Wrestling Observer Rewinder

January 04, 1988

The Complete Observer Rewind Archive by u/daprice82
Rewinder Note: I'll be joining the once a week train on these, aiming for Thursdays at around 11 am. This one's a bit early due to some stuff I need to take care of today, but I hope you enjoy.
The first big news of the year is that NBC will be broadcasting a live special sometime early in the year for WWF. It’s not clear what we’re looking at exactly in terms of the form of this card, but it’s expected to set up for Wrestlemania and will be Friday, February 5. Hogan vs. Andre appears to be the main event of the show, and if that’s the case Dave expects this to be the most watched wrestling show of all time. The potential audience is huge and if this special is as successful as the Saturday Night Main Events have been, Dave thinks the potential for WWF in the long run is almost scary. We’re now counting down to The Main Event, kids.
Crockett and McMahon go head to head before that, however, on January 24. Crockett will be putting out their first national ppv, the Bunkhouse Stampede finals, featuring an 11-man street fight battle royal for a $500,000 prize (Dave, as always, makes fun of the ludicrous amounts offered in the prize fights in wrestling). McMahon’s going to try to siphon off viewers with a free special on USA network, the Royal Rumble. They tried the Rumble idea once in St. Louis and it flopped, drawing only 1900 fans and the match was awful. So this might be Crockett’s best chance, if WWF is going with that. That said, WWF is aiming to keep Crockett from getting off to the races on ppv and will do everything they can to stop them. It’s debatable if Crockett can do it, even without WWF playing spoiler, but it’s also debatable whether the Royal Rumble will really work (32 years on I think we can safely say that the Royal Rumble is a beloved concept and that first one was probably just working the kinks out). On the one hand, a bunkhouse battle royal on its own won’t do big business, so it’ll be up to the undercard to help things out and if they load that up they can make a good profit. WWF putting a free show on at the same time might sway some viewers from spending $15 or whatever for Crockett’s show, but nearly everyone with ppv capability these days has a home video recorder so they might just be able to tape the Rumble and watch it back later. No doubt WWF’s show will be a thorn in the side of the Bunkhouse ppv, but it may not make a big difference in its success or failure.
The Slammy Awards show last weekend (see last Rewind) drew a 6.2 rating and 15 share. It was second in its timeslot in most tv markets behind Saturday Night Live, and generally did double the viewership of whatever normally occupies that time slot in those markets. Pretty impressive. Dave’s heard pretty much every possible opinion on whether or not it was good and/or funny, so you decide for yourself.
Ole Anderson returned at the NWA Christmas show at the Omni. He cleaned house to help Luger, who had just won a Bunkhouse Stampede and was being beaten down by the Horsemen, and set up a match for January 1. Ole and Luger vs. Arn and Tully. They aired the segment on WTBS, but the lighting and audio of the tape were a far cry from the level of production Crockett needs if they want to be the slick national promotion they clearly aspire to be.
J.J. Bins, head of the Eastern Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission, resigned on December 21. His resignation followed the passage of the bill abolishing the commission in the state house (it passed with a 155-7 vote). It still had to pass the state senate before the end of the year, but the margin in the house makes the abolition of the commission inevitable at some point, so Bins’ resignation is clearly a face saving move. Bins was known to wrestling fans for his stance against blood, and no blood had been shed in Philadelphia all year until Crockett’s December 26 show, the first under new commissioner James Walker. Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair naturally juiced heavy that night. Dave accepts blading as part of the business even if he thinks it comes across as barbaric to those outside, but he thinks Crockett has let it get out of hand. On the other hand, he wonders how a commission can ban blading under the pretense of caring about wrestlers’ well-being, but then go ahead and sanction scaffold matches.
The double issue last week got a lot of positive response. Dave was uncertain about doing an issue with such a heavy emphasis on Japan because many readers don’t care about Japan, but the response was pretty positive and Dave’s glad. He’ll thank Japan in the future with a 7 star match.
Hell Comes to Frogtown is looking to release in the next month or so, and the Hogan biopic should be done filming shortly after Wrestlemania. Well, that’s what WWF wants folks to believe. Hogan is supposedly taking twenty weeks off after Wrestlemania, so rumors of a title change are swirling.
Watch: Hell Comes to Frogtown trailer
Dave got some news clippings from Puerto Rico on the lineups of some cards from Carlos Colón’s promotion. The big one is the Thanksgiving card, which had Carlos defending the Universal Title against Hercules Ayala in a match where the only way to win was with the figure four. Other matches include Invader #1 (fuck Invader#1) defending the TV title against Grizzly Boone, El Profe (heel manager) vs. Hugo Savinovich (tv announcer), and the Fantastics vs. the Wild Samoans (Samu and Fatu).
