August 31, 1987
- Our top story this week involves the Von Erichs digging WCCW’s grave just a little deeper this past Friday at the Sportatorium. Kevin Von Erich was scheduled to defend his world title against Al Perez on August 21, and Perez was supposed to go over to set up rematches for the upcoming Star Wars shows on Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Kevin didn’t cooperate, however, and decided to no-show the match, which led to Perez winning the title by forfeit, pissing off the audience something fierce. They’re going to explain this away by saying Brian Adias hit Kevin with the “dreaded” Oriental tool punch again on August 17 and doctors didn’t allow Kevin to wrestle. Dave just doesn’t get how people can fail this hard to do good business and what they get in their heads that prevents them from doing things right. The big holiday shows are coming up and WCCW always draws best with a Von Erich challenging for a world title, so it looks like Gary Hart made the right booking move in getting the title off Kevin ahead of the shows. Perez isn’t the best choice to be champion, but none of the alternatives is much better. Since WCCW lets the title change hands on a disqualification, they could have had Kevin get disqualified and not have to go down for the count. And the fact that Kevin’s father is the sole owner of the promotion just makes things weirder.
- Dave’s gotten more phone calls this week about the Road Warriors and their plans than on anything else in a long time. They met with Vince over a week ago and negotiated with Crockett last weekend. They haven’t signed anything yet, but they are committed to Crockett through October, at the very least. It would appear they went to WWF and pitched their million dollar offer, but no idea what WWF countered with. Dave has heard that WWF refused to offer a guaranteed contract of any kind because that’s not how they do business, but the opportunity to make a lot of money is there if the Road Warriors did work with WWF. One important factor is that there’s a fear by “at least one member of the Roadie trio” that signing with WWF would put them under Vince’s thumb and let Vince change them into something they don’t want to be. There’s also the chance WWF might phase out Paul Ellering, who doesn’t really add to their act but is their real life business manager. Whatever WWF offered, they used it as negotiating leverage with Crockett, who apparently offered a cut of the Starrcade pay-per-view profits (this is the first Dave’s heard that Crockett has finalized a deal for Starrcade to go on ppv, though he did know they were negotiating for such).
- Sticking to Crockett through October ultimately puts the Road Warriors in a better bargaining position. Starrcade hype will have started by then, so their absence would be notable to Crockett fans, and if Chicago is chosen to host Starrcade then a Road Warriors match is essential. The door is still open with WWF, though, so if they eventually do want to jump, they can. That means the Road Warriors are in the unique position of being a major attraction working in either JCP or WWF but under no contractual restriction forbidding them from jumping at any moment. At present, it looks like they’re sticking with Crockett because of the greater creative freedom, better schedule, and freedom to tour Japan.
- Many readers think if the Road Warriors jumped to WWF it would kill the NWA. Dave disagrees. Sure, it would hurt the NWA in the midwest and elsewhere, but only Hogan has the ability to completely upend the current status quo. WWF survived the loss of guys like Piper, Snuka, Slaughter, and other once hot commodities and didn’t seem to miss a beat, and Crockett’s talent pool is deep enough to weather the same storm. Other fans think they need to be heels to be the biggest they can be, but Dave thinks it just wouldn’t work. The Road Warriors have the look and feel of being mean and sinister while still being faces and it works because “we are in the era of the anti-hero” and only Hogan is a bigger face act than the Road Warriors. Turning them heel in NWA and putting them against Dusty/Nikita would just turn a large number of fans against Dusty. There’s nothing wrong with lots of fans cheering heels (it’s happening with the Horsemen right now, for instance), but if it kills the popularity of your babyfaces with the majority, then you do have a problem and it’s going to be a long-term problem. Just look at the AWA. The Fabulous Freebirds could have been great there, but getting put in a feud with the Road Warriors killed their appeal. Greg Gagne and Jim Brunzell were very popular as the High Flyers for almost a decade, but making them faces against the Road Warriors as heels killed them both so hard that neither has been able to come back from it. The same thing would happen to the Rock & Roll Express or any other babyface in either NWA or WWF bar perhaps Hogan, Roddy Piper, or a babyface Ric Flair if put against heel Road Warriors.
- Watch: What happens when you make the Road Warriors heel against the Freebirds
- [New Japan] Dave is awaiting results from the August 19-20 shows. The big hype for those shows is the August 19 Now Leaders vs. New Leaders ten-man elimination match, as well as the two-day junior heavyweight tournament across both shows.
- [JWP and AJW] Shinobu Kandori has once again challenged Chigusa Nagayo. Dave thinks JWP must be having major financial difficulties, because in addition to Kandori making this challenge, Nancy Kumi also quit a few weeks back, and now El Gran Hamada (father of Xochitl Hamada, their teenage babyface star) and trainer for the group has retired and left the group effective August 22.
- [All Japan] Giant Baba has signed another ex-sumo, and perhaps has burned his bridges with the Sumo Association in the process. He’s signed Hiroshi Wajima, Isao Takagi, and John Tenta over the last ten months before signing this new wrestler Tamakirin (his Sumo name. Dave doesn’t know his real name, but I’ll tell you his name is Akira Taue). It’s expected that signing all these guys so quickly will mean Baba is prohibited from running shows at Sumo Hall, which leaves him only Budokan Hall for big Tokyo shows.
- [New Japan] Riki Choshu’s face managed to make it to tv as he walked from the ring after his team won a match that wasn’t aired on tv on August 4. It’s the first appearance of Choshu on tv at all for New Japan, and TV Asahi even avoided showing his face during the press conference announcing the August 19 ten-man match while showing the other nine wrestlers.
