Wrestling Observer Rewinder

November 30, 1987

By the time this issue comes out, Starrcade and Survivor Series will be over and it’s likely both WWF and JCP will make some changes. Crockett especially needs to, but those in charge have felt it’s too late to change anything before Starrcade, so expect any changes to occur over the next six to ten weeks. The big goal is to spice up the television side of things.
Looking forward to 1988, Dave thinks wrestling might go the way of boxing. 1988 promises to have six major ppv events, with two or three of them also being big closed-circuit events as well. JCP is committed to the Bunkhouse Stampede final on January 24, followed by the Crockett Cup (hoping for late April in Tokyo), and a Great American Bash event in July, as well as Starrcade come late November (Dave doesn’t know it yet, but Survivor Series 1987 would end Starrcade’s position as a November show forever). WWF is planning to offer Wrestlemania IV on March 27, as well as another major ppv later in the year that has yet to be announced (WWF is going to double what Dave has heard and offer Wrestlemania, The Main Event, Summerslam, and Survivor Series). With promotion of mega-shows all year round, the focus of the day-by-day will change, and the standard way of doing things may well die, just as big hype for big production boxing matches has killed gates for small fights. Many see JCP’s small gates currently and WWF’s lower gates from their normal (though still doing well) as pointing toward a potential trend back toward territorialization once again. If the public would support smaller promotions if Crockett and McMahon let guys go, there could be something to that. But Dave doesn’t see the revitalization of territory wrestling as realistic. There were people at a live show a few weeks back talking about starting a territory in California, but that will never work. WWF and Crockett can barely draw big business, and if fans won’t come out for Flair and the Road Warriors, a bunch of local guys won’t draw for a one-time deal, let alone on return swings. WWF will certainly make it through 1988 and may even thrive, and Crockett has the potential to be a major force if they use their resources well, but for anyone smaller than those two promotions the prognosis is grim for any chance at revitalization.
The biggest story this past week is that the Pennsylvania House committee has recommended the state athletic commission be abolished. The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story on this and “exposed” pro wrestling as a pre-arranged performance as well as quotes from commissioner J.J. Bins explaining that the blood in wrestling is traditionally achieved by wrestlers cutting their heads with razor blades to generate excitement from the audience. Ultimately, if the Pennsylvania General Assembly agrees with the findings of the committee, wrestling will be deregulated in the state and Pennsylvania will become the 22nd state with no regulations on pro wrestling. Another result would be a reduction of the state wrestling tax from 5% to 2% (making shows more profitable to promoters) and raising the security bond for live events from $3,000 to $10,000 (making it much harder for small promotions to to run in the state. The deregulation effort is, according to deputy commissioner Frank Talent, the direct result of lobbying efforts by WWF and JCP, and they would benefit strongly from lack of regulations by limiting competition, increasing profits, and having full control over their shows to do whatever they want. Dave won’t comment in detail on Talent’s comments until he can hear the tape himself, but the impression he has is that the rhetoric was particularly anti-WWF.
As far as Dave is concerned, it’s not in the interest of fans or wrestlers to deregulate. It’s obviously in the interest of promoters, but that’s just the nature of capitalism - capitalists don’t want regulations that protect consumers and laborers. It’s a point of semantics and not actual useful meaning if the regulating body is called an athletic commission or whether wrestling is called a sport or not. The important thing is that guidelines and regulations should be written to account for what wrestling is, and not as if wrestling is just boxing without the gloves, and the regulations should be enforced for the protection of the interests of the fans (nobody else is watching out for them) and for the wrestlers (ditto there). But that’s never going to happen. Wrestling fans and wrestlers have never been able to organize, and they’ll never have lobbying power as a result. And that’s why benefits packages for wrestlers are laughable compared to other athletes who have similar levels of national appeal.
