March 07, 1988
- It’s a slow week in wrestling as we build toward Wrestlemania and Clash of the Champions. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to report, but it does mean that we’re spending the front page pretty much on those shows. Also, there will be WCCW’s May 1 Texas Stadium show, which Dave really hopes won’t be called the Mike Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions, but he’s already resigned himself to that.
- For Wrestlemania, the big news is that it’ll be longer than the 2.5 hours Dave said last issue. WWF has reserved four hours of satellite time in two blocks, covering 4 pm to 8pm Eastern, with an encore feed from 8 to midnight. Expect Wrestlemania to last between 3 hours 30 minutes and 3 hours 45 minutes. That extra time should help matches get the time they need to have some potentially good stuff happen, as well as filling the show with extra clips and rest time for the guys doing multiple matches.
- After Wrestlemania, it looks like Hulk Hogan will indeed be taking time off to film his biopic. So he’s pretty much no longer being spoken of backstage as a possible winner of the tournament. Dave says that a few weeks back, everyone with inside knowledge was saying DiBiase’s name, and Dave thinks that makes sense what with the upcoming August show being a perfect opportunity for him to drop it back to Hogan. That said, DiBiase can’t draw as champion here, even if he is the best wrestler in the company and is at the top of his game right now. That might not matter - WWF has never been good at drawing in the summer, and in some parts of the year seems only to draw at all with Hogan on the card, so it’s probable that nothing will solve their summer drawing issues and Ted’s perfectly fine as a pick. Anyway, Dave thinks the reason DiBiase won’t draw as champion in part comes down to the fact that his gimmick is over, but not his wrestling - casual fans don’t see him as a good wrestler. That might make him well positioned to draw if audiences believe he will drop the title to one of Savage, Bigelow, Steamboat, etc., but the fact is the belt does not draw on its own, and it won’t enhance the drawing power of the next champion, and a title change won’t be a big event. WWF tested DiBiase out with his brief house show run as champion after The Main Event, and that did not go well despite taking place largely in California (where WWF typically has their biggest success outside the Northeast) and his MSG main event with Bam Bam Bigelow was the smallest house they’ve gotten there in years. Hogan is the only guy who can maybe draw in the summer for WWF. So with him out and DiBiase’s drawing power in question, Savage’s name has been tossed around. Based on the current bracket, that means he would have to take out DiBiase in the semifinals and face a heel in the finals (which would either be Andre, Rude, or Bravo). Dino Bravo is obviously not the guy, as he barely merits being in the tournament at all. Andre probably can’t actually wrestle long enough to make it through to the finals, though if he could, it would do a lot to legitimize Savage as a face at or near Hogan’s level. Dave expects a Savage reign would be quick, though, because once Hogan’s back he’s obviously got to be the champion - you don’t put out a biopic on a former champion. Complicating matters, WWF magazine has just come out with a new bracket that seems to ensure a Savage/DiBiase final with DiBiase meeting the winner of Hogan/Andre in the semifinal. This changed bracket offers a lot more potential drama, Dave thinks, so that’s a plus.
