Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 26, 1987

Mad Dog Vachon was the victim of a hit and run in Des Moines, Iowa this past week. He was hiking down a gravel road while visiting his sister-in-law, and was knocked into a ditch where he lay unconscious for about eight hours. The driver, who was caught and charged with a hit and run among other charges, ran over both of Vachon’s legs and left them badly mutilated to the point that after five major surgeries this past week, on Friday parts of Vachon’s right leg were amputated. The left leg was s severely broken and required four pins and a steel rod to stabilize the bone. As of the most recent report, Vachon was in serious but stable condition in an Iowa City hospital. News reports have him at 58 years old, but Dave has his birth year as 1923, which would make him 63. In his youth, Vachon was a great amateur wrestler, representing Canada in the 1948 Olympics and winning gold in the 1950 British Empire games. He turned pro shortly thereafter. Vachon was a multiple time AWA world champion in the 1960s, and wrestled actively until his retirement in September 1986 to conclude a 35-year career.
Watch: Mad Dog Vachon news coverage and interview
Some notes about Thanksgiving night, the first of which is that Survivor Series is slotted to start at 7:30 pm. Eastern A key part of Crockett’s deal with cable companies is that Starrcade will not conflict with WWF’s show, so Vince putting the start time at 7:30 rather than 8:00 cuts another half hour off Starrcade, limiting the show to two and a half hours (all previous Starrcades have been 4+ hours). The lineup for Starrcade has been shaking out, so this is not final, but closer to final and the final lineup should be in next week. The big match will be Hogan/Patera/Orndorff/Graham/Bigelow vs. Andre/Bundy/Gang/Reed/Rude, with the other match being Honkeytonk/Bass/Davis/Hercules/Race vs. Savage/Beefcake/Muraco/JYD/Duggan. The tag team match seems now to be a completely different type of match than what Dave initially thought of two teams of five teams, and now something more like an old Mid-South tag team elimination match from 1985. Word is now the ten teams (Harts, Strike Force, Bulldogs, Islanders, Bravo & Valentine, Bolsheviks, Killer Bees, Roma & Powers, Demolition, and Rougeaus) will all fight individually in an elimination match, with two wrestlers in at a time and able to tag out to any other wrestler on the apron, leading to occasional heel/heel and face/face dynamics within the match, as every wrestler must accept any request for a tag. Elimination of one man eliminates his whole team. This promises to be confusing if it remains the format. The women’s Survivor Series match has formed up a bit more. Moolah, Velvet McIntyre, the Jumping Bomb Angels, and possibly Debbie Combs (no longer seeming certain) vs. Sherri, Leilani Kai, Judy Martin, Angie Manneli, and one other will be the match. The entire card will be these four matches, so it will be interesting to see how it performs, but it’s already successful for what it was designed for: destroying Starrcade.
Starrcade, at least, looks like it will sell out the Pavillion in Chicago. Closed-circuit in the locations like Baltimore and the Carolinas where JCP is well established should do well, but otherwise it’s looking like a potential disaster at this stage. The card in Chicago at present stands, from main event to opener, as Garvin vs. Flair for the NWA Title with no time limit and no dq in a cage, Luger vs. Rhodes for the U.S. Title in a cage and if Dusty loses he is banned from wrestling “anywhere in the world” for 90 days, Tully and Arn defending the NWA Tag Titles vs. the Road Warriors, Nikita Koloff vs. Terry Taylor to unite the NWA and UWF TV Title, Rock and Roll Express vs. Midnight Express in a scaffold match, Steve Williams vs. Barry Windham for the UWF “World” Title, and Michael Hayes/Sting/Jimmy Garvin vs. Eddie Gilbert/Rick Steiner/Larry Zbyszko in the opener. In addition, JCP will have live shows in New Orleans and Greensboro. In New Orleans they’ll have the Sheepherders vs. the Lightning Express in a cage, Bugsy McGraw & Jimmy Valiant vs. Tiger Conway & Shaska Whatley in a bunkhouse match, Ron Simmons vs. Black Bart, Shane Douglas vs. The Terminator, Steve Cox vs. Gary Young, and the Kodiaks squashing some jobbers. Greensboro will have Ivan Koloff vs. Wilbur to main event, a 7-woman battle royal, Mike Rotunda defending the Florid Title against Warlord, New Breed vs. Mod Squad, Kendall Windham/Ricky Santana/David Sierra vs. Hiro Matsuda/Konga the Barbarian/Samurai Warrior #1, and Denny Brown & Italian Stallion vs. Thunderfeet.