Five pro wrestling shows cracked the top 20 shows on basic cable in the third quarter of 1987 (July-September). Crockett’s 6:05 pm Saturday show on WTBS is the second-most watched show on cable, averaging a weekly 3.2 rating and watched in more than 1.3 million homes. Right behind it is WWF’s Prime Time Wrestling on Thursday nights at 9 pm, with a 3.4 rating and watched in just under 1.3 million homes weekly (JCP gets the higher ranking due to being watched in more homes, owing to being available in more. WWF’s All-American Wrestling is ranked 4 with a 3.2 and 1.2 million homes. After that JCP holds number 10 with their Sunday evening show, and AWA on ESPN takes number 20. AWA on ESPN would surely do better if they could have a regular time slot, as the only thing on ESPN that outranks it is Friday Night Boxing (which does not outrank it by much). Looking at tv ratings, ESPN’s lack of respect for wrestling makes little sense. These ratings rankings don’t account for MTV or its subsidiaries, since they don’t subscribe to the ratings and believe the margin of error is too large for them to be reliable. That said, the ratings here reveal that there’s a downward trend in WTBS ratings for JCP, with the Sunday show dropping 37% in viewership in the past nine months and similar drops for their Saturday morning show after being moved to a more advantageous time slot. WWF’s numbers have fallen as well since the 1985 peak of wrestling on cable, but their drop has been 25-30% over a two year period so it is not as significant a drop.
WWF’s syndicated package is now the only wrestling package remaining in the top 15 for syndicated packages. WWF remains number 4 (Oprah and Star Trek have been dancing around WWF’s ranking, swapping third and fifth place rankings). Two weeks ago All-Star Wrestling Network and JCP fell out of the top 15. Crockett made it back to 13 last week, but they’re off the top 15 again this week.
AWA had their Cow Palace show in San Francisco on November 21 with the $100,000 street fight battle royal and a shitload of local advertising behind it. Remember how Dave said AWA would show they understood how to draw in San Francisco using a battle royal? Yeah, they only got about 850 fans, so this was a major flop and the show was awful as well. Dave rates the matches and notes he’s being very, very generous. Only two matches rate above 1 star - Tommy Rich vs. Adrian Adonis to a double countout got 1.5 and Curt Hennig vs. D.J. Peterson for the AWA title got 2.5. Everything else was 1 star or less. The battle royal was won by Wahoo McDaniel and fans were chanting “boring” during the match. They had a show the next night in San Jose which probably got very few fans, as advance ticket sales were under a dozen. The only good thing Dave can say about the AWA show is that, and this is a rarity with AWA, everybody who was advertised showed up.
Memphis wrestling is looking hot once again now that Austin Idol is back as a babyface. Some of the recent title changes have probably also helped - Jerry Lawler beat Bobby Jaggers for the Southern Title and the Midnight Rockers lost the Southern Tag Titles on November 16 to the RPMs in a match where the RPMs put up their car against the belts, then regained the titles on November 22 in a match where if the Rockers lost, whoever lost the fall would be shaved.
Corporal Carl Anderson (C.J. Styles, formerly Doctor Diablo, who was “blinded” by Hector Guerrero), will not be returning to Memphis to feud with Guerrero after all. Bill Dundee made some veiled remarks in an interview to the effect that Anderson was actually blinded before Guerrero threw the cream (Styles does have a glass eye, so that’s true), so that’s put the kibosh on the angle and it looks like Styles will be heading to Alabama instead.
Steve Keirn tried to get a heel response from the Memphis crowd by asking if he was right or wrong to fight Lawler and if Lawler had thrown fire at him on purpose. The crowd gave him a babyface response, so he had to reassert his heel credentials by telling the crowd it didn’t matter what they thought and asked Jeff Jarrett what he thought. Jarrett said he thought it was an accident, then Jimmy Jack Funk attacked.
[Stampede] Dave makes a little remark that it’s scary how much Zodiak wrestles like Bob Orton in his heyday. There’s just something about these Orton boys that they get it so well.
Stampede also had a bit of a birthday angle during the Hiroshi Hase vs. Jason the Terrible match on Friday, November the 13th. The heels gave Jason a birthday cake with candles, and a lot of it wound up on Hase’s face. A lot also wound up on the mat, though to their credit they never slipped. Anyway, Jason threw Hase into the arena door to knock him out and make him bleed, then Zodiak threw him into the ring towhere Jason destroyed him more. Hase never made a comeback and wound up losing and got carried out on a stretcher, writing him off so he could return to Japan.
Watch: the end of Jason the Terrible vs. Hiroshi Hase with the birthday cake on the mat
[Stampede] Corporal Kirchner has been “stripped of his ranking” and is now just Mike Kirchner. The likely cause is WWF didn’t want him using the name with any other promotion.
