August 17, 1987
- [WWF] The August 28 show at Sam Houston Coliseum will indeed be Paul Boesch’s last card as a promoter. It was made official last week in Houston. Boesch will be turning 75 in October and has been in the business for over 50 years as a wrestler, announcer, and promoter. He worked for UWF up until the Crockett buyout when he signed on with WWF. He promoted four shows for them before deciding to retire, and he’ll be selling the Gulf Atlantic Club (which promoted Houston wrestling) to WWF. Apparently the driving factor was that at this stage it was no longer fun for Boesch to promote, and he’s been contemplating retirement for a long time. Mil Mascaras and Terry Funk are expected to be on the card, and names like Ernie Ladd, Gene Kiniski, and Verne Gagne are expected to make appearances. Gagne showing up on a WWF card is something Dave never imagined he’d see, and Crockett plans to counter the next night with a Flair/Windham main event. Flair was already announced to be in Japan on tour that night, so we’ll see if the tour is canceled or if it’s just Flair who will be pulled.
- The Road Warriors will be meeting Vince McMahon this week. They’ve already talked to AWA recently about leaving Crockett and are reportedly looking to ask Vince for $1 million each to jump. If they get this, they’ll be the highest paid act in wrestling history if they get that for a year. Dave’s sources don’t lead him to believe WWF will actually agree to those terms, but maybe there could be a compromise. They’re said to have been offered something around that much in the Tribune deal with AWA (which again, still looks like a nothingburger), but while that might have been talked about nobody ever talked about it with the Road Warriors or they’d have signed by now.
- [Crockett] Al Blake, who wrestles as Vladimir Petrov for Crockett, was convicted on July 30 of selling cocaine and conspiracy to sell drugs, as well as operating a disorderly house On that last one, he was a co-owner of the Golden Karat massage parlor in Richfield, Minnesota that was shut down in 1986 after police made 13 prostitution arrests there. The cocaine case was from his time as a bouncer at a night club that was a front for drug trafficking. In July he was able to wrestle on weekends while otherwise remaining in the Twin Cities throughout the trial. Of the six men on trial, one was acquitted, one not guilty, one had no verdict reached, and Blake and two others were convicted. Blake is expected to face up to 25 years in prison (probably 15 with parole, Dave notes), and many who have been following the case have the feeling that his size and imposing demeanor worked against him and made him look more dangerous and guilty than he actually was. He was scheduled to be in several main event matches teaming with Ivan Koloff against the Road Warriors in the coming weeks, but now he’ll be replaced with Konga the Barbarian. You’ll remember that back at the beginning of the year he was brought in as a replacement for John Nord, who was originally going to be play Petrov, after Nord backed out and they brought in the green as grass Blake.
- A Philidelphia group sponsored by pro-wrestling novelty store The Squared Circle spent the weekend in Memphis doing a tour including meet and greets with a number of wrestlers. Among the wrestlers involved were Jerry Lawler, Jerry Jarrett, Billy Travis, Randy Hales, and other top Memphis names. Several Observer readers made the trip and sent in reports about some of the shows they saw. Dave runs down three of the shows (complete with averaged out star ratings from the reader reports he got, which include 5 stars for August 2’s Pat Tanaka & Paul Diamond vs. Jeff Jarrett and Billy Travis match for the Southern Tag Titles with Moondog Spike as referee).
- Watch: clips from Tanaka/Diamond vs. Jarrett/Travis
- Continuing with Memphis, their August 10 show will feature Jerry Lawler vs. Curt Hennig for the AWA World Title. Also, newly entering the territory is Jerry Lawler’s cousin Carl Fergie. He was a UWF referee for the past few years and is now here to wrestle.
- New Japan has concluded their most recent tour on August 2 at Sumo Hall with a 10k crowd and a $375k gate. Dave only has results for the top three matches at the moment. Riki Choshu, Fujinami, and Kimura beat Sakaguchi, Masa Saito, and Fujiwara (Fujinami pinning Fujiwara), Antonio Inoki beat Bam Bam Bigelow to retain his IWGP Title (by the way, Dave, you should have said something about this year’s IWGP tournament having an actual championship for the winner and it being the beginning of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship’s lineage somewhere in here when the tournament concluded). And Akira Maeda and Takada retained the tag belts against Super Strong Machine and Kuniaki Kobayashi with Takada pinning Kobayashi to retain. The Inoki/Bigelow match was Bigelow’s first clean job ever. Their next tour begins August 24 and will feature the debut of Owen Hart.