In January 1987, JCP was coming off a very successful Starrcade and followed up with big gates across the country in December and January. Many thought they looked to be in position to become a real challenger to WWF’s supremacy by the end of 1987. Dave thought so as well, though being number one is not a big deal because they could both do pretty bad at the same time (they’ve managed that the past few months), and still be far ahead of the pack. There are lots of reasons to point to the drop in live attendance for most groups. If in December if you had told Dave JCP would pick up Luger, Windham, Williams, the Freebirds, Terry Taylor, Sting, Rick Steiner, Chris Adams, Eddie Gilbert, all of UWF’s tv and arena contracts, and only lose non-headline talent like Wahoo McDaniel, Rick Rude, Dutch Mantell, Bill Dundee, and a few others and they’d not be drawing big crowds, regardless of how WWF was doing, he wouldn’t have believed it. But only Luger was used well among the newcomers, and instead “the clique” continued to have their push run well past the point of becoming stale and the rest of the talent were treated as mid-level guys. JCP made it impossible, by the way they structured cards, for Florida and UWF to draw on their own. Every newsletter has already had a long piece about Dusty Rhodes, and the points are valid. And to Dusty’s credit, he has incredible charisma even if he’s not a great worker and is out of shape, but he’s not the guy to be a top babyface anymore, and the fact that he gets as loud a reaction as the Road Warriors today isn’t a reason to make him a top face. Anyone given the push Dusty’s gotten for as long as he’s gotten, and built every story around himself and his great promos, would be over three times as much as Dusty is right now. When judging a booker, you want to look at if the booker gets the most possible out of the talent roster, and Dusty has been an unqualified failure there, especially since UWF was bought. Buying UWF, according to a Charlotte newspaper article in April, was for Jim Crockett about getting the tv network and thus increasing ad revenues. Getting the UWF talent roster wasn’t even viewed as a major item. With the first combined cards being Bash cards, they drew really well (even if Dusty/Tully and WarGames were the only major angles), and with UWF getting tv in New York it makes sense to showcase guys from both groups. But all the guys getting big pushes were NWA guys and UWF guys were made into the B level guys, and the number of titles became overwhelming. The drawing power of UWF was killed, and the death of the UWF zombie promotion will eventually follow, just like Florida. This week on WTBS, Jim Crockett himself tried to paint UWF as the heels, which shows how willing he is to potentially abandon the red-headed stepchild of Jim Crockett Promotions. The heat between UWF and NWA guys was visible on tv beyond the angle they’re working, and that’s just ridiculous because they all work for the same boss in the same promotion in real life. There are lessons to be learned here that will go completely unheeded in 14 years.
Eddie Gilbert will be meeting with Vince McMahon this coming week. He’ll be representing himself, Terry Taylor, Missy Hyatt, and Sting. No secret that Sting is one of the wrestlers WWF most wants to have under their employ.
Major disappointment for New Japan on the ratings for their October 5 two-hour special. The show included both Choshu’s first tv match in 8 months and the jungle match between Inoki and Saito, and it drew an 11.0 rating according to Video Research and a 14.8 Neilsen, double the weekly average. TV-Asahi, however, were banking on all the hype leading to a rating of 20 or higher. Both the network and promotion were banking on Choshu’s return to tv solving their tv ratings woes, and they’ll need to average 12-14 ratings to stay in prime time. With Choshu’s debut barely cracking that, trouble appears to have returned to New Japan.