- UWF did an angle on the August 18 tv taping where Terry Taylor and Eddie Gilbert beat up Japanese photographer Jimmy Suzuki. Suzuki reportedly bled a whole hell of a lot. The angle is a work, Dave assures us, and was spurred in kayfabe by Suzuki flashing a camera in Taylor’s eyes. The bleeding was so bad that Suzuki needed a dozen stitches in the emergency room and when the doctors asked what happened, he said he was hit by “some sort of a foreign object” which is hilarious because that’s meaningless to doctors but common wrestling parlance. Dave imagines the doctors must have thought something got lost in translation.
- [Stampede] Chris Benoit returned from Japan on the August 14 show. He pinned Biff Wellington (who has now changed his name from Beef). Devil Masami also made what will turn out to be her final Stampede Wrestling appearance (and her final match ever in North America), defeating Mika Komatsu. The main event saw Great Gama defend the Commonwealth Title against Owen Hart, with Hart taken out of the ring on a stretcher to write him off the show. They had Gama and Badnews Allen double team Hart and work his leg, which he legitimately injured before the match, so he’s going to Japan pretty hurt. Between Hart being in Japan and Brian Pillman missing the next two weeks for a throat operation, that left the August 21 card to be headlined by Badnews Allen vs. Hiroshi Hase.
- Dave’s seen clips of the Paul Diamond & Pat Tanaka vs. Jeff Jarrett & Billy Travis tag title match in Memphis a few weeks back. He’s very impressed and expects to get a copy of the whole match eventually. Tanaka takes the fastest and hardest bumps of anyone.
- [JCP/NWA] WarGames 3 in Chicago drew $155,000 and about 2,000 shy of a sellout. Weather and ticket prices, as well as the Bears playing their first tv game of the season are the main reasons for not selling out.
- Jim Crockett has forbidden NWA, UWF, and Florida footage from appearing on Pro Wrestling this Week in the future.
- They’re trying to push Johnny Ace (Road Warrior Animal’s younger brother) as a sex symbol of sorts in Florida. They’ve got him doing vignettes with women every week recently.
- [WWF] There was some ironic commentary surrounding Ken Patera’s injury that aired during his match against Rocky Stone on Superstars this past weekend. He injured himself doing a military press, and McMahon asked Ventura how much Patera could military Press. Ventura’s response, just before the injury, was that he doesn’t do them because they cause injuries.
- In order to avoid confusion with Rick Martel, WWF is calling Sherri Martel the “Sensational Sherri” now.
- Dave’s heard from someone in the music industry that Koko B. Ware’s song on the upcoming Wrestling Album II will be a major hit. Dave is not sure whether to believe it or not.
- That Global group that hit the stock exchange is still in business. It’s currently run by Red Roberts and Bob Roop.
- Eddie Sharkey’s pled not guilty in his assault case, and the trial is set to start September 2. Tom Zenk has also come out and said that he quit WWF because he wanted to work Sharkey’s independent shows, but his contract wouldn’t allow it, as well as the fact that he was getting paid less than Rick Martel.
- Terry Funk recently filmed a national ad for Wendy’s.
- Watch: Terry Funk Wendy's Commercial
- At the National Video Convention last weekend in Vegas, Hulk Hogan, Gene Okerlund, Bobby Heenan, and Gorilla Monsoon went representing Coliseum Videos. Bruiser Brody was also there, representing the Dusty Woods line of Japanese wrestling tapes, and Sgt. Slaughter repped Hasbro. There were a lot of porn stars there since a very large chunk of video sales are porn. Hogan refused to pose with them because he felt it would be bad for his image.
- WWF’s August 22 MSG show drew a $221,000 gate, which is a little over 18,000 fans. Ricky Steamboat vs. Honkeytonk Man was the headline.
- New Japan’s August 19 and August 20 shows sold out Sumo Hall, drawing a combined $899,000 and 22,000+ fans. That’s three times the Crockett Cup’s draw. Masa Saito wound up missing both shows because his green card expired (Saito is native to Japan, but as a U.S. Citizen he needs a green card to work in Japan. So the Now Leaders team on August 19 was Inoki/Sakaguchi/Fujiwara/Hoshino/Mutoh against the New Leaders Choshu/Fujinami/Maeda/Strong Machine/Kimura. The New Leaders won with Choshu and Fujinami surviving. Inoki’s elimination was via count out. The Junior Heavyweight saw Kuniaki Kobayashi beat Nobuhiko Takada. By the way, Owen’s first match in is scheduled as a tag with Dick Murdoch against Inoki and Mutoh on August 24, so expect Owen to job to Inoki on his first night.
- Not a lot going on in the letters, but one does offer a bunch of basic information about the effects and dangers of anabolic steroids. The writer concludes “Steroids are potentially as deadly as cocaine, speed or any other recreational drug. So I find any defenses or explanation’s [sic] of Titan’s schizophrenic ‘stand’ on drugs to be utterly asinine.”
- English wrestler Malcolm Kirk, who wrestled in California as Killer Kirk in the early 70s, died on August 23 during a match. He was wrestling Big Daddy (the UK one) in Great Yarmouth, England in a battle of big men (Kirk weighed 350 lbs, Big Daddy’s billed weight was around 370 at the time). He took a big splash from Big Daddy and never revived. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital of undetermined causes. Kirk was 51.