Wrestling Observer Rewinder

August 03, 1987

Another slow week, so slow that the leading story is that Wrestlemania 3 officially broke the record for highest grossing pay-per-view event in history. The previous recordholder was the 1982 Gerry Cooney vs. Larry Holmes fight for the heavyweight title, which grossed $10.05 million. Wrestlemania 3 grossed $10.3 million, plus $1.6 million at the gate and $5.2 million from closed-circuit for an estimated total of $17.1 million. That also stands as a record for highest grossing wrestling event of all time. Obviously WWF didn’t take all of that, as cable companies and others get their cut, but it was still incredibly profitable.
International Wrestling (Montreal Territory) has officially folded. Last week was their final week and Pat Patterson was present to make a pitch to their headline babyface Steve DiSalvo to join the company.
Sherri Martel made her WWF debut on July 24 and defeated the Fabulous Moolah for the WWF Women’s Title. Martel leaving AWA (and she did so while still AWA Women’s Champion) isn’t a surprise, though. Dave thinks she’s easily the best all-around performer of all U.S.-based women, but going to WWF’s low workrate style and being a face could diminish her performance quick. She got great heat (but unfortunately wasn’t able to translate that into being a draw) in AWA mainly through her colorful language, and that won’t fly as a WWF babyface. Regardless, anything is better than Moolah, even Ronnie Garvin in drag.
Watch: Sherri Martel wins WWF Women's Championship
The Great American Bash continues to draw big for Crockett. The Greensboro show on the 11th drew $150k and Charlotte on the 18th drew $175k according to Crockett (Dave questions the latter, as the latter number translates to about 16000 tickets when all crowd estimates he had were between 20-24k people). July 20 in Greenville was an all-time record for the city at $70,000 and the Dallas show on July 23 also drew about $70k. Dave has a big report on the July 25 Philadelphia Bash, which drew about 8500 people, but probably didn’t top the record for highest gate in the city. The Lex Luger dating game bit went off without an angle, surprisingly, and it was made to look legit to the fans (but the girls picked for the game obviously knew about the game in advance). Nothing really huge of note on the matches themselves, other than that Nikita Koloff beat Luger in a cage match by DQ when Luger used a foreign object which is only notable because I forget sometimes that you could get disqualified in cage matches back then.
Jim Duggan should be back to work with WWF at the end of August as a babyface. Dave is glad about this because the suspension only happened due to an incredible string of bad luck in the first place. Of course, this is the 80s, so the next sentence has aged poorly: “Not that drinking while driving is something to be condoned, but it is hardly the type of activity that should cost someone their job, at least with the realities of the biz.”
Variety magazine had a review of Body Slam which Roddy Piper and Sam Fatu (Tama the Islander) filmed on their summer vacation last year and is due out next month. The review was surprisingly favorable, and Dave’s never heard of a wrestling movie getting good reviews even when the movie is okay. Most people Dave knows loved The One and Only (which Piper had a small role in and Henry Winkler played a Gorgeous George type character) and Paradise Alley (starring Sylvester Stallone and featuring a great performance by Terry Funk) was at least average, but critics panned both. Anyway, other wrestlers also appeared for cameos like Ric Flair and Bruno Sammartino, and Dave wonders about Piper’s prospective future in Hollywood. No doubt Piper could play wrestler in Hollywood - he has a lot of experience playing wrestler in wrestling land. The real questions are if he can make enough just doing that, and if he can be good in roles that aren’t just playing wrestler.
Watch: Wrestling with Wregret reviews Body Slam
Houston has become the major battleground between WWF and NWA. Both companies held shows there on the 24th (Crockett with a Bash, WWF with the Martel title win and Mr. T as referee between Savage/Honkytonk). Dave has no gate figures yet, but he expects NWA to have won the day due to their deeper lineup. They go head to head in Houston again on the weekend of August 29, as WWF brings Hogan vs. One Man Gang on the 28th, as well as Duggan vs. DiBiase (Houston has long been where Duggan is most popular), Moolah vs. Martel in a rematch, and Bruno Sammartino vs. Hercules Hernandez. The NWA/UWF card for August 29 doesn’t have a complete card, but they’re calling it Champions Night and have six title matches scheduled including Steve Williams vs. Bubba Rogers for the UWF title, Luger/Koloff for the US Title, Sting/Eddie Gilbert for the UWF tv title, and Rock’n’Roll express vs. Arn/Tully for the NWA tag titles).