It’s pretty clear that Ron Garvin was a terrible choice for NWA champion, just going off attendance figures. He may indeed be the worst NWA champion in history, as he’s not even over to the public as a main event star. He’s a solid worker, a decent challenger, but as the anchor of a card he just doesn’t have it. There’s the argument that it’s unfair to compare him to Hogan, but that’s a ridiculous comparison even when Ric Flair was champion. To all but the small number of people who know “what working is really about” Hogan is the best champion because he’s the most over, always wins, and nobody ever embarrasses him. Those who understand working will, on the flip side, happily see Flair job every night of 1988 while Hogan goes undefeated and still find Flair to be better. In 1984-1985 the question may have been relevant, but Flair’s booking as a heel champion who never wins has settled the debate for the marks. Insert Garvin and the question just becomes an exercise in exasperation. Out of all the world champions, the only one who “deserves it” on the grounds of being the best wrestler in his promotion is Curt Hennig.
New Japan on October 5 sold out Korauken Hall for Choshu’s tv debut. His opponent was supposed to be the winner of a fan vote, but they did a coin toss instead. Dave suspects a two-headed coin, as Fujinami won the toss, and that Maeda won the fan vote but that the office doesn’t trust him enough for the match. They wrestled 35 minutes until a referee stoppage due to Fujinami “injuring” his arm, and Choshu refused the win because he couldn’t make Fujinami submit, so the match officially went down as a no contest and the two shook hands. They’ll have a rematch on October 25 at Sumo Hall. They had to restart the match twice due to the guys getting double counted out twice, with both promising to fight to a definitive finish.
TV-Asahi spent $135,000 for production costs on the jungle match between Inoki and Saito. Costs included flying all the reporters and equipment to the island by helicopter. That’s one reason they’re not feeling great about the rating.
Watch: Inoki vs. Saito on the island of Ganryujima courtesy of u/FMecha
All Japan Women is full steam ahead toward October 20 where they will unify the World Title and the Pacific Title between Chigusa Nagayo and Yukari Omori.
Bruiser Brody will be returning for All Japan’s tag tournament in December and will be working 10-12 weeks in 1988. On October 6, Tenryu beat Tsuruta by DQ when Tsuruta hit the referee, and after the match Brody ran out and attacked both men and bloodied Tsuruta. Tsuruta fought back and suplexed Brody before running Brody off. Tenryu and Tsuruta are set for a double title match putting up their International and United National belts in their next match.
Meanwhile, pulling Flair from the latest All Japan tour has apparently significantly damaged relations between Baba and Crockett. One report Dave received says the relationship between JCP and All Japan is irreparable, but Dave thinks the word might be too strong.
[All Japan] Yoshiaki Yatsu has disappeared. Baba held a big party on October 1 to celebrate All Japan’s 15th anniversary. Over 600 people were there, and Yatsu wasn’t there, and it was then announced he wouldn’t be on the next tour. Baba says Yatsu called and asked for a break from wrestling. At least part of the story seems to be that Baba wanted Yatsu to team with Tsuruta to win the tag tournament and beat the Road Warriors for the International Tag Titles, before feuding with Tiger Mask II and Nakano. Tsuruta wanted to team with Tiger Mask and Yatsu with Nakano, though. It does not look like Yatsu is going to try and join up with Choshu in New Japan, though.
Memphis looks to have gained some life with Lawler and Steve Bill Dundee winning the AWA Tag Titles. In the same show as the title change, Lawler, Dundee, and Steve Keirn had a cage match against Carl Fergie, Don Bass, and The Black Prince (Brickhouse Brown), with Lawler throwing fire at Prince while Keirn held Prince. But Prince ducked, Keirn got the fireball, and got pinned, and then he attacked Lawler (which means he’s a heel now). Crowd was up for this, drawing almost 4,000 fans. Still no solid word on the relationship with AWA.