- Over in Crockett Country, Clash of the Champions is going to have its own celebrity guest: Ken Osmond. If you don’t remember the name, he played Wally Cleaver’s friend Eddie on Leave it to Beaver. He’s no Vanna White, and honestly this kind of play makes Crockett’s show come off like a cheap knockoff. They probably should have avoided celebrities at all unless they could get a Bob Hope or Sylvester Stallone type name. Anyway, Dave talks about the main event, the big drawing card for this show. Flair/Sting for the NWA Title with Dullon in a cage and three judges in the event of a broadway is the main event, though there is one question there: can the title change hands by judges’ decision? If not, who cares if Sting wins the match by decision? Given the reach of WTBS and the free factor, Crockett’s going to have to seriously misstep not to have more viewers than Wrestlemania. Crockett should be seriously disappointed if this show doesn’t come in with a viewership higher than they’ve ever had, or higher than any wrestling in America aside from the Royal Rumble and WWF’s NBC specials. And even if they don’t hurt WWF one bit, they should still pull at least a 6 rating (which translates into roughly 2.5 million homes and maybe 5 million viewers). Wrestlemania will probably be far more profitable, but the viewership will be much more limited, maybe 400,000 at closed circuit locations, 18,000 live, and 900,000 homes on ppv. Even if most of the ppv views are people hosting parties, they’re not going to be close to 5 million pairs of eyes watching. And unlike previous head-to-head encounters, for the first time there will be significant viewership for both shows (Royal Rumble still had five times the viewership of Bunkhouse Stampede). Some think this is suicide for Crockett, just because Wrestlemania 3 was so impressive and they don’t believe Crockett can offer anything on WWF’s level. That said, if they put on a really great show with a big viewership, and the show can even come close to seeming as crisp as Wrestlemania to a good number of those viewers, then Crockett might just pull off undoing the damage they’ve done to their viewership with the past two shows. WWF will make millions and probably put on a good show as well, but this is going to be a real test for Crockett to see if they can undo their negative momentum.
- An update on Memphis and their tv at Financial News Network/The Score. They will not be on Saturdays at first, but rather they’ll debut on Sunday March 23 in the 10 pm Eastern timeslot. They’ll have that slot for three weeks before they move to 9 pm Saturdays beginning April 2, with NWF taking the Sunday slot. Dave doesn’t know much about NWF, but they’re claiming to have Sgt. Slaughter and Wendi Richter, which is how they got the slot.
- Dave just can’t get the story on Animal right at all. So, correction: Animal was not injured in Pittsburgh on January 29. He was injured a day or two before that, and no-showed Pittsburgh.
- Probably the biggest wrestling event this week was Dump Matsumoto’s retirement ceremony. Dump’s last match was set for Monday night, and the card isn’t being taped for television. Her final tv appearance was taped this past Thursday at Yukari Omori’s retirement show, where they teamed against the Crush Gals. More details next week.
- In the February 15 edition of amateur wrestling publication Wrestling USA, there was a column talking about the formation of a league for amateur wrestling. It will be called the National Wrestling League, and is planned to have 8-12 teams based in major cities around the country. They’re planning to start in November so Olympic eligibility won’t be an issue, and the reason behind it is they think there’s going to be a lot of publicity for several of the prospective wresters coming out of the Summer Olympics if they win medals. Dave would keep up with amateur wrestling if he had the time, but he has been a fan in the past. But the long and the short of it is that amateur wrestling isn’t super marketable, which is why pro wrestling evolved into whatever it is now. All luck to them - both previous attempts in the past decade failed after just a few shows. Surprisingly, NWL is still alive (and appears to be the same one, I think), though it appears to have morphed rather quickly into a standard pro wrestling promotion. Mick Foley’s first wrestling championship was the NWL Heavyweight Title in 1991. Keeping an eye on this as it develops later in the year.
- Update on the Von Erich family story in Penthouse. Wanda Lee Nichols, who recently made some press when she got a court order for David Bowie to take an AIDS test in her presence, somehow got wind of the story and is trying to insert herself as Mike Von Erich’s former lover. Penthouse is loving this, since controversy will sell issues. The author isn’t happy, because the story itself is excellently written and well-documented, and Nichols being Mike’s former lover (whether true or not) is entirely irrelevant). So mentioning Nichols just drags the story and its credibility down. There’s speculation that she’s a plant to discredit the real stuff in the story, what with how much the Von Erich family has been against the real story coming out.