Although he’s advertised to resume with WWF at the end of this month, Jim Duggan was at the July 25 UWF taping. He was backstage, showing interest in returning. Dave says it’s pretty clear he’ll be in one place or the other soon enough.
On commentary Bruno Sammartino has had to pretend he’s never heard of Bam Bam Bigelow before. It’s Bruno’s role and WWF likes to be a bubble, but it’s just dumb. Bam Bam was all over the wrestling magazines and Sports Illustrated had an article on him even.
With Tom Zenk gone, WWF is figuring out a repackage for Rick Martel. The word Dave has currently is they plan to give him a new partner and drop the Can-Am Connection gimmick. Martel’s not a great promo but is extremely talented in the ring, and Dave thinks it would be interesting to team him with Billy Graham. Graham can’t work at all now, but he’s a great promo. He gives that one pretty much zero odds of happening, though.
Just a quiet note, and more me noticing a trend than Dave picking it up here, nearly every report Dave has gotten since the Jumping Bomb Angels arrived for WWF has had their match with Judy Martin and Leilani Kai as the best match of the card. This has been going on for a few issues, and it’s pretty universal to every report Dave has gotten and which he’s printed. If the JB Angels and Glamour Girls are on a card, they’re almost surely the best match.
A few issues back Dave reported on the beef between Stampede Wrestling’s school and the Les Thornton school. Here’s an update. A student at Stampede’s school quit after nine days, and the contract offers a refund of $1500 of the $2000 (CAD) tuition if you drop out within seven days. The student then met with Les Thornton and attempted to run the Harts out of business, and it got to the Boxing and Wrestling Commission where it was thrown out and the issue is dead. From what Dave hears, the students of the Harts who were complaining came in with poor physical conditioning and wanted to begin wrestling right away and were resentful of the Harts trying to get them in decent shape before letting them in the ring. And Calgary style demands good cardio and all-around conditioning.
[Stampede] The second most dangerous and tragic job in professional wrestling after being a Von Erich is being Hiroshi Hase’s tag team partner. His first partner, Fumi Niikura, suffered a heart attack late last year and hasn’t returned to wrestling yet. Another Japanese wrestler, named Matsuda, was brought in and trained to be Viet Cong #2 but nearly died from a brain hemorrhage. He’s recovered well enough that he may wrestle again someday. The latest Cong, Shinji Sasazaki, was more fortunate but still tore the cartilage in his knee. He needs surgery and will be out of action for a while.
Davey Boy Smith was supposed to work full time for Stampede in August and September, but he probably won’t due to the need for babyfaces in the tag division in WWF. With Zenk gone and Brian Blair gone for a while and Dynamite Kid operating at about 30%, the Rougeaus are the only face team WWF has operating at 100%. Back on the May 26 Stampede show where Badnews Allen was destroying Owen Hart, it was Davey Boy who made the save and Allen did a promo challenging Smith later on. Smith and Allen would probably be the main event angle in September for Stampede if not for WWF.
Lastly for Stampede, Dave is convinced Brian Pillman should win rookie of the year. His flying moves are some of the best in North America, and he reminds Dave of Tommy Rogers but bigger.
Terry Taylor returned to UWF at the July 23 Bash show in Dallas. He ran into the ring and attacked Chris Adams, leading to Black Bart and Eddie Gilbert beating Adams and Windham. He’s scheduled to make his in-ring return on August 8, and should be okay as long as he doesn’t stretch his abdomen or take any shots in that region.
[Memphis] They’re headlining the July 27 show with Bockwinkel vs. Lawler, with the winner challenging Hennig on August 10. And for what it’s worth, Lawler was very giving to Brickhouse Brown in their recent matches and made him look great. Fans just didn’t buy Brown on top, so back down the card he goes.
Sheik Adnan al-Kaissey was fired form AWA. Tommy Rich has also been given an ultimatum: he can either keep working for Deep South in Georgia (where he’s booker and top star) or he can work in AWA, but he can’t do both.
AWA drew roughly 100 paid in Milwaukee on July 24. Somehow, though, they’ve decided they’re in good enough shape to tour West Germany (in conjunction with promoter Otto Wanz) this fall, and worse yet they’re making plans to run a show in Charlotte, North Carolina. Even Hulk Hogan only managed to draw 2400 in Charlotte, so Dave has no idea how they think they’re going to get anybody at all.
[Alabama] Scott Hall starts next week and taking up the Lord Humongous gimmick. That should tell you everything about how far his star has fallen. This time last year he was primed to be a world champion and all the major promotions wanted him, but now this.
