November 02, 1987
- Rewinder note: I won't be posting any rewinds next week. It's my university's spring break, but with the whole COVID-19 situation I have to use the time to convert all my classes into online courses, so I won't be on reddit much and won't be able to do posts. We'll resume Tuesday the 24th.
- With all the Starrcade/Survivor Series coverage, there hasn’t been a lot of space to devote to the annual Japanese tag team tournaments occurring in late November/early December. New Japan will start the Japan Cup tournament on November 9, with the finals on December 7 in Osaka. There will be a round robin format with points (5 for pin or submission victory, 4 for a win via dq or countout, 2 for a draw, 0 for any kind of loss or a double dq). Last year they made it so any match that ended in a double countout had to be restarted and fought to a finish. The only foreign teams to be invited are Ron Starr & Ron Ritchie and Dick Murdoch & Scott Hall. The only other announced team is Mr. Pogo & Kendo Nagasaki. Dave figures a list of possible pairs and speculates this will be the most stacked tag team tournament in Japanese history. All Japan, meanwhile, has their Real World Tag League opening on November 21 and concluding on December 11. This will also be a round robin, but no matter how you win you get 2 points for winning, while a draw or double count out gets 1 point, and a loss or double disqualification gets 0 points. This tournament won’t have the winners go on to a championship match like New Japan’s, but the tournament looks very predictable and the moment the bracket is announced it should be easy to figure out what the finals are and make a solid prediction of the eventual champion. Foreign teams will include Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy, Bruiser Brody & Col. DeBeers, the Funks, Abdullah the Butchet & TNT, the Youngbloods, and Tom Zenk & Terminator. The Japanese teams are not definite, but PWF World Tag champs Tenryu and Hara are definite. Jimmy Snuka was supposed to team with Brody, but looks like he’ll be touring New Zealand during this period instead. Both of these tournaments are part of what is traditionally the hottest time of year for business in Japan.
- In addition to Starrcade and Survivor Series, AWA and WCCW will also be holding Thanksgiving events. World Class’s annual Thanksgiving show will be at Reunion Arena in Dallas and AWA will have a big show at the Minneapolis Auditorium. Dave expects some changes to the New Orleans and Greensboro cards for Starrcade, and Starrcade has reached availability for about 10% of the number of homes Survivor Series will be available in. With Starrcade set to start at 5:00 pm Eastern and Survivor Series set to start at 7:30 pm, Starrcade has to end before Survivor Series starts. Survivor Series needs to end by 9:45 pm for an encore broadcast at 10 pm, but the problem for WWF may be stretching a four match show to last that long. Even with all the hype, Dave thinks WWF will be lucky to do a quarter the ppv business of Wrestlemania (which would still be $2.5 million, so a very good amount). Realistically, JCP can expect optimistically around $400,000 gross for ppv, which would probably not be terribly profitable. Last year, with closed-circuit and live gates, Starrcade grossed over $900,000, and even with double the closed-circuit locations it doesn’t look like it’ll be easy for JCP to exceed that.
- It looks like WWF and the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission could be gearing up for a fight. WWF is behind the recent movement to deregulate pro wrestling in Pennsylvania, and it looks like the commission is retaliating by decreeing that all referees and ring announcers for wrestling shows must be provided by the commission. Previously, both WWF and JCP would use commission referees, but guys like Mel Phillips and Howard Finkel would do ring announcing and referees employed by the promotions would handle main events. The October 10 WWF show at the Spectrum was not approved by the commission until October 6, and according to Linda McMahon, the commission at one point made a threat that state police would close the event if it proceeded without state sanction. The commission had denied approval to WWF with a claim that WWF “hadn’t responded to letters requesting information about television broadcast revenues” and that, upon receipt of the information they gave approval. In McMahon’s statement, she said from a WWF perspective, state regulation is simply no longer appropriate. The commission argues deregulation would turn pro wrestling into blade city and cost local jobs, and that the very nature of pro wrestling makes regulation necessary. The first show to be affected by all this was the October 24 NWA show in Philadelphia during the Ric Flair/Nikita Koloff main event. Commission referee Dick Kroll refereed his fourth match in a row during the thirty minute main event (and two of the earlier matches had gotten quite wild and necessitated he run around quite a bit) and completely screwed up the finish. Fans report he was obviously exhausted by the end of the match, which saw Koloff get disqualified for flipping Flair over the top ropes. Kroll raised Nikita’s hand three times while telling ringside officials that Flair was the winner, which may not sound that bad on paper but fans say it was pretty awful in person.