- **As for WCCW, Dave’s firmly a believer now that Michael Hayes is in as booker. It’s definitely going to be the Michael Hayes show, but the stuff he’s put on tv the past two weeks has been great. For himself, Hayes is running a great angle where it’s obvious you know where it’s going, but not exactly how it’ll get there. He returned February 12 and started plugging his concert at the Sportatorium for March 4 and said he’s only back to do the concert, not wrestle, which led Buddy Roberts, Angel of Death, and King Parsons to come out and hug Hayes and tell him that now they can run the Von Erichs out of wrestling. Hayes had been saying he wanted no part of that because it was run into the ground, but h warily shook hands with Parsons and joked that he doesn’t “care if he’s Blackbird, Dodobird, or whatever, he’s still Iceman” to him. He then called Angel a no good son of a bitch for turning on him in UWF. Terry Gordy came out and you expect something to happen, but they shook hands and Gordy pledged his allegiance to Hayes. Two days later, Hayes plugged the concert again and he got into it with Gary Hart and Al Perez, until Gordy and Roberts made the save. Later on, Parsons, Angel, and Roberts were doing an interview promoting their defense of the 6 man titles on the 26th, and Hayes came out talking about his non-title match with Perez on that show, yelled at Roberts to shut up, and Parsons/Roberts backed off while Angel gave Hayes the evil eye. Hayes gave it right back and asked if Angel had a problem. Dave just straight up gushes over how this is going. On Feb. 21, Mark Lowrance announced that he had a contract for Hayes to get a title shot against Al Perez on March 11, provided he fulfilled two stipulations: first was a set of three warm-up matches on February 28, one of which is against Angel of Death. The other is that the winner of Perez s. Hayes on the 26th would have to fight Terry Gordy on March 27 (sure sounds like a familiar date) for the title. Hayes accepted, saying business is business. Roberts and Parsons begged him not to fight Gordy and that they’d prevent the Von Erichs from ruining the concert, and Hayes said they wouldn’t interfere and they argued and eventually Hayes slapped Roberts. So that’s where things are, and it’s the kind of angle that Dave says makes it fun to be a wrestling fan. Ken Mantell has proven he knows how to put together an exciting show, and Hayes is creative as hell. UWF failed under them due to lack of organization for live shows. They can probably turn the big cities in Texas around, and outside of Texas is up in the air. If they start thinking they can challenge Crockett nationally, though, that will probably end them.
- Watch: Michael Hayes returns to WCCW
- Eddie Gilbert returned to Memphis on February 21, interfering in the Lawler vs. Tommy Rich main event. It was a whole buildup, with his brother Doug and father Tommy coming out, then Eddie Marlin (who teamed with Tommy Gilbert back in the day and is on-air promoter for Memphis), and told Tommy to get Doug out of the ring. So Tommy attacked Marlin and they brawled, and as Lawler made his comeback against Rich and Doug, Eddie Gilbert comes out and throws fire in Lawler’s eyes, and the whole thing went over massively.
- Dave reviews the book Drawing Heat. The book starts out kind of boring for Dave, as it seemed rather outdated to him. The personalities the book focuses on are long gone from the business, and Jim Freedman (the author) built the book off his travels with Canadian Wildman David McKigney in the Ontario independents in 1981. Wrestling has changed so much in the past seven years, so that portion of the book just didn’t fit the times. But this isn’t really the kind of wrestling book that’s about the change in the business. You can see the seeds of the territory war in here, but the point of the book is about McKigney. It’s about a small, independent promoter trying to survive in an industry where he’s dated to fail because the bigger fish are out to destroy him (like Jack Tunney, under orders from Vince destroying small promotions that don’t even offer competition to Vince). If you take it as a book about McKigney and his struggles, it’s a fascinating book. For Dave, though, the best part of the book is how Freedman refuses to accept the way wrestlers hate their audience and feel the need to believe their audience actually believes wrestling is real and that if audiences knew it wasn’t real wrestling would die. Basically, the Jim Cornette position. McKigney doesn’t care how much the fans know and figures as long as his shows are good fans will come back, and even gets in on the news bulletin side of things, praising guys like Elio Zarlenga and Terry Justice (who along with Norm Dooley, their bulletins were almost prototypes for the Observer). All in all, Dave thinks a lot of people might find the book boring, but a substantial amount of folks might find it fascinating. It’s the best commercially released book on wrestling Dave’s ever read, at least.
