Wrestling Observer Rewinder

January 11, 1988

Fritz Von Erich is alive. I know, you’ve been waiting to find out if he’d make it, and it was uncertain for a bit, but he made it. On the weekend show from Fort Worth they announced he didn’t suffer a heart attack, but that “there is some paralysis.” One of the local tv stations even covered this as news. Dave recaps the angle, which is a pretty hardcore one, but the thing that’s bad is that it’s playing off the deaths of Mike and David for sympathy.
On the ownership of WCCW, it’s commonly held that Ken Mantell is now in charge and he’s certainly in charge of the day to day. There’s some rumor that he doesn’t own a controlling interest in the company after all, though, but only 30% and the Von Erichs still hold a majority. Either version could be correct, and Dave has two inside sources providing him the latter information. Suffice to say, Fritz is not out of the business and he will certainly make some kind of return to the spotlight this year, though almost certainly not as a wrestler. Running an angle like they have is how you position someone as a lead babyface, so why would Mantell make Fritz the lead babyface at 58 years old? Clearly the Von Erichs still have a lot of influence on the creative direction.
The reason WCCW’s Christmas show ended so late is due to the Fritz angle. They had Kevin and Kerry do a press conference after the angle, and Kerry then had to return to Dallas to wrestle his match, which he lost “because his brain wasn’t into it under the circumstances.” Chris Adams was originally scheduled to replace Kerry, but that changed at the last minute. Maybe Fritz made the call, maybe Mantell had second thoughts. Maybe Adams misplaced his ring and had to go sort that out.
Three weeks out from the Bunkhouse Stampede on January 24 and only three matches have been announced. There’s the finals, which will be in a cage, Flair defending the NWA Title against Hawk, and Barry Windham vs. Larry Zbyszko for the Western States Title. Steve Williams is being flown back to the States on January 21 and will be involved somehow. Dave hopes they turn the heat up, because at present the whole card should be announced by now and they have not been pushing the ppv enough on tv either.
Crockett gets some commendation on improvements to their tv. They’re out of the studio on WTBS and things are much more lively. That said, Dave isn’t sure Crockett gets how minor league it looks to fans that they end tv shows with in-progress matches. The Luger turn is getting over well and crowds this past week in Atlanta and Greensboro were great. On live shows, however, Dave is still hearing more bad than good. On Luger, if he keeps saving Ron Garvin and being saved in return he’s in danger of being 1988’s Nikita Koloff. Koloff had three months being really over, and after that he just blended in with the babyfaces and stopped standing out. You need to have a couple guys on a level above the other main eventers to make them special. See Hogan and Andre for fantastic examples. Dave thinks Flair gave the Horsemen great credibility and got the group over great, but in the long run it’s harmed Flair’s drawing power by making him just another face in the pack. He may have been the key guy in the group, but he was positioned on their level rather than above them.
WWF’s January 2 Saturday Night’s Main Event aired (taped December 7). Ventura and McMahon toned down the overacting, and Dave wonders if putting Hogan on later is a move to retain viewership for longer as usually people turn the show off later. Hogan used to always go on early since he was the key guy and they wanted everyone to see him before they went to bed, so maybe they’re more confident in keeping the audience awake. It’s not the wrestling that did that this week, though - The Bolsheviks vs. Stryke Force was the best match of the show, which has to be a sign of the apocalypse. On the plus side, Andre’s doing great as a heel.
The Fritz Von Erich story in Penthouse has been pushed back to the May issue.