Rumors abound that something has changed with the ownership of the Alabama territory. Dave’s current knowledge is the Fullers are still in charge, but Ron West is trying to gather the money to buy a controlling interest.
New Japan is trying something ambitious. They’re running August 19 and 20 at Tokyo Sumo Hall, and if they can sell both nights out the total gate will be nearly $900k. August 19 will have the first and second rounds of a 10-man junior heavyweight tournament (featuring names like Keiichi Yamada, Nobuhiko Takada, Shiro Koshinaka, Kuniaki Kobayashi, and Hiro Saito) and will be main evented by a 10 man elimination tag match between Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami/Akira Maeda/Super Strong Machine/Kengo Kimura vs. Antonio Inoki/Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Masa Saito/Kantaro Hoshino/Seiji Sakaguchi. Fujiwara is the only under-40 on the second team (though Hoshino and Saito are still top-notch workers). The August 20 show will have the finals of the junior heavyweight tournament, Animal Hamaguchi’s retirement match, and Inoki/Saito vs. Choshu/Fujinami in the main event. After the card was announced, Fujinami told reporters he wants none of that and wants a singles match with Inoki instead. All of the above notwithstanding, Riki Choshu is still not cleared to be on tv.
All Japan Women will be getting Leilani Kai next month. They tried to sign Debbie Combs as well, but couldn’t get in contact with her. And in the ongoing saga of Shinobu Kandori and her inability to commit to anything in wrestling, she wrestled her final match with JWP on July 18 and beat Jackie Sato (more on this in two issues, it got nasty in the match). She now says she hasn’t decided if she’ll go to AJW or if she’ll go into a different martial art yet.
[NWA/JCP] Ric Flair has a pinched nerve in his neck and it has caused his fingers and occasionally the arm to go numb. Dave’s not sure that he buys that as the reason Flair didn’t wrestle Road Warrior Animal in Chicago, though. The injury has been getting worse, but everyone in JCP is banged up from this tour, and Flair wrestled that afternoon in Roanoke and the next day in Greenville.
Al Blake (Vladimir Petrov in JCP) made the Twin Cities newspapers as he was on trial last week for drug trafficking charges. Blake is part of a group of six charged with selling controlled substances in 1983-84, and the case is just going to jury as of Dave’s most recent report. This is the first case in the history of Minnesota where police have tried to introduce videotaped evidence, though the judge threw the evidence out of court. Dave says it’s times like these Jim Crockett can be glad he’s not Vince McMahon because “a Titan wrestler pretending to be a Russian, coming out as an American and being up on charges like that would bring down half of his organization with the resulting publicity. Since it was a Crockett wrestler, the news media didn’t pick up on it outside Minneapolis.” Dave thinks there's a chance Blake may get acquitted simply on the basis of making all his court dates this weekend, but that may not be a germane point.
J.D. McKay Jr., a writer for Pro Wrestling Digest, writes in about something Dave said in Wrestling Forum. Dave said anyone who thinks Nikita Koloff has improved should be forced to watch his match against Arn Anderson from July 7. McKay takes this as a rebuttal to his article in the Digest, and asks Dave why can’t Nikita just have an off night like a Randy Savage, Barry Windham, or Steve Williams do occasionally. Why isn’t it possible Arn Anderson was also having an off night, and two off nights made for a horrible match? Is it at all possible smart fans are too hard on wrestlers, especially those wrestlers who started out not so good? Dave responds and says that it’s possible he’s overly harsh on Nikita and Luger, but if you heard what many wrestlers say about their abilities you’d think Dave’s overly nice to them. Dave thinks Luger’s improved quite a bit, but not Nikita - and readers overwhelmingly say Nikita’s match is the worst on the card when they send reports to Dave, and his opponents are generally well regarded.
”Everyone knows that Space Mountain is the shortest ride in the park and you feel a little sick when you get off.” - Jimmy Garvin.
That promotion from Edmonton Dave wrote about last week? They’ve apparently run into difficulties and may already be dead.
Mark Lewin and Tom Prichard are apparently WWF-bound. They're both being brought in, it looks like, based on some advertising for a show. Prichard is no surprise as his brother Bruce works in the front office, but Lewin’s a surprise and makes no sense to Dave. Maybe they want to have an over-50 bodybuilding contest with Billy Graham? Dave then clarifies, for those confused if he’s joking, that he thinks they’re just under 50, then legit checks his records and discovers that Lewin was born in 1937.