September 28, 1987
- NWA/UWF are not going to have a lot of news this week due to the “team party” (I’m assuming the booking team/management, basically the slimmed down version of the NWA convention now that Crockett basically is the NWA) in San Martine this week, so the big news all comes from WWF’s tv tapings and some personnel changes, the first of which is that Jim Duggan is back. This was touched on late in last week’s issue, but he was present at the tv tapings on September 15 and 16 in Peoria and Rockford, Illinois. WWF had reportedly told announcers and publicity folks to pretend he was never gone. There was some worry about how fans would react, but the enthusiastic response he got in Houston at the Boesch retirement show seems to have alleviated the worry. Ivan Putski is back as well on a part-time basis.
- You won’t see Kamala, Jake Roberts, or Corporal Kirchner around WWF in the foreseeable future, though. Kirchner was fired again and Roberts is suspended for 12 weeks. Kamala’s been pulled from all scheduled bookings for unknown reasons. He was supposed to main event the Saturday Night’s Main Event to be taped September 23, against Hulk Hogan. But now that’s been changed and Sika will be taking his spot in the match. Honkeytonk Man vs. Savage for the Intercontinental Title is also scheduled for that show, and Dave expects something big with that.
- WWF has also announced the main event for Survivor Series and we finally have clarity on what that match type will entail. It’ll be a ten-man elimination tag match with teams currently consisting of Hogan/Ken Patera/Billy Graham/Bam Bam Bigelow/Paul Orndorff and Andre/Rick rude/One Man Gang/Bundy/Butch Reed. The show has also now been announced as an evening show, which means it will be going head to head with Starrcade. Survivor Series will be available for up to five million homes (a three percent buyrate would put them in 150,000 buys for a $2+ million gross). No idea yet how Starrcade will fare, as availability is still a question there and Vince has the jump on Crockett here.
- Comedian Richard Belzer is suing Hulk Hogan for $5 million. The suit stems from an incident prior to the first Wrestlemania and took place on Belzer’s tv show. Hogan and Mr. T were on the show during the hype week before Wrestlemania, and Belzer asked Hogan to demonstrate a hold on him. Hogan put Belzer in a front facelock and apparently squeezed so hard that Belzer passed out and, upon being released, hit his head on the floor and needed nine stitches in the back of his head.
- Watch: The incident that led to the lawsuit
- Following Chris Adams, Terry Gordy, and Buddy Roberts leaving UWF, here’s some speculation about future moves for Adams and Gordy. Adams left because of money, and apparently neither he nor Crockett really saw eye to eye, sohis leaving isn’t terribly surprising. He’s talked to both WWF and WCCW, though Dave supposes he’ll probably go to WWF if they’ll have him. If they don’t, he’s probably going to go to WCW and mostly make money working independently. Gordy has his Japanese tours to finish out the year. The smart move would be to do them then get knee surgery, which should basically write him a ticket to going wherever he wants doing whatever he wants. Michael Hayes is being brought to the main JCP side of things and will team with Jimmy Garvin. Hayes is better as a heel, but the (probably correct) belief by Crockett suits is that he needs to be a face to sell his album to wrestling fans.
- WWF’s latest round of tv tapings (September 15-16) has a few things developing. Honkeytonk Man did an interview with Craig DeGeorge listing ten reasons he’s the greatest Intercontinental Champion of all time, only to be interrupted by Savage. They had a good match later that night that’s probably set to air after the Savage face turn. They also taped a debate between Jimmy Hart and Elizabeth where she got off a number of zingers. Rick Rude stole the spotlight from Orndorff’s squash match by posing. Bob Orton and Don Muraco somehow screwed up the finish to their match and had to go out and do it again. The next night, Ted DiBiase offered $300 to a kid if he could do 30 pushups, then Duggan came out and took DiBiase’s money and gave it to the kid, which should make for a promising feud.
- **[WCCW] Iron Sheik started working here last week. He’s probably going to be billed as Ali Vaziri due to WWF trademark on the name The Iron Sheik.