The Great Kojika, a long-time low-mid card wrestler for All Japan, has announced his retirement. Kojika is 45 years old, and Dave suspects he was forced out. He debuted in 1963 and was a midcard star in the early 70s, and worked in the States as well in that time period. He’s going to stick around to help promote cards for All Japan and also work in the music industry.
New Japan’s tag tournament isn’t drawing a lot of attention this year. The return of major foreign stars like the Funks, Brody, and Abby the Butcher to All Japan is a big factor. Meanwhile, Dick Murdoch is the only major foreign star working for New Japan on this tour, and that’s just not enough.
New Japan is planning a big show at Sumo Hall on November 27. Ringside seats will be 30,000 yen ($220) and TV-Asahi plans to run a two-hour special off the matches from the card. The whole show is going to be big matches between key Japanese talent, with Inoki vs. Choshu likely the main event. They were planning to originally bring in three champions from other sports for mixed matches (Chris Dolman, a champion of sambo wrestling, was probably originally going to wrestle Inoki, while former world powerlifting champion Bill Kazmaier was set to face Choshu, Fuinami, or Maeda and World Karate Association cruiserweight champion Don Nakaya Neilsen was set to face Takada), but they’re instead going to build off angles set up during the tag tournament.
New Japan plans to do some international shows in 1988. They’re planning for a February tour through Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong and a shot through Brazil in March. They also plan to do shows in Italy and mainland China, and their tv returns to Honolulu on December 5. After the tournament wraps up, they’re sending booker Seiki Sakaguchi to Dallas to meet with Fritz Von Erich, then to Mexico and Hawaii to meet promoters there, and Sakaguchi was announced as the new figurehead of Mexico’s UWA promotion.
Sakaguchi said in a press conference that Jim Crockett had talked to him about doing the Crockett Cup in April in Tokyo. Plans are not finalized, and Sakaguchi said he thinks Crockett has talked to Giant Baba and want to present a card with wrestlers from all three promotions, but he doesn’t want to do a joint promotion. It’d be a major coup if Crockett could pull it off (but potentially a difficult sell to American audiences if the big highlights were New Japan vs. All Japan matches), on par with the idea of Sakaguchi putting together a show in America that would get WWF vs. JCP guys against each other. If everything works out, Dave thinks it would be a good spot for Flair vs. Williams to unify the NWA and UWF titles, but he’s not optimistic that the show will happen.
Last New Japan type news: Steve Williams did great in his last Japan tour, and the problem with the Choshu-Fujinami matches is they haven’t updated for the times. Williams carried Inoki to a good match, and he has a lot of really good matches this last tour. As for Choshu-Fujinami, they’re working the exact same style as they did during their 1982-84 feud. Wrestling has advanced since then, and there’s also the factor where things become legend in wrestling. The farther back in time, the more the matches become the stuff of legend and gain a status that exceeds what they really were. Watching previous “legendary” matches, you can see what they were doing so differently in their time, but as the years go by they can be disappointing to a modern eye. So Fujinami and Choshu continuing as they were and wrestling exactly like in their legendary matches, to the disappointment of fans because the style isn’t current, makes it easier for the old matches to lose some of the luster of their legendary status.
JCP had a show on November 16 where they had Ron Garvin and Steve Williams team against Flair and Luger. It was an elimination match, and Dave just doesn’t get why they do elimination matches when they can’t seem to come up with viable finishes since their top stars never seem to want to be pinned. Flair pinned Garvin after hitting him with his shoe, and somehow Luger and Williams were counted out at the same time despite not being legal. If the wrestlers don’t want to get pinned, or you don’t want them pinned, just don’t put them in elimination matches. Not one person bought a ticket because the match was an elimination match over a regular tag match (and it’s a waste of a stipulation if you don’t even run local promos to put the stipulation over, and JCP did not run any local promos for this).
WCCW’s Thanksgiving show should draw well, since ticket prices are so low.
Steve Corey is a really smart promoter for World Class. He got a lot of local press arranged for the November 21 show in Hollywood Florida - the Von Erichs were featured in the local paper and on local radio, and Kerry and Kevin got keys to the city of Pembroke Pines for “their work in combating drug abuse.” That last part may be laughable in reality, but all that publicity got advance ticket sales up to about the same level as WWF or JCP would do in the same building. It’s nothing to brag about given locale, but it really shows what some quality promotion can do. And since a group of businesses called Businesses Against Drugs are underwriting the shows on the tour, even though attendance will surely be low, they may still make a decent amount off the tour and more than Crockett has been making off road shows lately.
