January 25, 1988
- January 25, 1988
- February 5 could be the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning of this current wrestling war. No doubt about it that McMahon’s Main Event will be a big success, especially with Andre vs. Hogan headlining and lots of publicity. There’s a good chance it cracks the top 15 weekly ratings, but that’s where things get tricky. If it succeeds, WWF will want to do it again, as will networks. Does this then mean weekly prime time wrestling? Just four years ago it was almost unthinkable that pro wrestling would be on network tv at all, and WWF has had a run of successes all through 1987. They’re firing on all cylinders and drawing big ratings with everything, and that’s the sort of thing networks find appealing. Could this lead to network tv for Crockett? Probably not - no way would Crockett give up the creative control necessary to make their show fit for network tv, and no network would have “you-know-who” (I’m guessing Dusty?) as the showcased star. Dave expects that if this show is a success, we may see WWF getting offered a weekly network deal by fall of 1989 to combat falling ratings (doesn’t that sound like Fox in 2019 making a deal with WWE?). The question is if WWF can put on interesting weekly tv shows long enough to keep interest in the long-term, and Dave’s not sure they can do that. He also isn’t sure Vince will be smart enough to avoid the trap of weekly network tv if the opportunity is there. On the other hand, whatever time they did get would be very lucrative for the duration. So would passing it up even be the smart move? Wrestling as a whole could fall to scandal at any moment, so is the long-term really worth considering too hard?
- Focusing on the event itself, Andre and Hogan have big pressure on them. Andre’s condition means they can’t do a good match on their own, so they need a good finish and need to gimmick their way around the limitations. Hogan winning cleanly is the bad option - it would kill interest in Hogan’s match for Wrestlemania because nobody will be able to get over to Andre levels to be believable. Andre winning with Hogan challenging at Wrestlemania is the most discussed scenario, but Dave wonders if they’ll mortalize Hogan. It’s a hell of a needle to thread.
- At the time of writing, Rumble vs. Bunkhouse is one week away. Dave fully expects Crockett’s ppv to fail, based on all indications he has. Dave’s pessimistic about their ppv numbers and the number of homes they’ll clear, and they’ve done a terrible job at hyping things up. The fact of the matter is this: every cable company will compare their performance to WWF (an unfair comparison), and that’s just going to not look good for Crockett. Failure here will make it harder to get the Crockett Cup carried, especially if WWF puts the pressure on after Wrestlemania. One of the companies Dave has contacts with has given indication that the Bunkhouse Stampede isn’t selling at all with them, which is not a good sign.
- The Midnight Rockers are AWA Tag Team Champions. The December 27 match in Vegas ended with a double pin and the referee awarded the match to the Midnight Express. They’ve since announced that decision was overturned and the Rockers are champions. The real reason is that the Midnight Express have quit the AWA. Randy Rose wasn’t making enough money and wanted a guaranteed contract to keep him coming up from Georgia, and Condrey (who had a guaranteed contract) got his contract cut. So Condrey quit immediately, and Verne apparently didn’t want to keep using them so he didn’t even want to bring them back to do the job. Dave’s not sure where Paul E. Dangerously stands in this, but he’s heard stories indicating he’s still with them and that he’s split from them. Either way, he wasn’t at the most recent AWA taping. The Rockers are still mostly wrestling in Memphis, but expect that to change soon.
- Good news for Crockett: their tv ratings seem to have stopped dropping and they might be rebounding. Their syndicated package has returned to the top 15 (coming in at number 14, two spots behind the All-Star Wrestling Network package which has 65 fewer stations it’s available on). So it’s good for Crockett that they’re improving, but that comparison to the ASW network means there’s still lots of room for improvement. WWF came in fourth place with their syndicated package.
- All Japan Women has a big challenge ahead of them as both Dump Matsumoto and Yukari Omori arintend to retire in the Spring. AJW has a retirement rule in place where wrestlers are expected/made to retire at 26, and Omori just turned 26 last week. Matsumoto is 27, but they had waived the rule for her due to her drawing power and because they had no one to take her spot as a top heel. So this past year was spent building Bull Nakano and Condor Saito for that role, and the goal is to phase out Dump over the next two months. Dump, like Devil Masami, reportedly wants to continue wrestling and may tour North America. If used correctly, Dave believes she could make women’s wrestling in the U.S. and gain one of the biggest cult followings in all of wrestling. She’d need to be given the push and let completely loose for it to work, but “her gimmickry is such that she would actually get over more in the U.S. than in Japan.” Dave’s seen how Americans react to her in Japan and how they go to AJW shows just to see her (and more Americans go to AJW shows than go to either New Japan or All Japan), and he really thinks Dump has the potential to be among the biggest things going in America if she were to come over, on the same level as the Road Warriors. The Jumping Bomb Angels have been doing fantastically in WWF, so there could be a spot for Dump there. The only problem is it would mean phasing out most every American woman they have, because the only one they really have who can keep up is Leilani Kai. Anyway, Omori and Matsumoto retiring would mean five of the eight biggest draws for AJW would no longer be working there, leaving Bull Nakano, Lioness Asuka, and Chigusa Nagayo to carry things along as they try to develop new draws.