- If it weren’t sad, the funniest story of the past week would be Kevin Von Erich’s promo on the September 4 WCCW tv show in Dallas. He spent an entire tag match trying to break Brian Adias’s thumb, then he grabbed the mic and cut a promo saying “I don’t make you fans many promises but when I make a promise, I’ll keep it. I promise you I’m going to run Chris Adams out of Texas and I’m going to break Chris Adams’ thumb.” He was dead serious and not trying for laughs, and he did the same thing not too long ago - he talked about Michael Hayes not long ago when Adias was the opponent he was supposed to talk about. So this is unsurprising and likely a result of everything going wrong in the Von Erich family since forever. The stupidest part is nobody in tv production edited it out. And Dave is irritated about stuff like this from all the promotions - television is your lifeblood as a promotion, so if you have an error or a wrestler gets carried away and says stuff that isn’t in good taste or whatever, just edit it out.
- Not to pick on Florida when they’re on the verge of folding, but they’re pulling some rookie mistakes here. They’ve advertised a loser leaves town match between Steve Keirn and Mike Graham vs. The Sheepherders. Those in the know already know the result, since the Sheepherders have already arrived in UWF. Nothing wrong with that, thouogh, since their debut won’t be televised until after the 22nd. But, they’re advertising shows for October and featuring Graham and Keirn heavily on those cards, and it’s also for a feud that hasn’t started yet.
- [Florida] That’s still better than what they did on what they’re billing as the final episode of Championship Wrestling from Florida (in this format, anyway - they put the word “Finis” at the end of the episode). They played a video of Johnny Ace kidnapped by Kevin Sullivan and Bugsy McGraw, who were bullying him and making him wash Sullivan’s hands and read the Three Little Pigs (replacing pigs with sheep). That’s fine on its own, probably, but Ace was busting out laughing throughout the segment and couldn’t get through his lines without it. Why not do a second take? Even worse, later on in the show they had a Sheepherders match and Ace was out there carrying their flagpole. They covered for that by saying on commentary that Sullivan and McGraw released him. But later on the Sheepherders did a promo demanding Sullivan and McGraw release Ace before saying they’d start hurting people until he is released.
- The Wheel of Torture in Memphis turned out to the faces’ benefit on its second week. Every match was a rematch from the September 7 Wheel of Torture show, and the faces won this one. Cute idea, but it didn’t really work to draw crowds. They really went full Wheel of Fortune ripoff, as even the model they had spinning the wheel was called Vanna Black. Dave’s sense is that Memphis is completely gimmicked out. All their matches on the August 31 card were gimmick matches (bullrope, chain on a pole, kendo stick, hickory stick, cattle prod, battle royal with all the above legal, and two hair matches in a cage and additional bets as well). Dave’s surprised that Lawler hasn’t avoided doing this - it’s basic wrestling psychology that the more gimmicks there are on a show, the less each means. With all the gimmicks and bets and stipulations, drawing less than 5,000 people and following up the next two weeks with all gimmicks has just led to a major drop in attendance. It’s just like Crockett’s big problem with having too many title matches on a show - the more title matches, the less meaningful. Having eight title matches on a show gives you nothing to come back to the area with, and the more titles the less meaningful the big ones are and the less they draw. There’s nothing special about a title if everyone has one, and that’s part of why WWF is more successful at retaining audience when they tour outside their home territory. They don’t have a lot of titles, they keep the gimmicks limited, and their tv product focuses on one big angle each week rather than overdosing the fans with too many angles to keep up with.
- Andre’s movie he filmed last fall should be releasing soon. Dave thinks it’s called “Prince’s something or other.”
- Watch: trailer for The Prince's Something-or-Other
- Dave saw some of the work the luchadors have been doing in LA at the Olympic Auditorium and he seems to have mixed feelings. He’s not into the style at all, but there are some excellent moves. Dave thinks Negro Casas is the best luchador working in the U.S., and his home promotion is no longer promoting in LA, so he’s only here in San Bernadino now. Casas takes some of the best bumps ever, but on the whole Dave thinks the Japanese style is better executed and more realistic while Mexican style is more transparently choreographed and sloppy.
- World Grand Prix Wrestling in Nova Scotia is ending their current season in a couple weeks. Why do I mention them? Because they’ve got a fake Dynamite Kid working for them. So that's a thing.