Antonio Inoki did a clean pinfall job to “Big Ben Bader” on December 27. That’s Big Van Vader, transcribed from Dave’s understanding of how he heard the name. The match lasted under three minutes. New Japan has determined they need a big American in a main role to get tv ratings back to acceptable levels, and having him squash Inoki helps put heat on Takeshi in his quest to end Inoki. Of course, the announced main event and the reason ratings were expected to be high was Inoki vs. Choshu. It’s also the reason the live gate was around half a million dollars from 11,000 fans. Vader had been announced for a tag match, but before it could begin Takeshi’s friends took the mic and challenged Inoki, which caused unrest in the audience to the point they started throwing eggs, programs, and beer cans at the ring because they saw the card change coming. Inoki said he’d wrestle Vader and Choshu both, and Choshu wound up replacing Vader in the tag match and the fans hated everything about it and screamed for the match to stop. Choshu didn’t leave after the match and he and Inoki wrestled for six minutes and Inoki won by disqualification, leading to a small riot as fans were upset at the finish and length given what they had paid to get in. Then Vader squashed Inoki and the fans damaged Sumo Hall badly enough that the Sumo Association has now banned pro wrestling from the building indefinitely. That means New Japan’s only venue in Tokyo is Korauken Hall, which only seats 2,000. A few days later TV-Asahi announced that New Japan’s show is being moved to Monday nights at midnight, which will sharply contract their audience and mean less money to New Japan from the station.
Watch: Here's Vader talking about that match
Akira Maeda, Kazuo Yamazaki, and Osamu Kido were let go from New Japan. It’s partly punishment and partly cost-saving. Maeda’s shoot kick to Choshu got him canned, while Yamazaki (one half of the tag champs) and Kido appear to be gone as part of cost-cutting.
All mean things aside, WCCW has at least gotten much more interesting with Mantell having the book.
Shaun Simpson of WCCW has a Dallas area car commercial where he wrestles against price reductions. It’s basically him jobbing to the invisible man.
Watch: Shaun Simpson's car commercial
More on the Fritz angle: Kerry says Terry Gordy tried to kill Fritz and Marc Lawrence said it looked doubtful Fritz would make it through Christmas. They got the doctor who saved Mike’s life when he had toxic shock syndrome to play the doctor who revived Fritz.
[NWA] Hawk no-showed the Omni show on New Year’s Day so Animal filled in. For the third time in the past month Animal tripped during his entrance.
[NWA] Dusty Rhodes won the final Bunkhouse qualifier on the same show. Nikita Koloff, Dick Murdoch, and Black Bart were all simultaneously eliminated as they got thrown through the cage door at the same time, then Dusty eliminated Bobby Eaton by knocking him off the top of the cage after a whole 7 minutes of match. On the syndicated package they hyped up how Dusty won the match. Problem: the syndicated show aired in several areas on December 31, in others on January 1, and in most areas on January 2. Therefore there were a lot of areas where the result was announced before the match happened.
Rick Steiner, Steve Williams, and Mike Rotunda are being put in a stable managed by Kevin Sullivan called the Varsity Club. The connection is that they were all top tier college wrestlers.
Al Blake (Vladmir Petrov) was sentenced to six years in prison on cocaine trafficking. He’ll be eligible for parole in two years, but won’t be allowed to leave the state of Minnesota until his parole is up if so.
Nobody turned heel in the Memphis Lord of the Rings tournament. They just had three straight face vs. face matches, with Lawler winning the diamond ring in the end. He beat Scott Hall by disqualification when Hall used an illegal piledriver on him. Bill Dundee beat Jeff Jarrett by countout when Hector Guerrero held Jarrett’s leg from under the ring, with Dundee not knowing it happened. Lawler beat Dundee when the two collided and Lawler fell on top. On the same show, Debbie Combs beat Candi Divine and became CWA Women’s Champion, and defends against her mother Lady Satan (Cora Combs, who has been wrestling since at least 1950 in the pre-Moolah days) on January 4.
Scott Hall looks like an absolute monster compared to the other guys in Memphis. Dave’s not super hung up about size, but Hall is just huge.
On the December 18 Calgary show some fans got hurt. Jason the Terrible did a dive to the outside that landed in the seats and knocked several fans from their chairs and ended up with one taken to the hospital. And during a crowd brawl, Badnews Allen elbowed a pregnant woman.
Oregon’s new state athletic commissioner is trying to regulate wrestling according to boxing guidelines. He wants all referees to be boxing referees, four ropes, every ringside official licensed, blading banned, and is testing for marijuana and cocaine. Don Owens, who runs the local promotion, hates all of this since it’s doubtful WWF will be subjected to this level of scrutiny.
