January 18, 1988
- The Main Event (still yet to be named) is officially on for February 5. It’ll be live for an hour from Market Square Arena in Indianapolis. Hogan defends the title against Andre and Savage challenges Honkeytonk Man for the Intercontinental Title, while the Harts face Strike Force for the Tag Titles. Dave anticipates massive ratings, given the speculation that Andre will win the title. He expects this to be the most-watched show in U.S. wrestling history. It should set things up for Wrestlemania, and given that Dave doesn’t see Hogan pinning Andre or it would kill interest in any Hogan match for Wrestlemania. They need a good finish to keep the match looking good and be flukey so Hogan’s rematch interest will be high. Dave has no idea how exactly right he is about that aspect of the match. Hogan kicks out and the referee counts three anyway, then we learn that there was twin magic by the Hebners, as Ventura and McMahon declare that Dave and Earl Hebner look like identical twins. They sure do, as long as identical means one looks about 40 lbs heavier and ten years older than the other.
- Watch: Early, but here’s the Hogan Andre match
- Royal Rumble vs. Bunkhouse Stampede Finals is the next battle to get through, though. A Hogan vs. Andre debate is to headline the show, along with Steamboat vs. Rude, Dino Bravo’s attempt to bench press 700 lbs, and the Jumping Bomb Angels vs. Glamour Girls in a best 2 of 3 falls match (Dave expects a title change). Crockett’s show will be their first national pay-per-view and the lineup includes a weak undercard. The bunkhouse finals is headlining, but you have Flair vs. Hawk for the NWA Title, Windham vs. Zbyszko for the Western States Title, Sting vs. Rotunda, and more. What’s clear is that they’ll be available in much fewer homes than Survivor Series was, and it’s questionable how well they’re going to do at the live gate too. Dave’s planning to host a viewing party for both shows in the Bay Area. He notes how silly it is that the better show on paper is being offered for free.
- The big news of the week is WWF signing Big Bubba Rogers. His salary with JCP didn’t give him a set salary for the year due to a different structure to his contract from everybody else, so although he was under contract, WWF apparently feels confident about any potential legal battle. At first Dave thought this would be a bigger deal, since it would be a challenge to the legality of Crockett’s contracts, but it’s just a guy jumping ship.
- An interesting lawsuit was decided this past week. In Binghamton, New York on October 28, 1986, Randy Savage “injured” Ricky Steamboat (this was Savage crushing Steamboat’s larynx with the ring bell). Anyway, a $1.15 million lawsuit resulted, as members of the local volunteer EMT squad claimed that Steamboat “violently struck” one of them and seriously hurt her. They were on standby on authorization by WWF with orders to only be called if someone was injured. Well, a WWF employee told the squad that Steamboat was “seriously injured,” they went to help, and then the incident happened. The lawsuit alleges that the damage from Steamboat’s strike caused injury to her ribs, sternum, chest, and back sufficient to leave her disabled. WWF is also being sued because one of their broadcasters (allegedly Bruno), said “Incompetency on the part of those paramedics, there, don’t you agree,” which the suit alleges that Bruno was declaring them all unfit to practice their profession. They also contended that the injured EMT was broadcast on tv illegally. WWF settled out of court, and both sides are quiet about how much the payout was. Dave checked back with his copy of the tape and with a friend’s, and he can’t make anything out enough to say one way or the other, but his friend says it was Ventura and not Bruno who made the comment.
- Watch: Randy Savage "injures" Ricky Steamboat
- Dave expects the Penthouse story on the Von Erichs to lead to a lawsuit. Dave’s read an advance copy of the story and it’s well-written, but it could make some waves and Dave’s gut says Fritz may sue over it. Spoilers - the article isn’t going to run in the May issue but instead be pushed back yet again to October. I’ll include it when we get there, but if you’re itching to read it now, it’s the “Born Against Bashing” article.
- [Memphis] Nobody’s turned heel between Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee yet. Given this week’s happenings, a Dundee turn should be expected soon. They had a match on January 4 where Dundee hit Lawler with a chain to get the pin, only for the decision to be reversed and Lawler got to keep the diamond ring he put up against Dundee’s $5000 check (which Dundee stopped the payment on). So they’ll rematch again with the $5000 in cash vs. the ring. The crowd cheers them both, neither has made a hard turn, and both are doing promos that are slightly more heel-leaning. It’s a really interesting confluence of factors here.
- Terry Taylor, who just on Sunday went over on the WTBS show for Crockett, appears to have jumped ship to Memphis. Surprise to Dave and probably a surprise to Crockett.
- [Memphis] Dave hears Shawn Michaels is such a good heel because it’s not an act.
- Crockett’s tv this week is hinting that Barry Windham will be the next Horseman. Dave’s not sure how much sense it makes to turn Windham given his program with Steve Williams.
- [NWA] Jim Cornette is now managing Dick Murdoch.
- [NWA] Thunderfoot #1 got fired, and there’s a bigger story beneath that. He was given notice on Christmas day, and after he got his notice and was driving home, he allegedly ran a red light and hit another car, killing the other driver. He was arrested on January 3 on charges of vehicular manslaughter, possession of drug paraphernalia, and passing bad checks. He faces up to five years in prison if he’s convicted.
- Speaking of legal news, the grand jury in Tennessee couldn’t find enough evidence to indict Rocky Johnson on the rape allegation. They felt that the girl’s story didn’t hold up to scrutiny and declined to indict him.
- According to an inside source, Ken Mantell owns half of WCCW while Kevin and Kerry each own a quarter. Fritz may not own anything anymore, but he obviously has sway.
