July 27, 1987
- The Great American Bash’s success continues to be the top of the news. Nearly every show is drawing a big gate, and Charlotte tops the list now with an estimated crowd of 21,000 (the largest anywhere since Wrestlemania), which makes for a roughly $180k gate. At the time of writing, Chicago’s card is tonight and Dave expects that to sell out. So in terms of money, JCP is the hottest thing in wrestling currently. That said, Dave thinks it’s premature to make any assumptions about Crockett’s position relative to WWF in the near future. At the Charlotte show, they seem to have taped two hours worth of tv and the main event matches will likely be used on the Bash tape in the fall.
- Otherwise there’s basically no real major news this week. WWF and AWA held tapings this week that should indicate their August plans. Not really anything there, even, except that Mr. T will be counted on in WWF to help draw and that Tommy Rich will be a face in AWA.
- Doug Furnas set a new world record in the 275 lb weight class in powerlifiting at the APF’s Senior Nationals at the end of June. His total for squat, bench, and deadlift was 2401 lbs. His total was the third highest in history in any weight class, and his squat (981 lbs) and his bench (600 lbs) are new individual records for the weight class. Furnas’s goal was to beat Bill Kazmaeir’s record (he didn’t, but Kazmaeir’s was in the unlimited weight class and he weighed 320 when he set it).
- [WWC] Dave has results from the June 20 card and there are a couple kind of interesting notes there. Carlos Colon worked two matches against Chicky Starr and Abdullah the Butcher. Invader #1 (fuck him) and Hercules Ayala wrestled a match where the only way to win was with the figure four. That match led to an injury angle setting up a match the next week between Colon and Ayala. There was also a match between Terry Funk and Lance Von Erich on the 27th where the newspapers ran a photo of Barry Windham in Lance’s place.
- There’s a new group called the North American Wrestling Association operating out of Edmonton, Alberta. They’re drawing roughly 500 fans weekly in competition against Stampede, which is drawing roughly 900 weekly. They had a big success on July 12 in Saskatoon where they drew 2500 for a $40,000 gate with Bruiser Brody vs. Nick Shults headlining and Wendi Richter on the card as well. They’re trying to find a niche with smaller, lighter guys. Dave thinks they should go with J.J. Taylor, who’s a protege of Dynamite Kid and been getting over really well.
- [Florida] The July 13 West Palm Beach leg of the Great American Bash tour nearly sold out and drew a reported $56,000. Good news about Black Assassin (Bill Tabb) - he’s no longer wearing a KKK hood and now wears Road Warrior face paint and a mohawk. Also Scott Hall isn’t quite gone yet - he was on the card, but he’s rumored to be going to the Alabama territory instead. The Orlando card the night before sold out (4000 fans, $35,000 gate).
- Despite the above, Florida may be phased out to some degree. Dave’s told they’re only running about 12 shows in August and September, and if they don’t start drawing bigger audiences when Dusty and co. aren’t on the show then Crockett might cut weekly shows in cities and trim down the spot shows as well.
- The big surprise this week in All Japan is that Ted DiBiase and Stan Hansen regained the PWF World Tag Team belts from Tiger Mask II and Jumbo Tsuruta on July 11. They lost them on July 3, so this is a surprise mostly because this is DiBiase’s last tour of Japan and he starts in WWF in August. Dave expects they’ll lose the belts to Tsuruta and either Tiger Mask II or (more probably) Hiroshi Wajima.
- Watch: Ted DiBiase and Stan Hansen vs. Tiger Mask II and Jumbo Tsuruta for the PWF Tag Titles
- [All Japan] Dave recommends that anyone who wants to vote in the year-end awards watch Giant Baba vs. Raja Lion from the June 9 card because it’s a strong contender for worst match of the year (the award may even me too kind for the match). Dave thinks there’s no way Lion could be a legit martial arts champion with chops that slow and weak. The only upside is it didn’t hurt the business because everyone knew going in that it would be shit.
- Watch: Raja Lion vs. Giant Baba
- [Memphis] At some point in August they’ll be having a big match between Curt Hennig and Jerry Lawler for the AWA title. The Russians from AWA will also be defending the tag titles.
- New Japan’s selling out nearly every night and should be the hottest promotion come August. They have three big shows in Sumo Hall, two of which will be a Jr. Heavyweight Title tournament that should be tremendous. And the winner will defend against Owen Hart. He’s the only foreign wrestler coming in, and that makes Dave wonder if part of this whole Choshu thing might be a shoot because the younger Japanese guys would like to be the stars, not the foreign talent.
- [JWP] Shinobu Kandori returned the UWA Women’s Title and announced ahead of her July 6 match in Tokyo that it would be her last match with the promotion. Since she challenged Chigusa Nagayo publicly, expect her to join AJW soon.
- There’s been a split in AWA and Jerry Blackwell and the Georgia office have left. Looks like Verne Gagne gets to keep Bruiser Brody in the divorce settlement.
- [WWF] Even though he hasn’t made the turn yet, Randy Savage is already turned in the eyes of many fans. At the tv taping in Glens Falls, they had Hogan and Savage in a dark match. The match had the typical finish (Savage going for a chair on Hogan, Liz taking the chair, Hogan hitting the legdrop), but the key thing is that the crowd was mostly pro-Savage. On tv they had Andre the Giant return for an interview. And the Exhibition Stadium card they had set for August is off, so that’s an indication that Andre’s health isn’t quite up to par. In other notes, Barry Horowitz is strictly in as a jobber. Rick Martel did a promo shitting on Tom Zenk for leaving. Ron Bass has a bullwhip now. Billy Graham debuted with a bad limp and got a big pop but he’ll be disappointing audiences soon enough. Rick Rude will be managed by Bobby Heenan.
- [JCP/NWA] Lex Luger’s come a long way in the past six months, but he needs to do some cardio. He can’t be good if he blows up after only five minutes. Also, he was in a 6-man elimination tag match teaming with Flair and Arn against the Road Warriors and Nikita Koloff. How do you do an elimination match when 5/6 guys in it refuse to do clean jobs? Lex and Koloff were double counted out first. Then Hawk pinned Arn. Then Hawk threw Flair over the top to get disqualified. Flair and Animal went thirty seconds before Arn returned to cause a disqualification. If you can put up with the fact that not a single clean elimination occurred, it was apparently a good match.
- Eddie Sharkey has been indicted for the incident a few issues back where he assaulted Dave Strecker. The story goes that he was upset that he and the Terminators (no relation to UWF’s The Terminator) only got $100 so he and Strecker wound up brawling. Strecker eventually upped the payout to $400 and pressed assault charges.
- Les Thornton and the Hart brothers have a lot of bad blood between them. Apparently this is getting serious. Thornton is running a wrestling school in western Canada and there’s even been negative media about the Hart Dungeon that the Harts claim Thornton is behind. More next issue.