Wrestling Observer Rewinder

August 24, 1987

The end of another long-time wrestling tradition is upon us his month: Gordon Solie will no longer be the voice of Florida Wrestling. Solie and the Crocketts had a disagreement over money, and so Solie has been replaced with Steve Keirn. With Sir Oliver Humperdink jumping to WWF, Crockett canceled Southern Pro Wrestling and are down to just one tv show weekly from Florida. And to keep costs down, they tape two shows at a time and only tape every other week. Solie’s workload would be cut down to 26 dates per year rather than 52, and even though he’d still be working the same amount of time (52 tv shows on those 26 dates) Crockett wanted to cut his pay down to pay him for 26 dates. You can see the problem. Gordon Solie had been the voice of wrestling in Florida for over 26 years at this point.
Rumors abound about what the Road Warriors will do in the future. They were scheduled to meet with Vince McMahon last Friday and Jim Crockett the next day. Other than that, no solid word.
Dave went to the August 10 Stockton, California and the August 11 San Jose Crockett shows and for whatever reason Stockton tends to get very good wrestling coming through. He didn’t see every match, but others in attendance filled him in and all the ratings for this show are basically by committee. He runs down the card. Dave still thinks Ron Simmons has potential, but isn’t quite as good as he had thought earlier. Rick Steiner was injured (pulled muscle or something in his right leg), so Sting got bumped into subbing for Ricky Morton against Arn and Tully. The Steve Williams and Terry Gordy vs. Eddie Gilbert and Dick Murdoch bunkhouse match wins the honors for match of the night. The San Jose card wasn’t as good and the crowd had trouble getting into the matches. It was also an outdoor show, and Dave has decided that outdoor shows tend to suck after this. UWF doesn’t air in the area, so the UWF matches didn’t really have any familiarity for the crowd. If the area had localized tv (the NWA show that airs on channel 26 in San Francisco plugged the card, and that channel isn’t even on cable in San Jose, nor is San Jose channel 48 which is where San Jose fans can watch NWA, so there was basically no localized advertisement) they could probably draw some people, but the only advertisement that San Jose fans could have seen was from WTBS. Only notable thing here is that in the main event between Williams/Morton/Gibson and Arn/Tully/Lex, Williams no-sold a piledriver.
Fritz Von Erich is suing the doctors who did Mike’s shoulder operation a few years back. He’s claiming negligence and that it left Mike physically and mentally scarred, and that the surgery is therefore directly tied to his suicide. Dave wonders, if that’s true, why would Fritz pressure Mike back into the ring? Mike’s toxic shock syndrome left him changed, but Fritz declared him fit and pushed him into the ring again. The tragedy never seems to end here.
A federal judge in St. Paul has prohibited Dru Tossel and Babydoll Promotions (they run indy shows in the midwest) from using “All Star Wrestling” in the promotion of their shows. Using the name is likely to cause confusion with the public and belief there is a connection to the AWA, which has used All Star Wrestling for thirty years and has it registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Lastly in our legal roundup, Ron Garvin has been ordered by a jury in West Virginia to pay Argel Johnson (a fan) $455,000. Johnson alleges that Garvin headbutted him during a match between the Midnight Express and Garvin/Bruno Sammartino Jr. in 1983. Dave notes that the Midnights didn’t come to the NWA until the summer of 1985, so you do the math here). There was a lawsuit, but Garvin either failed to respond to or failed to show up for, and so the Ohio County circuit court jury has ordered Garvin to pay up. They have not been able to track Garvin down to collect the money, though.
WarGames 3 took place in Chicago on August 16. Ron Garvin was in for Paul Ellering, as Ellering appears to be injured for real, on the babyface side. Animal caused Bubba/War Machine to submit after taking a spiked wristband to the eye. They definitely fudged the clock a bit on the entries, as the match ended in 19:38 but according to the rules the Match Beyond doesn’t even start until 21 minutes in. Lots of blood (six of the ten guys bled), and universal acclaim that the match was great. The undercard, though, was said to be disappointing.
Ken Patera had reconstructive arm surgery last week and is back on the road with WWF. He’s not working yet, but he is showing up in the arenas. They’ve been putting Billy Graham in for him in the matches, which makes for bad main events if you pay attention to the matches. That said, Bobby Heenan has been great at distracting fans from the ring during these matches. Patera says he’ll be back in the ring in 6-8 weeks.