- Gill Cable out of San Jose will be carrying Starrcade live on Thanksgiving afternoon. Dave is organizing a watch party “for those of you wishing to alienate your families for life.”
- The top rumor in wrestling is the possible merger or buyout of AWA and Memphis. Negotiations have taken place that, if concluded, would give Jerry Jarrett control of the ESPN tv slot, which would probably be the best news in the western hemisphere for a lot of fans. No verified reports have come in yet that any deal has been completed, though.
- Dave expects to have to wait another week for the full story, but basically UWF is on life support as a circuit and the Crocketts are about ready to pull the plug. They may keep the name around for unification matches, but Dave believes we are no more than a few weeks out from the termination of the circuit as even a semi-separate entity. Most of the low-card UWF guys were let go effective the first week of November, though there are conflicting reports on names right now. What Dave does know is that all the prelim guys, with the possible exception of Road Warrior Animal’s brother Terminator, will be gone by Starrcade. Eddie Gilbert is out as booker, but remains as a wrestler. Expect more names gone soon.
- It’s official - the second NWA ppv will be on January 24, 1988, out of Nassau Coliseum and will be the finals of the Bunkhouse Stampede. It will feature all the wrestlers who win the Stampedes in December and early January, and Dave guesses another big unification match will be featured as well.
- A note on Wilbur in NWA/Crockett. They’ve got him doing a farm boy hick gimmick and are billing him from Hayward, California. Hayward isn’t exactly Mud Lick, Kentucky. It’s a San Francisco suburb and not remotely agricultural. Dave says they should have at least made him from Turlock.
- Numerous departures from Memphis: Brickhouse Brown, Don Pass, Pat Tanaka, Paul Diamond, The Nasty Boys, and Tracy Smothers. Brown and the Nasty Boys were expected. Brown got heat, but couldn’t translate that into drawing power. Meanwhile, Dave says the “Nasty Boys wrestled more like Nasty Girls.” Smothers had been planning to leave for a while to go to Alabama and re-form his team with Steve Armstrong (who just left Alabama). Tanaka had a disagreement with management. No idea what happened with Bass and Diamond, but Diamond and Tanaka could make a promotion some good money as a mid-card tag team.
- Hector Guerrero and Dr. Diablo (Carl Styles under a mask) won the AWA Tag Team Titles from Bill Dundee and Jerry Lawler on October 19. Dave thinks something fishy’s happening, because he doesn’t think AWA management knew this was going to happen given how they’re billing Lawler and Dundee defending against the Midnight Express (the AWA Midnight Express with Paul. E. Dangerously) on ESPN on October 30. Maybe Lawler and Dundee will regain the belts on the 26th of October in Memphis in the rematch, Dave muses. Dave muses correctly.
- Hector Guerrero and Dr. D give a promo ahead of their tag title match
- Rocky Johnson is still around in Memphis, but he doesn’t appear on television and only works the openers.
- World Class may be attempting to kill itself by booking dates all around the country. They’ve got a December 10 show in Chicago just a couple weeks after Starrcade; November 14 at the Sam Houston Coliseum (if Hulk vs. DiBiase can’t draw 4,000 here, Flair vs. Windham can’t draw 2,000, what the hell can Al Perez draw?); dates in Birmingham; Hollywood, Florida; St. Louis; and at the Omni in Atlanta. The Omni show is billed with Perez vs. Matt Borne for the WCCW Title in the headliner. They’re also advertising Bruiser Brody (who will be in Japan and won’t make the show) vs. Iron Sheik. They also happen to be booking Mil Mascaras for the show, though they’re billing him as Mils Mascaras and after being around 23 years and being a legend for most of those years you’d think they could spell his name right.