- Ted DiBiase and Stan Hansen have concluded their tour in All Japan without dropping the PWF World Tag Titles. And they never will.
- [AJW] Dave had a dream about Dump Matsumoto wrestling Chigusa Nagayo in a match where Matsumoto came out and shook hands with Lioness Asuka before the match and the crowd cheered her wildly. Then they shook hands, wrestled 17 minutes of one of the best technical matches of the year, and Nagayo won clean. Then they bowed and shook hands after the match. Then Dave woke up and turned on the VCR and watched the match because it was real. It sounds like a fever dream, but it absolutely happened.
- Shane Douglas is now UWF TV Champion. He beat Eddie Gilbert on August 3 and was a replacement for Sting, who got clobbered a little too well by Gilbert (Dave comes in with a correction on this next week) with a chair, as he needed 18 stitches.
- Watch: Shane Douglas wins the UWF TV Title
- One of the best lines on JCP’s WTBS show this week had Tony Schiavone praising Steve Williams and his toughness. He said he would walk down any street of any city in the country at any time of day with Williams and he’d even call the other people on the street names because he knew he’d be safe.
- Dusty Rhodes has started caling himself the Living Legend. Humility remains one of Dusty’s biggest virtues, Dave says.
- WCCW’s crowds are up recently. They drew nearly 4000 on August 2 for Kevin Von Erich vs. Brian Adias in a cage. Dave figures Gary Hart must be doing well as booker if the attendance is picking up everywhere despite the wrestlers continuing to suck. They’ve got Vic Steamboat trying to wrestle like his brother. Well, if you’re going to copy someone it might as well be Ricky Steamboat.
- [AWA] Larry Nelson collapsed doing interviews this past Tuesday. Nelson is AWA’s main interview guy. Initial reports suggested a heart attack, but it seems not to have been quite that severe.
- Highlights from the most recent WWF tv tapings include Paul Orndorff turning face. The turn is built around Heenan calling Rick Rude the best built guy in pro wrestling today, which made Orndorff come out with his new manager Sir Oliver Humperdink. Dave finds it funny because one of Heenan’s other guys (Hercules Hernandez) is better built than either Rude or Orndorff. Humperdink joining Orndorff seems to be a last minute change of plans in response to Bam Bam Bigelow missing the first day of taping (Dave assumes transport issues from Japan) and them changing things on the fly. Orndorff was going to turn anyway, though, and he’s also opening a bowling alley in Atlanta. Ken Patera is legit injured, which will mess with main events for the next month or so. He apparently went to toss a jobber across the ring and one of his arms gave out. Severe tendon and ligament damage requiring reconstructive surgery that will keep him out of the ring until around Christmas.
- WWF is ceding Baltimore to Crockett, at least a little. With Crockett running monthly, WWF is going to cut down on shows there. They are also planning to increase their schedule to six shows a day (three matinee and evening combos) on Saturdays and Sundays, which means most of the guys will be working double shifts on weekends.
- Davey Boy Smith is accused of slugging a fan in the Winnipeg area. According to the fan, Smith punched him and knocked a few of his teeth out after he came up and asked for an autograph. According to Smith the fan didn’t ask for an autograph but came up and said he could whip the Bulldogs, and Smith asked the guy to leave. Al Klassen, who works in the front office for the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers was there and says the guy tried to pick Smith up and Smith responded with a slap.
- A former pro wrestler turned sheriff writes in under anonymity and names three bookers (whose names Dave redacts). Why? Because he’s discovered through working as a deputy sheriff that the only difference between the bookers he once worked for and the prisoners he sees now is that the prisoners are more honest.
- Based on one of the letters, it looks like rumors are swirling that Crockett will unify the UWF titles into the NWA titles at Starrcade. The letter writer thinks this talk is premature.
- Dave is holding a poll this month - keep the nicknames for wrestlers (e.g. Junkfood Dog, Hectortron, etc.) or go back to just using their regular wrestling names. I for one hope the nicknames are banished because they get in the way of doing these, but I know they won’t be banished because he hasn’t even started mentioning the Anabolic Warrior yet.
- JWP star Nancy Kumi suddenly announced her retirement after the July 27 show. Just nine days earlier, Shinobu Kandori had announced her retirement (though that must be her third already). Kandori’s match with Jackie Sato before that retirement apparently turned into a shoot. Kandori is a multi-time judo world champion, and she put Sato out of action with a really nasty punch.
- Watch: Kandori vs. Sato winds up with Kandori shooting on Sato