Tracy Smothers and Steve Armstrong are both leaving Memphis. The Midnight Rockers are inbound, working full time beginning October 26.
AWA drew 400 in Denver on October 16, which is really bad considering the annual battle royal event there has traditionally drawn over 10,000. Wahoo McDaniel won the battle royal.
Kevin Von Erich regained the WCCW World Title on October 17. Attendance was about 5,000, pretty much for Kerry’s return. He walked out to the ring fine, but reportedly he was limping badly by the time he returned to the locker room.
In Alabama, they’re running a fun angle with Wendell Cooley turning babyface. He’s trying to apologize to Danny Davis for turning on him a few weeks back, and has offered $25,000, an apology, and his Continental Title in exchange for forgiveness. Davis has turned down all those offers, and so Cooley asked what Davis would accept. Davis said he’d only forgive Cooley if he retired. So Cooley laid down his title and walked out, supposedly retiring. Davis has refused to take the title, so it will be put up in a tournament.
Owen Hart’s return to Stampede on October 19 drew 1,400 and saw him go to a double countout with Jason the Terrible. Owen debuted a number of new moves he learned over in Japan.
Stampede is bringing in a newcomer named Rick Hudson to do a gay act.
Central States is on its last legs. Wrestlers are making anywhere from $175-250 per week, and they’re making 7 hour drives so that’s just not enough. On their October 9 show in St. Joseph, they were supposed to have Hennig defend the AWA Title against D.J. Peterson. Before the match they announced that Hennig missed his plane and wouldn’t wrestle, then called it similar to what happened with Stan Hansen when Nick Bockwinkel was awarded the title in 1986. For those wondering about that, Baba had negotiated with Gagne that Hansen would be AWA champion. In June, Gagne booked Bockwinkel to win the title off Hansen, but Baba had already promoted Hansen for his next tour as champion. Gagne taped promos with Bockwinkel as champion and sent those tapes out to tv stations, and when he told Hansen to drop the title to Bockwinkel Hansen refused because he was already committed to defend the title for Baba in Japan, and that he’d be happy to drop the title when he got back. So he left with the belt, and Gagne declared in Denver that Bockwinkel was the champion as a result of being unwilling to fulfill his commitments. So anyway, Bob Geigel announced that “because of current AWA standards, the new World Champion is D.J. Peterson.” Dave guesses you won’t see Hennig coming back here, or any mention of the AWA World Title, since Geigel’s focusing on his World Wrestling Association (under which he’s supposedly uniting Oregon, Alabama, and Deep South).
Dave compliments how well the Hiro Matsuda angle in JCP is coming across. Matsuda trained Lex Luger, and Johnny Weaver bleeding from the mouth while Matsuda had Weaver in the sleeper was a nice touch.
Hector Guerrero is leaving JCP for Memphis. He’s the first of a lot of talent that will be phased out as a result of the trimmed down schedule. It’s not clear how many will be dropped or be unable to afford to stay. Dusty’s booking decisions are more based on his personal feelings as opposed to the abilities of the wrestlers, so there’s a good chance that more talented guys like Hector may be cut when they otherwise should not be cut.