- [Memphis] Another week, another week with neither Lawler nor Bill Dundee turning heel. Their January 11 match (ring vs. $5,000) ended in a ref bump and the visual was Dundee pinning Lawler, until Terry Taylor ran in and hit Dundee with a DDT, then beat up Lawler and the match was a no contest.
- [Memphis] For January 18 they have Lawler putting up his ring against Curt Hennig’s AWA Title. Lawler’s talking about this as any kind of loss will result in Hennig getting the ring, and Dave wouldn’t be surprised if Hennig drops the belt, probably to drop it back to Hennig in Vegas in February at the next tv tapings.
- [AWA] The last show in the Minneapolis Auditorium will be on February 4 and is being billed as Old Timers Night. They’re bringing in Dick the Bruiser, Kenny Jay, Leo Nomellini, Bronko Nagurski, Billy Robinson, Dr. X, Red Bastien, and Butch Levy for guest appearances, and Curt Hennig vs. Greg Gagne will be the AWA Title match. Otherwise the card is a mystery.
- Nord the Barbarian’s car commercials have made him the most over wrestler in the Twin Cities after Hogan. AWA is, of course, afraid to push him too much lest he leave and it winds up hurting them. Nord doesn’t work dates outside Minnesota, even.
- Due to the Winter Olympics coming to Calgary next month, Stampede’s going to have to move from their usual spot in the Pavilion. The Pavilion seats 2000 people, and their shows in February will be in a 1000 seat building.
- Southern Championship Wrestling’s second tv taping drew 400 and had a couple highlights. Dick Slater said in a promo that when he was through with SCW he’d be more hated than Bill Watts. The other highlight was Bruiser BRody accidentally calling Grizzly Boone Grizzly Smith. The promotion’s figurehead president also confiscated Paul E. Dangerously’s mobile phone.
- Global in Florida now has Gordon Solie doing tv for them. The Malenko brothers are the best workers, and Solie talks about how much the fans are booing those dastardly Russians even as they get nothing but cheers and are the most over guys in the promotion.
- The UWF (Japan version) has folded and is closing up, and that’s the only real news in New Japan. The UWF was Akira Maeda and his friends negotiating as a group with New Japan and they had their own business office. With Maeda gone from New Japan, the group has dissolved and been fully absorbed into NJPW. Kazuo Yamazaki is being kept on, and Maeda will probably return in the future. UWF guys will now stop wrestling a different style and won’t sell UWF merchandise at shows anymore.
- [New Japan] Inoki and Fujinami are teaming again. Dave finds this pretty unsatisfactory and indicative of how any success New Japan is having right now is in spite of their booking, not because of it. They teamed, feuded, never had a singles match, and are now teaming again all without the feud ever coming to anything or getting resolved. Irritating.
- [World Class] The Freebirds (King Parsons, Terry Gordy, and Buddy Roberts) won the WCCW 6-man tag titles on January 4. The former champs were Kevin Von Erich, Steve Simpson, and Chris Adams. Matt Borne subbed for Kevin in the match as the Birds attacked Von Erich backstage and left him injured, but he came out during the match to interfere and cause a disqualification. And in WCCW titles change on disqualification, so yeah. Anyway, extra funny for Dave is how pointlessly they lied on commentary in the match where Kevin, Steve, and Chris won the titles on Christmas in the first place. They called it the finals of a tournament being held around the country over the past several months, but everyone knows Simpson was out for several months because of a torn retina and only just came back. Not to mention the other guys involved who were either in Japan, not working for World Class, or otherwise occupied. Lying’s baked into the DNA of the business, but that doesn’t mean everything you say has to be a lie.
- World Class is pushing Ken Mantell’s wrestling school hard on the air. They’re calling it the World Class Academy of Wrestling. It was formerly known as the UWF training center.
- Mantell’s come up with a hell of a gimmick match idea, and it’ll be the feature on the January 22 Dallas show for WCCW: the Thunderdome match. It’s a ten man elimination tornado cage match pitting Kevin & Kerry Von Erich, the Fantastics, and Chris Adams against the Freebirds, Jack Victory, and John Tatum. There are five sets of handcuffs in each corner, and when a man gets pinned he gets handcuffed to the ropes. When all five members of a team are cuffed, the winners get the keys and can uncuff their guys, after which the referee will leave the ring and they get five minutes to beat up the cuffed and defenseless losers. Dave thinks this sounds like a great match concept and expects a sellout on the strength of it (and no, as much as he’s been ragging on WCCW, there’s no sarcasm there at all - he’s genuinely positive on this).