- The price for the Pro Wrestling This Week cruise is $899. For that you get a one week cruise and a wrestling card in San Juan, plus the chance to hang out on the cruise with the PWTW folks and Jerry Lawler, Wendi Richter, Hugo Savinovich, Bruiser Brody, Missing Link, Paul E. Dangerously, Red Bastien, Ken Mantell, Bill Apter, and Craig Peters (the last two work for Pro Wrestling Illustrated).
- A letter comes in from a reader who found the quote in the April 1976 issue of Inside Wrestling. The writer wants to nominate it for the award for “best E.S.P. from a 25-year-old legend-to-be immediately after surviving a plane crash.” Enjoy the quote from a young Ric Flair:
- When I return to the wrestling world, I will be better than ever. There is no force on heaven or Earth that can stop me from being the greatest grappler in history. My life story will be an inspiration to everyone...Ric Flair is destined to be the best wrestler in history...I will be the greatest wrestler the world has ever seen...As far as I am concerned, the sky is the limit.
- Another letter writer thinks turning down Baba is a bad move by Brody. He writes that we should be real - Brody’s spent the past year working minor leagues and expecting the wrestling world to come to him. If things keep on course as they are, though, it’s likely that Brody will no longer be the commodity he is today.
- Dave continues the roundup of favorites for the awards. This week he notes that best babyface is the easiest category. Hogan should have it on lock and by a landslide and no wrestler has been more over on a national and international basis than Hogan is presently. Dave thinks Riki Choshu is probably number 2, with Chigusa Nagayo in third. Anyone who’s seen AJW regularly won’t question her placement at all. He next covers most overrated. “In a business where being overrated is a plus because a promotion’s job is to make the public believe the wrestlers are better than they really are, I’m basing my picks on guys who are getting big pushes who if another wrestler had the same push, would be more effective in his role.” That actually really helps clarify what the award is about. Dave puts Dusty Rhodes, Kevin Von Erich, then Antonio Inoki as his top three. This has been a banner year for Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic. Dave says there’s one scene he has to pick, and which he will remember until he dies: Glenn Goza, a friend of the Von Erich family, reading a poem extolling Mike Von Erich just weeks after his suicide at the Texas Stadium show. The disgusting part is that he was “standing next to a mud pit (where a mud wrestling Battle Royal was to follow) and standing under the highest scaffold” Dave has ever seen. The nearly empty stadium behind Goza showed Dave he wasn’t the only one who felt put off by all of it. Most Embarrassing Wrestler is for the wrestler who makes you most embarrassed to be a fan when your non-fan friends see them. Dave says he hates to pick such a nice guy, but picks Giant Baba because although he is beloved in Japan, he sticks out like a sore thumb as his ability simply isn’t there anymore and physically he looks like he “died five years ago and was buried, and then the corpse was exhumed and skin was stretched over the bones and they stuck him in the corner to team with Tiger Mask.”
- The new UWF show was bad, but remember that it’s aimed at introducing all the personalities to the New York market. They had Missy Hyatt, Jim Ross, and Magnum T.A. in a newsroom type setup and they showed a lot of clips, and doing that before getting the personalities over for the new market is probably a mistake, but Dave’s willing to give it a few weeks to work out the kinks and before he makes up his mind. For viewers already familiar with UWF, 90% of the show was repeat material. So we can feel much better about modern Raw with that in mind. There is one thing Dave will say about it now, though, and that’s that it had too many angles for casual fans to register (he watched with some casual fans who then watched WWF’s tv, and they remembered everything about the WWF show but nothing about the UWF show). The newsroom setup and clip introduction probably hurt things too - it’s hard to be spontaneous when you are presenting everything as pre-taped and nothing feels live.
- Dave also went to the most recent WWF and Crockett shows in his area, and he thinks Crockett’s dropping the ball on local advertising. Do more localized promos to build up the card, even if just for the major cities. It really makes a difference in terms of building hype and getting fans in the door. At the NWA convention last week, Crockett and company should have focused on correcting the obvious problems they have (no localized promos, stale main event, tv product looking substandard compared to WWF, etc.) so they can get more fans and get them to appreciate their strength: better and wilder wrestling.