Bam Bam Bigelow’s television debut has been pushed back to the August 25 San Francisco tv tapings. The plan is an angle where he seems to be trying to find the right manager, leading to crossing all the managers off his list until only Slick is left. Then they swerve and reveal it’s Sir Oliver Humperdink.
WWF erased the tape of Ted DiBiase’s first match at Madison on August 4 because he got too strong a babyface reaction. The match with Jerry Allen that aired on Superstars 49 (taped that same day in front of the same crowd) and was promoted as his first match was actually his second, and they took steps to make sure he’d be booed. Dave saw the skit where he made a woman (2020 note: some people believe this was Linda McMahon) bark like a dog and those who watched with Dave started to hate him for not paying her, so the tweak to the character seems like it should work. Dave doesn’t expect he’ll toss money into the audience like he was originally supposed to (can we take a moment to note that Vince apparently thinks giving away free money is a heel act?). Some WWF wrestlers are jealous of DiBiase because in order to make the character more legit he’s being shuttled around in a limo and getting put up in the best hotels, which only Mr. T and Hogan get.
Watch Ted DiBiase vs. Jerry Allen
[WWF] ”Mark my words, Rude will not get over as a major attraction here.” Rick Rude’s gonna need more than abs to do that, and Dave watched with some marks who thought it was comedy that they were talking about his great physique on tv. Apparently, Rude has the body of someone with scurvy according to the marks.
The biggest story out of WWF is that they’ve banned blading. The ban is primarily because of fear of AIDS, and they are probably going to implement AIDS testing as well. Dusty’s going to have to eventually follow suit, Dave thinks, but he’s sure it won’t be any time soon.
[WWF] Dynamite Kid has been given August and September off to see if two months of rest and relaxation will help his back issues. Davey Boy was supposed to then head to Stampede to be main event babyface during Owen’s Japan tour, but they kept him to fill in as a partner for the Killer Bees.
[Puerto Rico] Hercules Ayala won the WWC Universal Title from Carlos Colon in a Texas Death match where Colon was deemed to be bleeding too badly to continue. In case you’re wondering, a Texas Death Match is more or less an old school name for a Last Man Standing match (but there's a pinfall required before you can be counted down) and it’s not in the rules to stop it for blood. Dave supposes Carlos is too much like Virgil and Antonio when it comes to doing any kind of job in the middle of the ring.
Watch: Hercules Ayala wins the WWC Universal Title by blood loss
UWF will be having Black Bart as the challenger for Williams at the next round of shows. Shows that they need a big, mean heel in a bad way because while Bart is fine and can have good matches with the right opponents, he’s not someone anybody will buy as a title contender.
Dave wonders if anyone else is sick of the endless Bikini Bare commercials that air during every Crockett show.
Curt Hennig vs. Jerry Lawler for the AWA Title in Memphis on August 10 was kind of crap. Hennig retained after Brickhouse Brown (dressed in drag) attacked from the audience and gave Lawler a piledriver. Almost everyone knew Brown was in the audience in drag, so the ending was obvious. They’ve storyline suspended Brown for 30 days for this. Otherwise, nobody from AWA except Wahoo McDaniel worked on the card, so that’s a real strong alliance happening.
Scott Hall will be in Memphis for a week before his September Japan tour. After he concludes the tour he should be in Memphis full-time.
Correction from last week: it was Terry Taylor, not Eddie Gilbert, who hit Sting with the chair during the Gilbert/Douglas UWF TV Title match
[Stampede] I guess the definition of a clean job has changed over the past few decades, but Dave describes Owen Hart losing the British Commonwealth Title to Gama Singh as Hart’s “first clean pin job” in 1987. Hart pinned Singh, but Singh’s foot was on the ropes so the referee called for the match to continue and Singh’s manager handed him an object, which he used to hit Hart and then pin him. Hart has a rematch on August 14, which should be his last match before his Japan tour, so they’ll probably do an injury angle. He won’t be dropping the North American Title as well, but they might hold it up if they do an injury angle. Leaving for Japan as well is Keiichi Yamada.
[WCCW] Mark Lowrance is on vacation, so tv commentary is being handled by a rodeo cowboy and a local preacher. Seriously.
[WCCW] Brian Adias is now accompanied by the worst ninja character ever. The guy is supposed to be the Asian ninja master who taught him the move that nearly kayfabe killed Kevin Von Erich in the ring back in May, but he talks like a Texan. The guy’s name is Jimmy Bush, he’s from San Antonio.