- Word this week on WCCW’s ownership is that Mantell owns 30%, but the company’s been restructured and he’s Managing General Partner and calls all the shots. Fritz has called at least one shot, though so…
- Steve Corey had been helping revive WCCW’s business with spot shows, but some of his ideas lately have been not great. He recently promoted one in combination with a Martina Navratilova vs. Chris Evert-Lloyd tennis exhibition, and Dave thinks there can’t be anything dumber than trying to put in one show a women’s tennis exhibition with pro wrestling. Fortunately the tennis players balked and the show wound up canceled, but jeez.
- **Last note from WCCW: on the January 4 show they had Brian Adias and Frankie Lancaster vs. Missing Link and Bill Irwin in a first blood match between Wild West and WCCW representatives. Link and Irwin won, and Bill Mercer went on and on about how it was a win for Wild West over World Class, which has Dave thinking at least Crockett did one thing right with their UWF vs. NWA angle. There Crockett had NWA win and come out on top and look superior, which was stupid, but smarter than scuttling Wild West, then having Wild West look better than World Class anyway. The galaxy brain move would have been to not mention promotions at all.
- WWC from Puerto Rico now airs on channel 41 out of Patterson, New Jersey in the New York area.
- Dave got a line-up for a January 9 card in Pasadena, Florida for “Women’s Championship Wrestling.” Wendi Richter was listed as world champion, and Luna (Vachon) and Lock (Wenona Littleheart) are there as The Daughters of Darkness.
- This appears to be from a bit earlier, but Women's Championship Wrestling
- Dave’s calling off his hunch about Lawler winning the AWA Title in the short term.
- [NWA] Dick Murdoch has a great match with Nikita Koloff. That alone is a big surprise, but he’s also giving hilarious promos and has become the highlight of the promotion. Dave doesn’t think their February 6 barbed wire match will be as good, but he’s pleasantly surprised about Murdoch putting on his working boots.
- [NWA] Barry Windham vs. Tully Blanchard for the Western States Title on January 15 (to air January 23) was awful. It went almost half an hour, and 17 minutes in they did a bit where Barry injured his leg and limped for the rest of the match. Near the end, he did a flying clothesline and the referee counted to two before stopping, expecting the bell to ring for a time limit draw. But the bell didn’t ring. So he looked at a replay and called for the match to resume, only for Flair and Arn to run in, with Luger running in to make the save, with the Horsemen beating Luger up and wanting Windham to join them. Several fans jumped the rails and ran into the ring to attack the Horsemen and had to be dragged out, and in the end Luger and Windham shook hands. Dave says scrap any notions of Windham being the fourth horseman (he considers that Steve Williams probably has too many Japan commitments, and that really just leaves Ron Garvin which won’t happen), because it looks like they have no candidates lined up. Au contraire, Dave. They’re just slow-burning Windham’s heel turn. Wait until April.
- Watch: Barry Windham vs. Tully Blanchard for the Western States Title
- Once again we have a letter asking for coverage of POWW and GLOW. There’s more space in the issues now that Dave’s gone to two columns, so coverage of them and of more international wrestling from England, South Africa, and Mexico would be welcome. Seems like Dave’s got a small, but vocal subset of subscribers clamoring for more coverage of women’s wrestling at home as well as abroad.
- Roddy Piper’s The Highwayman pilot is going to be picked up. Piper is probably not going to be involved in the series going forward, though. In other news, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, and Lex Luger were in a pilot for Canadian tv called “Learning the Ropes.” It’s about Lyle Alzado (who was also involved in the pilot for The Highwayman and also won’t be involved in the series going forward) as a single father schoolteacher with two kids who works as a wrestler on the weekends. They made four pilots and it’s set up as a half hour sitcom. Not sure yet if it’ll be picked up, but the letter writer who gives us these bits of info about these projects promises to let us know if she can find out.
- Roddy Piper is also going to be the lead in John Carpenter’s next movie, which is a great sign for him having a future in Hollywood. It’s a little movie called They Live.
- Iron Sheik appears to be returning to WWF. Dave expects him and Bubba Rogers to debut on the January 26-27 tapings.
- Wrestlemania IV won’t be at the Superdome. Dave’s not sure where it will be, but the Superdome, Kingdome, and Silverdome are all booked for the NCAA basketball tournament. Dave’s been told they’ll be at a 20,000 seat arena, but only a few know for sure and they’re keeping their lips sealed.
- Joel Watts (son of Bill) quit WWF’s tv crew and is apparently getting out of the wrestling business. I’m gonna blindly blame Kevin Dunn.