Crockett injury updates: Barry Windham returned to action from a broken collarbone Christmas day. Wilbur broke his leg Christmas night in a bunkhouse match when he took a bad bump over the top. Rick Steiner should be back from his shoulder injury by the time this issue makes it to readers. Ricky Morton injured his knee in a bunkhouse stampede in Charlotte. Robert Gibson is still out with his back injury. Steve Williams missed his matches this past week due to messing his knee up while filming a tv pilot in Canada, no word yet on if he’ll be back in time to keep his commitments here or in Japan.
Crockett’s December 26 show in Detroit was a cluster. They drew only 1,500, apparently having failed to advertise the show during their local tv time before hand. The report Dave got said every match was 1 star or less, and everybody working was tired from working in Richmond the night before and most arrived late. The Stampede on this card was supposed to have 22 men but only had 14. The morning after the show, they finally started running the promos advertising it on local tv.
Crockett’s contract with WTBS has been changed to allow their show to air on WPIX in New York. Additionally, they’ll be doing more arena shows for WTBS, and the ratio of arena shows to studio shows should shift to be more heavily arena shows.
AWA’s Christmas show drew 1,800 for the return of the Midnight Rockers. A note on the Thanksgiving show that feeds into this card - D.J. Peterson left the promotion after Thanksgiving and had already given his notice, and they had a match between him and Kevin Kelly where if Peterson lost he was gone and if Kelly lost Peterson got Madusa for 30 days. Well, they had Peterson win. Anyway, the 30 days are up so she’s back with Kelly and helped him win his match on Christmas. The Midnight Express and the Midnight Rockers drew in an excellent match for the tag titles (two days later they win the tag titles), and the Rockers appear to be back full time. In the main event Curt Hennig got disqualified for hitting Greg Gagne with the championship belt while Larry and Verne were strapped together outside the ring. No plans for a tag match, as apparently neither Curt nor Larry wants Larry back in the ring, but it seems Verne wants to make another comeback.
Watch: The Midnight Rockers win the AWA Tag Titles
With the final four of Memphis’s December 28 Lord of the Rings tournament, the question is who will turn heel. Bill Dundee vs. Jeff Jarrett and Jerry Lawler vs. Scott Hall are the scheduled semifinals, and there’s good reason for each guy to stay a face. Hall just arrived, so it’s too soon to be meaningful while Dundee’s made a big show of turning more times than anyone can count so everyone expects it. Jarrett’s too young, small, and looks too much like a prototypical babyface to do it (they’ll have to do it eventually, though), and Lawler just does too much outside charity stuff to be a heel, though he’d be great at it. Also on the card Debbie Combs wrestled Candi Divine for the new CWA Women’s Title.
New Japan appears to be gearing up to take a page from the Memphis playbook to boost ratings. Hardcore fans aren’t going to be happy, but you need to try and draw in the general public. Some of the stuff they’ve already started: Kotetsu Yamamoto, who wrestled in the 60s and 70s and now does color commentary, nearly got into it with one of the managers during the tag tournament. They’ve also said The Pirate (who is now supposed to be a Polynesian Giant), attacked Tatsumi Fujinami during Fujinami’s vacation in Hawaii in mid-December. It just so happens that photos of the attack made it into Tokyo Sports. The Pirate’s group are apparently joining forces with Mr. Takeshi (the comedian) to destroy Fuinami and Inoki (well, there goes that feud). So 1988 looks like it’ll be New Japan vs. Takeshi’s guys as the main feud for the year, which leaves a lot of question marks about Choshu and his guys.
Akira Maeda may be sent to wrestle in the U.S. for several months as punishment for shooting on Choshu. That’s a unique idea of punishment, I suppose.
All Japan did real well in the Tokyo Sports wrestling awards. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Tenryu on August 31 won match of the year, while Tenryu won wrestler of the year, Tenryu/Hara won tag team of the year, and John Tenta won rookie of the year.
In Oregon, they’ve got Chris Colt running a ripoff of Brutus Beefcake’s gimmick. He’s cut Art and Sandy Barr’s hair as well as Mike Miller’s, and they’re calling him The Barber.
WCCW’s Christmas show was apparently sent to San Antonio via ppv, though nobody anywhere knew that. So if you had a satellite dish you could have picked up the show live. Apparently they didn’t reserve enough ppv time and wound up going off the air right after the attack on Fritz, with three of the main events yet to air (the show ended at 1 am local time). Makes Halloween Havoc 1998 look like it was done well by comparison, really.
