaker gates on WWF’s part recently means the gap has been closing, put that thought down and go outside. WWF has a bunch of fresh angles set up for the fall and seem to Dave like they’re deliberately keeping things cool in the summer. And the angles they’re setting up will draw, alongside fresh faces like Bigelow, DiBiase, and face Randy Savage. The future for Crockett looks like more of the same matches with the same endings and the same guys in the main event with the heels losing but being brought back a month later to try again for as far as the eye can see. NWA is stale and WWF is still fresh.
- J.J. Dillon separated his shoulder, so he’s out of the July 31 WarGames and will be replaced by a big masked guy called War Machine. It won’t be Big Bubba, and it really doesn’t matter who it is because he’s likely still going to make the surrender. In other JCP/NWA news, they’ve got Michael Hayes issuing a challenge to Flair. Dave wonders why not have Hayes be Terry Gordy’s mouthpiece and have Gordy challenge - it would draw as well or better and be a better match, but they just seem to want to avoid putting Gordy against Flair. Ricky Morton is acting so cocky on tv that his popularity is plummeting like the stock market in 1929.
- Assorted WWF notes: Honkytonk Man and Jimmy Hart will be making an album. Tom Zenk walked out because the travel was too much and may be gone from wrestling entirely. Ricky Steamboat’s wife Bonnie gave birth to an 8 pound 4 oz baby boy.
- Correction from last week - Dave got bad information on Honkytonk vs. Bruno, and Bruno actually won by countout. Bruno has not been pinned since his 1977 loss to Billy Graham.
- Sherri Martel may be incoming to WWF.
- UWF has more superb college athletes than any other promotion. Steve Williams was all-American in wrestling and all-conference in football, Ron Simmons was all-American in football, the Steiners were both all-Americans in wrestling, and Steve Cox was all-American in football. Despite all their athletic prowess, Terry Gordy and Barry Windham are still the best wrestlers in the promotion. That said, Dave thinks they should push Ron Simmons to the moon because he has amazing potential.
- The big news in New Japan is that Shiro Koshinaka has been forced to vacate the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight title due to being injured for too long. They’ll have a one-night tournament on August 20 for the title, and it should be excellent.
- In AJW Chigusa Nagayo won the singles tournament final on June 28 against Dump Matsumoto. Nagayo will get a shot at Yukari Omori for the red belt, but the interesting thing is they had Dump wrestling as a babyface (never such a. misnomer, Dave says) before she shook hands with Nagayo after the match.
- Wild West Wrestling’s tv debuted this last week, and there’s room for improvement. Bill Mercer isn’t any better as an announcer than he was with the Von Erichs, they spent more time hyping their taping locations than the wrestlers, and the actual content is bad. Lots of green guys, and one finish saw Jeff Raitz botch by getting up from pinning Bobby Durrell at 2 while thinking the ref had counted three, then having to hit the finish again to win. Lance Von Erich will now be known as “The Fabulous Lance.”
- Former AWA wrestler Buddy Rose was ordered to pay a fan $12,500 in restitution for hitting the fan with his tag team belt in Denver last June. Dave thinks somehow the fan will not be seeing a dime.
- The July 6 show in Memphis saw three title changes, but the big one is Brickhouse Brown winning the Southern Title from Jerry Lawler. If Brown lost, he’d have to shine Lawler’s shoes. Given we’re in the South, Brown is black, and all the associations), I find it actually kind of good to see that Memphis went with the title change and did things right here - if you’re going to do an angle where the white wrestler feuding with a black wrestler sees the stipulation with an outcome that is coded on racially degrading stuff, it doesn’t matter who the face or the heel is, the black wrestler needs to win or else you’re just perpetuating degradation of black people on the basis of race.
- Speaking of racially degrading bullshit in wrestling, in Florida they had Black Assassin (Big Bill Tabb) wear a KKK hood. Dave asks the obvious question: isn’t that degrading?
- Assorted notes: The Hulk Hogan cartoon wasn’t renewed for the fall. Terry Taylor is denying his injury on tv so fans won’t build sympathy for him and cheer him when he returns. Wendi Richter beat Rhonda Singh (Monster Ripper) in Trinidad for the women’s title of Carlos Colon’s promotion. Dusty Rhodes said something about Missy Hyatt’s “ability to suck chrome off something or other” on Power Pro this week and Dave just finds it crass:
- I used to say stuff like that too. Then I graduated 8th grade. I know Dusty’s mentality about how that stuff gets over with fans, but when Dusty was over, westling’s audience was a whole lot smaller and less diverse than it is today. Some fans get a rise out of it. Others will tell their kids to watch the WWF because the only thing offensive there is the work-rate of the wrestlers and the announcing of Gino and Gene (who isn’t really offensive, just not funny while he thinks he’s hilarious--Gene does have a great delivery tho). I’ve never understood why promotions do things that will alienate portions of their audience.
- Watch: Wendi Richter wins WWC Women's Championship from Monster Ripper
- And a final late note: War Machine at the July 31 Bash will be Big Bubba Rogers after all. Dave doesn’t know why they’re putting a mask on him, unless there’s a plan to do an angle in the match revolving around unmasking him.