Correction: Paul Boesch is not coming out of retirement. It was reported in a local newspaper, but it’s not true. Turns out Boesch’s son-in-law was negotiating with Crockett about working on the tv side of things and did some interviews at an early December taping, but Paul’s staying retired.
The bill to abolish the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission is on hold for six months per the state senate.
[NJPW] There was an incident that took Takeshi Kitano out of the top spot in comedy and television in Japan a while back. One of the scandal magazines ran a story and Kitano got his friends and went to beat up the reporter, which led to Kitano being suspended from tv.
Tiger Mask II vs. Curt Hennig for All Japan’s January 2 show was a disappointment. Hennig didn’t get over, and the finish (Hennig losing the match by countout but retaining the AWA World Title due to AWA rules) was confusing and upsetting to fans, who are used to titles being able to change on countout. The report Dave got says Tiger Mask did no high flying and Hennig did few holds, so the whole match lacked any of their strengths.
Watch: Tiger Mask II and Curt Hennig disappoint
Sumo yokozuna Futahaguro, who is 24 years old, was suspended for life from sumo. He punched a sumo sponsor and his teacher’s wife. Futahaguro is a known fan of pro wrestling and it’s thought to be only a matter of time before he gets in the ring. That’s Koji Kitao, and he’ll be next seen in 1989 when he debuts for AWA.
[Continental/Alabama] The mink coat tournament wound up drawing about quadruple their usual average. But only half the advertised matches took place, so no real gain in the long run. Wendell Cooley won the tournament.
[AWA] Several title changes at the December 27 show. Greg Gagne won the tournament to become inaugural TV champion (promoter or promoter's son winning the inaugural TV title tournament? That would never happen today), beating Adrian Adonis by disqualification. They didn’t have a belt ready, though (that would also never happen today). Madusa beat Candi Divine to become AWA Women’s champion. The Midnight Express beat the Midnight Rockers in a double pin situation. They’re also now calling Curt Hennig “Cool” Curt Hennig. That’s an A+ nickname right there. Just perfect for the guy.
Watch: Madusa vs. Candi Divine for the vacant AWA Women's Championship
The Jumping Bomb Angels vs. The Glamour Girls has been added to WWF’s Royal Rumble lineup. And it's a really good match, but we'll get there.
One reader writes in that she was talking to a friend of hers in the wrestling industry and made the observation that if live gates tanked to nothing, WWF would still be able to get by profitably on television and ppv alone. Feels appropriate that I come across this right as we’re in the middle of a pandemic in 2020 and there are no live gates to be had, and yet WWE has such lucrative tv rights deals that they can never have a live audience again this year and still would pull in record profits. Don’t tell me that businesses need to maximize profits because of shareholders or whatever. I don’t care about that, because I think the whole system that demands that is garbage that needs to be torn down. Look, WWE cutting the people it did on April 15 was not about anything but making the profits bigger and driving up their stock price ahead of their Q1 earnings report, not ensuring there would be a profit at all or making sure the company was healthy enough to survive. It’s a greedy move that hurts real people, and real people always matter more than corporations. Anyway, the writer talks a lot about Luger and how right now they seem to be building him as a Hulkalike, and honestly when you are faced with a choice between running with a young guy who looks like a weak imitation of the competitor’s top draw or an older guy who is better in the ring, has charisma and great promos, and broad appeal, the choice is obvious. You run with Ric Flair, not Lex Luger, Crockett. Jeez.
Another letter about POWW and arguing for why Dave should cover them. Dave’s gone on record that if and when POWW can draw consistent attendance at live shows he will cover them, and the letter writer points out by that standard he should stop covering WCCW, Central States, and AWA. Burn. The writer says he’d consider POWW’s Nina (Tina Ferrari in GLOW, Ivory in WWF about a decade from now) for most charismatic in the awards this year.
Dave notes in a response to a letter that he can’t imagine anything that would force WWF to turn Hogan heel.
Hogan’s planned hiatus this year is from the day after Wrestlemania into June sometime. Hogan’s wife is expecting their first child in April.
WWF is now instituting fines for irish whips into the guard rail, violating dress code while traveling, and missing shows. One wrestler was docked $1,000 for missing a show.