- WWF is dropping Video One as their tv production company and switching to their own in-house production studio. They’ll probably make the switch during the down period after Wrestlemania. In addition, the trade magazine ads (which have been a signal of this change) also include ads looking for a tv play-by-play guy, an interviewer, and a senior producer, so looks like the future holds some on-air personnel changes.
- The Feb 22 MSG card was one of WWF’s worst cards in recent memory, and had the smallest crowd at the Garden in five years with under 10,000 in attendance. Dave runs down the card, and it’s just awful. Harley Race is in the opening tag tteaming with Mike Sharpe and jobbing to the Rougeaus. George Steele beat Sika by pinning him after Sika bounced a chair off the corner into his own face. Demolition were in single matches, with Ax beating Ken Patera and Smash pinned by JYD. Jake Roberts and Dino Bravo went to a 20 minute draw that felt like forever, and Ted DiBiase beat Bam Bam Bigelow by countout in the main event after he posted Bigelow while Bigelow chased Virgil. And that was the only decent match of the night. Oh, there also a couple more stinkers: Duggan and Ron Bass in a double countout and Warrior and Don Muraco beat Bundy and Butch Reed (bundy subbing for One Man Gang but out of ring shape).
- Our favorite probable neo-nazis Ron and Don Harris make their Observer debut as the Bruise Brothers in Memphis. They remind Dave physically of Ron Fuller when he started out. They’ve been wrestling for only two months and just won the CWA Tag Team Titles on the February 27 tv show.
- Owen Hart returns to Stampede on February 26 to resume his feud with Makhan Singh. These two should be all wrong for each other. Singh’s almost 400 lbs and should be too big for Owen’s offense to look good against and to work with Owen’s style such that Owen looks believable beating him, but somehow they manage to make it work really well every single time. Also, Wayne Hart has started wrestling, which means they’ve rotated in another Hart brother to referee now.
- Negotiations to bring Akira Maeda back to New Japan appear dead in the water. Maeda was suspended back in November for kicking Riki Choshu in the face legit and breaking two bones in Choshu’s eye, completely wrecking the tag team tournament in the process. There was speculation about his future, though folks generally agreed he’d be back in January, but then he and Inoki had a contract dispute (Inoki wanted him to take a 15% pay cut. Maeda, who is the third most popular wrestler in Japan, didn’t want a pay cut. He also refused to do a tour in the U.S., and negotiations fell through when New Japan wouldn’t budge on the paycut but offered Mexico instead of the U.S. Dave says Mexico would have been disastrous, as none of the Mexican wrestlers are big enough or tough enough to hang with Maeda. Maeda just refused again. Part of the reason behind the pitch of the pay cut was simply due to New Japan’s tv deal changing means less revenue and a need to cut expenses and isn’t about punishing Maeda at all.
- Hiroshi Hase has been impressing lately, doing a bunch of new moves. In a match with Takada, he reversed a superplex and instead superplex Takada to the floor outside the ring for a double countout. He’s also picking guys up like a suplex then dropping their groins onto the guard rail and doing diving splashes over the top rope onto opponents lying prone on the mat. With this level of innovation, he’s on track to be one of the best of the year if he can avoid injury. And with all the other junior heavyweights like Yamada, Hiro Saito, Owen Hart, etc., this junior heavyweight division is better than it has ever been. Although, that comes at a cost. New Japan has a booking philosophy where anyone can beat anyone on a given night, so while nobody is stuck as a jobber, nobody is able to get over as a big deal either. I think with the superplex to the floor Dave's talking about his tournament match with Takada and I found it, but um, watch for yourself.
- Watch: "superplex" to the floor
- All Japan opened their latest run of shows on February 20, and the Malenko Brothers debuted with an upset over Tiger Mask II and Shinichi Nakano. It’s Dave’s first time actually watching the Malenkos work, and he says they worked a 50s-era Thesz style. The technique was impeccable, and they kept it mat and submission based, with only one high spot to set up the finish. The crowd was quiet most of the match, but at the end they erupted, which showed just how much they were following and appreciating the performance. It’s a style that would not work for American fans, but Dave notes that sometimes the best way to get over is to work a style nobody else is doing. He makes a note of the Bulldogs and Jumping Bomb Angels in WWF, who came in and got over by doing a hard style different from anything else in the company, but over time they “learned” (read: were forced to soften their style to WWF style) and lost a lot of their popularity due to having their uniqueness stripped away.