Doug Furnas is getting a decent push in Alabama. He did a bench press exhibition, then Buddy Landel came out and claimed he could equal Furnas’s feats (Furnas benches over 600 lbs in competition) before his elbow “popped” while attempting the lift. Furnas then did five squats at 775 lbs and then offered an open challenge for anyone to match lifting strength with him. Later, he had a dark match where Landel came out with a sling and sent Black Assassin to fight Furnas in his stead, which Furnas won with a splash off the top. Then Landel revealed he’d faked the injury, tried to attack, and wound up run off by Furnas.
The Road Warriors told the Japanese press about their new contracts, and they’re now the second-highest earners in wrestling after Hogan. They told the press why they decided not to go to WWF. They could probably be paid more, but their image would be copyrighted by WWF and they didn’t want that.
All Japan Women (and this is the first time I’ve seen Dave actually use the name of the promotion) has had some absolutely fantastic wrestling on tv lately. For Dave’s money, only New Japan is on their level, and Chigusa Nagayo is every bit as versatile and well-conditioned as Nobuhiko Takada.
WWF’s old-timers’ battle royal on November 16 has gotten Dave more phone traffic than anything else in months. The show wasn’t a huge success and drew under 5000 fans, who didn’t really react well for the old timers. No surprise - most of WWF’s fan base weren’t born when Lou Thesz was on top (Thesz won the battle royal, by the way). Thesz and Pat O’Connor did a few minutes of their old style work at the end once the match came down to the two of them, and those who went specifically for the battle royal loved it, but most of the crowd didn’t get the style and thought of the match as comedy because most of the guys were in such poor shape. The other participants in order of elimination: Gino Brito, Chief Jay Strongbow, Baron Mikel Scicluna, Tony Garea, Sailor Art Thomas, Pedro Morales, Rnee Goulet, Arnold Skaaland, Al Costello (one of the Fabulous Kangaroos), Dom DeNucci, Edouard Carpentier, Bobo Brazil, Gene Kiniski, The Crusher, Killer Kowalski, Ray Stevens, and Nick Bockwinkel. Bockwinkel, Thesz, Kiniski, Kowalski, and O’Connor all worked really hard to make things go well.
Watch: WWF Legends Battle Royal
[WWF] They had another battle royal on the same card, and Jake Roberts won that one. The final four were Roberts, Ted DiBiase, Dino Bravo, and Hercules Hernandez, and Ted grabbed the microphone and said he didn’t care about the money ($10,000 to the winner) but the prestige of winning, so he offered $10,000 each to the other guys to eliminate themselves. Bravo and Hernandez did, but Roberts fought and they had a few excellent minutes before Virgil pulled down the ropes and accidentally caused Ted’s elimination. DiBiase also had a match against Ricky Steamboat that was the best on the card.
A letter writer chimes in with an anecdote about the Road Warriors. He works at a special ed school and took one of the students to a Crockett show, and they waited around after the matches were over and got to meet the Roadies. Hawk and Animal were in a hurry, but they were friendly and stopped to take pictures with the kid, which left a really good impression of both the promotion and the Road Warriors for the kid and the writer.
We also get a couple quotes from late wrestling promoter Jack Pfeffer in another letter. “To wrestling comes a crowd of all the queer degenerates.” “An honest wrestling match is the dullest thing in sports.”
Dave spends a bit responding to a letter asking about if JCP or WWF would sign any of a long list of guys, but his answer on Owen Hart is the most interesting part. He could see either group signing Owen, but the issue is whether either would use him right. Owen’s about 5’10” and 215 lbs, so even though he’s the most talented wrestler in North America and has the potential to be among the biggest names in the business, his size is going to take careful planning and work to negotiate. Audiences are not used to guys his size being headliners, so it’ll take time to build him up right and make him believable. Vince probably wouldn’t want to, since it would fly in the face of his size fetish. Dusty probably wouldn’t be creative enough to figure out what to do with him, either. But it wouldn’t be surprising to see Hart make it to a major promotion next year (indeed: enter the Blue Blazer next year).
JCP fired Shane Douglas again.