- Global Wrestling Alliance, the one that’s publicly traded, started television syndication this past weekend. The show they aired was taped six months ago, though, so guys like Bugsy McGraw and Cyclone Negro (whom they billed as world champion) probably aren’t involved anymore. Nevertheless, they’re said to have the best production values of any independent promotion, but the wrestling wasn’t great.
- Badnews Allen is leaving Stampede for WWF. He’s already made his tv debut there, even, as Badnews Brown, which just has Dave puzzled over why they turned Steve DiSalvo if Allen’s leaving.
- Terry Gordy, Stan Hansen, and the Malenko brothers will be headlining the next All Japan tour starting in late February.
- Curt Hennig’s tour in All Japan as AWA champion is being received poorly. Weekly Pro Wrestling called his debut match with Tiger Mask II the “worst AWA title match ever in Japan” (he lost the match by countout too) and he had a double countout with John Tenta (who is solidly mid-level). He pinned Kawada on January 4. This is all very confusing to Dave because Hennig is the only world champion from the States who’s touring Japan, and they book him like this? Flair’s not coming back, it looks like, and Hogan hasn’t come to Japan since 1985. Williams’ UWF title doesn’t count anymore and isn’t recognized when he tours New Japan. Dave hasn’t seen the match with Tiger Mask, but those who have tell him it’s probably a style mismatch that led to it being no good. This kind of coverage is going to make it really hard for Hennig to get over in Japan.
- All Japan Women is now hitting the highest ratings of any promotion in Japan. Their last two shows clocked 11.3 ratings. All Japan is generally in the same ballpark when it’s on prime-time on Saturdays, but only pulls a 6-7 in the afternoon. New Japan’s prime time ratings have been around the 8 mark. Devil Masami’s retirement show (which Dave covered in the big issue on his trip to Japan at the end of 1987) is part of the last episode they aired, and it’s expected to handily top the previous two episodes.
- New Japan’s December 27 show ended in a riot, but pulled half a million at the gate to a sellout crowd of 11,090. The riot began during Choshu and Saito vs. Fujinami * Kimura, and picked up a few times before the show was over (Vader squashing Inoki in under three minutes was the main event). The crowd tore the building up over the course of an hour and almost set the place on fire, which has led to Sumo Hall banning New Japan. Their tv spot will also be moved to Mondays at midnight once baseball season starts. Dave saw a newspaper clipping from during the Choshu tag match and you can tell the crowd is almost out of control already. A similar riot happened in 1984 at the old Sumo Hall after a Hogan/Inoki match where Choshu lariated Hogan and Inoki, and Inoki wound up beating the countout). Another similar riot took place on March 26, 187 at Castle Hall in Osaka after an Inoki/Saito draw.
- New Japan’s way of dealing with their recent problems is to organize a junior heavyweight tournament. This will be the biggest tournament of its sort since 1984, which had dynamite Kid, Davey Boy Smith, Takada, Black Tiger, Bret Hart, and others. This year’s tournament has Owen Hart, Keiichi Yamada, Koshinaka, Takada, Hiroshi Hase, Hiro Saito, and more. They opened the tournament on their January 4 show, and on that card in a tag team match was Steve Blackman. And that’s his Observer Rewind debut.
- Continental (Alabama) had Wendell Cooley beat Dutch Mantell on their January 4 show. If Cooley lost, he would have had to leave the territory, and Mantell losing means Cooley gets his contract back. They went with the story that Mantell owned Cooley’s contract, which meant Mantell was even collecting his earnings, which meant Cooley didn’t have money to buy his kids gifts. They even showed Cooley’s daughters with an empty Christmas tree.
- Tom Zenk has settled his legal troubles with WWF and signed with AWA. Giant Baba wants to feature Zenk heavily, but feels he needs to be a big star in the U.S. before he comes to Japan, hence the AWA move. As far as his legal issues, WWF sued Zenk for breach of contract, and they settled out of court. Zenk will have to give WWF a percentage of his earnings in 1988 rather than the $70,000 WWF initially sued for. Dave likens the situation to if WWF tried to sign a Crockett guy on a guaranteed contract - if Crockett just let the guy go, it’d open the door up for WWF to poach anyone. Terry Taylor was actually on a similar deal, actually, with Crockett, but Crockett seems plenty happy to let him go to Memphis.
- Blackjack Mulligan beat the shit out of Bob Roop backstage at an independent show on December 29. Apparently there’s some personal issues dating back to Roop’s time booking Florida.
- One of the letters this week wonders if it’s wise for the Road Warriors to call themselves Neo-Nazis if they’re faces. In a promo on a recent episode of World Wide they twice called themselves Neo-Nazis, and the writer wonders if that should maybe be something faces don’t call themselves but which should be reserved for heels. Dave doesn’t touch this part of the letter and instead answers the part of the letter about whether WWF should bring back Bruno Sammartino and Pedro Morales. Dave’s verdict is that WWF shouldn’t live in the past.
- Badnews Brown debuted at the WWF tv tapings on January 5 after an untaped opening match. He came out and beat up Sam Houston. He made his tv debut during the third hour of the tapings.
- Watch: Badnews Brown's WWF debut
- Hogan and Savage are working better together than Hogan and Piper did because, Dave’s told, Savage knows his place. When they beat the Hart Foundation and Honkytonk Man at the end of the weekend’s tapings, Savage and Liz stayed in the background as Hogan posed. Piper always butted heads with Hogan because both wanted to be the central star, while Savage knows he’s the number two guy.
- Paul Orndorff is basically retired to go into the bowling business. He just no-showed a bunch of shows, leaving Rick Rude to try and carry Ultimate Warrior on house shows.
- King Kong Bundy’s ads for Head Start Computers are going real well. The company wants to bring him on for conventions and appearances full-time.