Ken Mantell’s backers for Wild West are apparently not happy about him taking over World Class.
The Jumping Bomb Angels will be on the undercard of a card headed by Hogan/One Man Gang in Oakland on January 17. Dave says that with the way weekend double shots are for WWF now, he’s been advised that if you ever attend a Sunday evening show (the fifth card in 48 hours for the performers) not to expect much, as you’ll get something that doesn’t quite pass as a match so much as a public appearance. So don’t be too excited to see the Angels, because they’ll be exhausted.
Starrcade’s combined live, closed-circuit, and ppv gate was $1.3 million dollars, roughly $820,000 from closed-circuit (not bad), $180,000 from the sellout in Chicago, and $300,000 from 20,000 ppv buys for a nearly 7% buyrate. Just a little less than Survivor Series did in buyrate, given the smaller number of homes they were available in. Crockett would have to be an idiot to have lost money on this show with that kind of result, though profit is probably down from the previous two Starrcades. So Starrcade was not a financial flop, at least.
[Alabama] Continental has apparently been sold again. Or it’s splitting. Or something. The Fullers sold the Alabama portion of the company to a new guy and Ron Fuller is restarting his own promotion out of Knoxville. The new guy in charge of the Alabama portion is David Woods, who has no known prior wrestling connection and is probably a money mark. Fuller’s new Knoxville promotion will be called Southeastern Championship Wrestling. The split should become effective mid-February.
The Sacramento Bee ran a story on Buzz Sawyer’s wrestling school. Apparently he’s training his students in Japanese style rather than American style.
Dave comments on how good All Japan Women is at editing. They’re smooth as silk with their editing to the point that you won’t realize they’ve trimmed a match down unless you were there to see it live. On a recent show they had a Yukari Omori vs. Bull Nakano match that went 8 minutes live but aired on tv as a 4 minute match with not a single sign of any noticeable jump cuts or ad break interruptions. The only company in the U.S. that comes close to their level of editing skill is WWF, which has six different feeds taping each Saturday Night’s Main Event. WWF can make a match longer, shorter, change the sequence of events, etc. to make an entirely new match if they want.
World Class is now saying that Fritz is in the intensive care unit. They’re really going for it.
At an independent show in New York, fans chanted “Just say No” at Iron Sheik. That's a reference to the "Just say 'No' to drugs" campaign Nancy Reagan started, for those who aren't old enough to remember this.
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story on Buzz Sawyer’s school as well. He claims to be preparing to open up a new promotion in California.** Dave’s not sure California or the world at large is ready for a Buzz Sawyer-run promotion.
AWA will no longer be providing tape for Pro Wrestling This Week. No idea why, but it includes not supplying Paul E. Dangerously’s “Danger Zones” as well. Those segments are a huge part of how Dangerously came to be known to wrestling crowds nationally and got him to his current spot as a name manager, so this is almost AWA cutting his knees out from under him and tripping themselves in the process.
A reader asks Dave to book his perfect night of wrestling with the following limitations: 5 matches (3 singles, 2 tag teams), any wrestlers on earth. Dave’s card would be Tiger Mask vs. Owen Hart, Lioness Asuka vs. Chigusa Nagayo, Maeda/Takada vs. Kazuo Yamazaki/Fujiwara, Road Warrior Hawk/Terry Gordy/Stan Hansen vs. Steve Williams/Dick Murdoch/Bruiser Brody, and Ric Flair defending the NWA World Title against Ted DiBiase for the main event. He’d put the match in Japan so the wrestlers would be able to work seriously without the fans chanting “boring” at them for not just doing high spots. Dave would have Jim Ross and Nick Bockwinkel on commentary, with Lance Russel doing pre-match interviews. Howard Finkel would announce the undercard (RIP Fink), while Jimmy Lennon would do the main event, and New Japan ring announcer Hidekazu Tanaka would be perfect as time keeper (he picks up the hammer and looks ready to hit the bell every near fall, which adds great drama for fans in the front row). As a joke, he picks WCCW’s Bronko Lubich for the referee.
Colonel Kirchner was fired from Stampede after an incident in the locker room.
Barry Orton had to leave Stampede due to legal affairs in the manslaughter case he’s facing. Earlier in the year he had a car accident that got his passenger killed, hence the case.
Upon returning from Japan, Kerry and Kevin Von Erich claimed to have won the tag team tournament in All Japan. They also claimed to have won the Asian Tag titles.
Correction: Dave reported the SNME crowd on December 7 as 11,000, but the actual crowd was 13,000.