- WCCW’s October 17 Cotton Bowl show drew 3,700 fans (out of 80,000 seats) and $48,000. At least Kerry, during his brief run-ins lately, has moved well and shown no signs of problems. On the flip side, wrestling a regular schedule doesn’t seem like the best idea for him, and he may be risking a lot for the sake of ego and fan support. Dave understands that a guy’s gotta eat, but it’s another thing to build the promotion around him and prime him for a World Title run when working full time could make a big setback more likely than not.
- WWF is suing Tom Zenk for $100,000 for breach of contract.
- Several weeks back in Boston the Davey Boy Smith/Hercules Hernandez match ended abruptly because Davey Boy separated his shoulder. It caused him to miss about a week.
- No confirmation, but rumors are flying that Wrestlemania IV will be at the Superdome in New Orleans. Guess McMahon isn’t afraid of a challenge, considering New Orleans is where Orndorff and Hogan only drew 2,000 in the midst of their feud where they were selling out everywhere else.
- Leilani Kai and Judy Martin have bleached their hair, taken on Jimmy Hart as a manager, and been renamed the Glamour Girls. Dave says he’s going to make no wisecracks here so you have to guess what he’s going to say. If you’re wondering, Dave’s nickname for them going forward will be the Glamour Ghouls.
- Chigusa Nagayo beat Yukari Omori to capture the WWWA World Title in All Japan Women on October 20. The death match lasted 18 minutes and saw Nagayo also put up her All-Pacific title. After the match, three-time World judo champion and former UWA Women’s World Champion Shinobu Kandori (whose multiple retirements this year you can read about in previous rewinds) came out and challenged Nagayo. On the same show, Bull Nakano and Condor Saito beat the New Yorkers (Yumi Orgura and Kazue Nagahori) for the WWWA World Tag Titles.
- [AJW] Devil Masami will have her retirement match on December 16, challenging Nagayo for the World Title. Masami just turned 26 and has thus come up against All Japan Women’s mandatory retirement age and is being forced to leave the group. If she can get booked in North America, Dave expects her to start working for Stampede or WWF beginning in March.
- [All Japan] Yoshiaki Yatsu will return to team with Jumbo Tsuruta to challenge the Road Warriors on October 30 and 31.
- Dave saw Brody’s appearance in All Japan on October 6. Brody was in for maybe a minute during the middle of a six-man tag match, and he threw some nasty kicks at Tiger Mask II . Tiger kicked back a few times, but Brody caught his foot and blocked, and Dave says it was a total shoot for the brief minute. Brody also kicked Takagi so hard for a shoot that Takagi went down like he took a bullet.
- [NJPW] The Choshu/Fujinami team broke up on October 19 after beating Inoki and Keiichi Yamada. The match lasted only a bit over a minute and ended with Choshu lariating Yamada. Inoki then challenged the two to a handicap match and got destroyed for four minutes until the two started their break up angle due to ego issues. Fujinami had Inoki pinned, but Choshu pulled him off because he wanted to beat Inoki. Then he had Inoki in the scorpion deathlock, and Fujinami punched him to break the hold. So now we have Choshu (with Super Strong Machine) vs. Fujinami (with Kengo Kimura) as a new feud.
- [NJPW] Dave finally saw a tape of the Inoki/Saito jungle match and understands the ratings issues. The idea was good, but two hours of restholds and no noise is nobody’s idea of entertainment. Lots of blood, but that didn’t help. Dave figures most people just fell asleep, because he fell asleep several times watching the match. It’s a big shame that New Japan put such a poor show up for their attempt to put on a big show, because they stood to make a lot of new fans if the show had been good. Before the Choshu/Fujinami match on that show, they showed clips from 1983 of Choshu pinning Fujinami, submitting Maeda, and getting pinned by Inoki, so great job killing your angles.