Wild West has a few small notes, particularly that Lance has dropped the fabulous from his name (an improvement) and Robin Smith appears to have debuted. Her first match seems to have been in a tag match against ancient Moolah-era staples Susan “Tex” Greene and Pepper LaBianco.
The Fullers are in the process of selling Continental (the Alabama territory) to a guy named Mike Costello. If that goes through, there’s a good chance Jerry Blackwell will promote AWA down there in joint ventures.
[Alabama] Mr. Olympia (Jerry Stubbs) quit the promotion after finding out he was going to lose a bunch of loser leaves town matches and jumped to outlaw promotion NASA, which also runs in Alabama. In retaliation, Ron West announced at the August 7 Knoxville show that Stubbs called the office and said he was tired of being beaten and humiliated and wouldn’t show up before going on about how Stubbs let the fans down and would never work for Continental again. Fans took exception to this and the attempted burial pretty much backfired.
As for NASA, they’re a little indy promotion based in Birmingham. They drew 300 for their first tv taping on August 8. Candi Divine and Bambi vs. Joyce Grable and Lock (Wenona Little Heart in a gimmick she started with Luna Vachon) had the best match of the show.
Dave McLane’s POWW has booked Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia for September 1. Break even is a $100,000 gate and they’ll be lucky to draw $6,000, so no idea what they’re thinking here.
[New Japan] As the Choshu/Inoki feud heats up, Inoki has changed the name of one of the factions. They were originally calling the feud the New Leaders (Choshu, Maeda, Fujinami, etc.) vs. the Old Leaders (Inoki, Sakaguchi, Fujiwara, and Masa Saito). But Inoki didn’t like the word “Old” so now they’re calling it the New Leaders vs. the Now Leaders on tv. By the way, Choshu still hasn’t been cleared to wrestle on tv for New Japan.
One letter includes coverage of how AWA handled the Sherri Martel departure. Sherri won the title on Saturday night on WWF’s show, then on Sunday morning AWA aired the Tommy Rich/Sherri Martel angle (where Sherri was stripped of her clothing during an arm wrestling contest) for the first time. Good angle, the writer says, but with her gone how to explain things? Well, the next week they re-aired it twice and then Kevin Kelly in an interview said Sherri was so embarrassed she left AWA and Larry Nelson explained that since AWA is the original wrestling league where they still actually wrestle, lots of wrestlers leave when they can’t take it and go to places where it’s easier.
Watch: Sherri Martel’s last AWA appearance
Another letter comes in saying Crockett has too many titles. There are nine currently, and that’s just the NWA division, double that if you count UWF and Florida. WWF, on the other hand has three (four, really, with the women’s title) and they always push the titles. Dave agrees wholeheartedly and says that the more titles there are, the less they mean and that two singles and two tag titles are more than enough for a promotion and anything more than three makes things overdone. Fast forward to 2020 and WWE has 18 titles.
Someone writes in supporting the continued use of nicknames. They aren’t derogatory at all, just cute, the writer explains, and says that he and his friends have always called Buddy Rose “Bloody Nose” and the Freebirds “The Fleabirds.” Besides, knowing the nicknames makes you in the know and means that non-fans (and by non-fans, I can only assume this guy means marks who aren’t subscribers to Dave) have no idea who you are talking about. Besides, the guys who get the nicknames like JYD, Outback Jack, etc. aren’t such great workers that they “command all this respect” about getting their actual working names used. I thought the names weren’t supposed to be derogatory? Rewinder here: The logic in this letter is nonexistent and just makes me hate the nicknames more.
Another letter writer is concerned about how much hate Dusty gets in the letters section. She wrote what she thought was a good defense of some of his actions that never saw print, but weekly there’s mail about how awful he is and one week there was a whole section titled “This Week’s Dusty Hate Mail.” She reminds us that to enjoy wrestling, you need to suspend belief. She saw Flair vs. Brad Armstrong a while back and while she knew there was no way Brad would win, she let that go and when Flair would wait until the last second to kick out she would find herself excited and believing for a moment he might pull it off. So enjoy wrestling. Don’t be bothered that Dusty’s the booker. Take him as he’s presented, the working man’s hero. He may not be muscular, or a fantastic wrestler, but he is embodying the idea of the American Dream and never giving up.