Awards thoughts once again get a page. Dave talks a bit about the content of the 1987 yearbook issue, which will have the awards results (I don’t have that among the files, unfortunately). He’ll run through all the important events, the awards, do profiles on several wrestlers, rank the top 75 wrestlers of the year, list all the championship holders from as many promotions as he can for the year, and do a special anniversary feature since it will mark the beginning of the sixth year of the Observer. Dave even promises to do the “hideous” task of ranking the top 25 matches of the last five years. For Most Improved Wrestler, which Dave calls his favorite category, Dave thinks Wajima, Sting, Bubba Rogers, and Luger are all good picks. Dave’s final top three are Big Bubba Rogers, Keiichi Yamada, and Masaharu Funaki. He picks Funaki over Brian Pillman solely because Pillman is a rookie, and Dave’s going to vote for Pillman for Rookie of the Year. For Match of the Year, this year has the fewest contenders of any of the five years the Observer has been around. The only two U.S. matches worth considering are the Flair/Windham 40 minute draw on tv and Steamboat/Savage from Wrestlemania III. Dave picks three: Takada/Maeda vs. Mutoh/Koshinaka on March 20, Flair Windham, and Takada/Koshinaka from February 5 for his top three, then immediately scratches that by remembering Lioness Asuka vs. Chigusa Nagayo from February 23, which he says definitely deserves the number 2, if not number 1 spot. For Worst Tag Team, Dave picks Bugsy McGraw and Jimmy Valiant.
WWF is also dropping shows during the week, but it’ll work out for them because they’re bumping their weekends to 6 shows. So they’ll still run an average of 20-23 shows per week, which should lead to higher WWF attendance as they deepend their cards with more name guys for the weekend double shots.
Jake Roberts is back in early November. He’s been suspended for some kind of drug test failure, but he’s done all the company has asked of him during his suspension, so he’s being brought back early for good behavior.
Eddie Sharkey was sentenced to six months in jail. He was able to transfer his sentence from Wisconsin to Minnesota thanks to multiple letters of support from politicians, which will let him serve his sentence only at night so he can spend the daytime operating his wrestling business.
Eddie Guerrero, younger brother of Chavo and Hector, has started wrestling in Mexico City. Reports are he’s fantastic. Dave should be getting a tape of Eddie highlights next week, but word is he’s working with some of the best high flyers in Mexico.
Nelson Royal is officially NWA Jr. Heavyweight Champion now that Hector Guerrero has left. According to Dave’s records, that would make Royal the oldest man to hold a major version of a world championship, with the exception of Verne Gagne in the final year of his career. Royal is 55, and Gagne retired as AWA champion when he was 56 back in 1981.
Al Perez is WCCW World Champion again. On the October 17 show, the finish saw Fritz Von Erich brawling with Gary Hart, and when Perez stuck his head out to get involved Kerry knocked him out with a punch, leading to Kevin pinning Perez. Because of the interference, the pinfall has been overturned and Perez is still champion.
Nick Bockwinkel did color commentary on the October 16 MSG show for WWF. He’s a heel, as they introduced him as a long-time friend of Bobby Heenan, and he just kept dunking on Gorilla Monsoon. Dave’s been told he did an excellent job, and he was the highlight of the show. Bockwinkel was announced as a semi-retired wrestler, so it seems the plan may be to have him as a heel commentator on one of the shows and let him work a short feud once or twice a year with a babyface. Dave believes this is the role they had always wanted Jesse Ventura to fill, if only his health had allowed it.
If the Inoki/Saito jungle match really went over two hours, it would be the longest match in Japanese wrestling history. It would also be the longest match anywhere since Dave became a fan 18 years ago. He remembers a few 90 minute Dory Funk vs. Jack Brisco matches, and believes Flair/Windham went 90 minutes within the last year or so. The longest match Dave recalls since he became a fan was Dory Funk vs. Cyclone Negro in a one hour and 44 minute death match that went to 27 falls before Negro finally stayed down. Of course, with all those falls, there was nearly half an hour of rest time built into the match. The Inoki-Saito match started in daylight and ended in darkness, so they had to build a campfire for the reporters and tv people and wrestlers to be able to see. The finish had Inoki throwing Saito into the campfire.
All Japan Women’s Crush Gals vs. Jumping Bomb Angels match drew a 7.5 rating on tv in Japan. That’s on par with New Japan’s average and well ahead of All Japan’s October 3 show (before Brody’s return).
Dave concludes the issue by giving Mad Dog Vachon’s hospital room number and its address so fans can send get well cards. Not gonna lie, kind of weird seeing an address in the Observer that’s less than a ten minute walk from where I live currently.