- Chris Benoit and Hiroshi Hase are leaving Stampede following the October 23 show to go be in New Japan’s tag tournament.
- Once again, Dave goes over award categories. For Most Unimproved, this is for those who have fallen farthest over the past year and no longer live up to their reputation. Dave thinks Butch Reed seems an obvious choice, maybe Buddy Landel or George Takano. Terry Gordy started the year as a top five guy but he’s nowhere near that now. Yoshiaki Yatsu and Dynamite Kid are also possible choices. For Rookie of the Year, Dave defines a rookie as someone who started full-time for a major promotion after September 1, 1986. Brian Pillman and Biff Wellington are obvious picks - Pillman is an outstanding athlete, and while Wellington is a job guy he makes very few mistakes, takes solid bumps, and does his moves well. For third, Dave picks Shane Douglas. For Worst Television Show, Dave thinks Deep South and Central States are the ones clearly competing based on production values. Central States has such horrible lighting that when Rufus Jones wrestles, his opponent looks to be wrestling an invisible man. On the flip side, World Class has good production but bad wrestling, but worst of all it has bad announcing, Fritz’s Corner, and so much self-righteous fellating of the Von Erich family that it can’t be anything but Dave’s pick for worst. The poem for Mike Von Erich during the Texas Stadium show earlier in the year just cements it.
- The Midnight Rockers are gone from Alabama. They had a pretty good non-title win against the Russians (then-AWA Tag Champions) and were apparently being set up for a series of tag title matches, but that seems to have fallen through (plus the Rockers are gone anyway). One thing that bugs Dave is that every Rockers tv match has Gordon Solie bringing up an “interesting story” about Shawn Michaels’ background, but never completing the story because “we don’t have time to go into it here.” Every time, either the action picks up or a guest commentator interrupts, and Gordon never returns to the point. This past week, he made it just a little farther and now we know the story is from when Shawn was three years old, but now that the Rockers are gone we’ll never know what it was.
- [Alabama] The Bullet lost the Alabama Championship to Tony Anthony. Anthony’s valet (who has no name) used some “S&M accoutriments” [sic] and hit the Bullet with them, leading to him being counted out. There’s a belief that wrestling fans come to see sex and violence, but when promotions get hot it’s kids and teens who make up the biggest audience gains. Dave just doesn’t get why do something like this which would turn off parents and have them keep the kids home. Judging by how low the attendance is in Birmingham, Continental could use all the extra fans they could get.
- Dave Manning ran a tour in Israel that ended this past week, but he and Lance Von Erich weren’t allowed to leave the country. Dave’s heard a lot of stories, but the consistent story across accounts is Manning had some kind of incident on a previous tour he had managed for World Class, and that they are being held in relation to that.
- World Class had the worst attempt at a body slam Dave’s seen in the past three years recently. Kerry Von Erich was supposed to slam Ted Arcidi, but either Kerry couldn’t support his weight or Arcidi has the worst timing ever. Ted jumped three times into the slam before Kerry was ready and it looked awful. It really says something about WCCW that they're pushing Kerry to keep going. The previous worst body slam Dave had seen was Pirata Morgan climbing up Giant Baba’s shoulders, turning around, and falling to take the bump.
- Japanese comedian Takeshi Kitano is apparently wanting to start his own promotion. Reports have Masahiro Saito joining him and booking American wrestlers for him. Kitano is very famous in Japan and could get the money and tv time for his promotion if he wants.
- Akira Taue makes his All Japan debut on November 7.
- Chris Benoit will wrestle in Japan under the name Dynamite Chris.
- *Roddy Piper has the lead role in upcoming movie Hell Comes to Frogtown.
- Watch: trailer for Hell Comes to Frogtown