- [All Japan] Tenryu’s Revolution have been having the hottest matches in the company. Kawada and Fuyuki have gotten big on aerobics and are putting on 20-25 minute matches full of high spots and nonstop action and may well be in contention for best tag team in the world right now, blowing past Strike Force, Arn and Tully, and the Islanders.
- [WCCW] Mark Lowrance wins the Bill Mercer award for extemporaneous speaking with this gem. Discussing the Thunderdome matches (where a guy gets handcuffed to the cage when pinned), Lowrance noted that an eliminated guy can still fight back with his free hand. Frank Dusek asked him if he’d like to fight Kerry Von Erich with one arm handcuffed, and Lowrance responded, “I wouldn’t want to fight him with both arms handcuffed.”
- The Feb. 19 AWA tv tapings in Vegas drew around 2,000 fans for mostly squash matches. The Midnight Rockers lost their non-title match against Diamond and Tanaka, setting up their defense on the March 19 taping against… The Rock & Roll Express. Also Greg Gage pinned Steve Olsonoski just after the bell rang (should have been a time limit draw) but and they named him the winner anyway.
- Channel 20 in San Francisco has dropped AWA “forever.”
- Crockett tried to book the Cow Palace for a show, and the building agreed until WWF told them they wouldn’t book the Cow Palace anymore if Crockett got the date. As of now, Crockett won’t be getting a date. As much as WWF claims Crockett isn’t competition and doesn’t bother them, they sure treat them like competition. Can’t blame them - Crockett would do the same if the roles were reversed, and Dave’s sure they have in some of the old Mid Atlantic strongholds. Crockett’s chances of being profitable in San Francisco are slim anyway, since they don’t know how to reach Californian fans and have proven that over and over again in the past year. That McMahon is going to these lengths against a competitor who really can’t compete in a market reveals how much less secure they are in their position than they project publicly. Remember: if a promoter says they are not competing with another promotion, and yet their actions appear designed to counter, hamper, or otherwise react to the other promotion (especially if these are consistent actions) then they are competing, and the promoter is lying. Another way to tell if a promoter is lying to you about their intentions is if they are talking. Apply this knowledge to any current wrestling "war" you wish.
- Bruiser Brody will be at the May 1 WCCW show.
- Good news for Earl Hebner (the fake Dave Hebner from WWF’s The Main Event. He only suffered minor injuries when Hogan threw him out of the ring, needing a few stitches but avoiding a concussion or anything major.
- Watch: Hogan hurls Hebner
- Allen Coage is wrestling as Badnews Brown in WWF because he didn’t want them trademarking the name Badnews Allen. Smart man.
- Big Bubba Rogers is looking for work. He wound up caught in a snare between Crockett and WWF - he made a jump to WWF while still under contract to Crockett (contract expires in May, Dave thinks), and Crockett threatened to block him from jumping. Dave isn’t sure what all happened, but WWF isn’t risking using him and getting sued, so he’s not earning money from either company until his contract situation clears up. He'll be fine - big guy's going to do a brief stint in All Japan shortly.
- City Hall in Calgary has asked Stampede to prevent Makhan Singh from mentioning the Olympics. Singh’s a great promo and loves to bring current events into his promos, but given he’s a heel the city seems concerned about what he might say.
- Things are getting interesting with Stampede’s tv due to announcer Ed Wheelan. He cuts off any match on tv that gets too violent or bloody, which means most of the best matches and angles wind up butchered for tv. This is why Edmonton has a reputation for having better matches than Calgary, as the wrestlers are more free to go wild and bleed more.
- Devil Masami looks to be moving to Calgary soon to restart her career. The Harts are also interested in bringing Dump Matsumoto to feud with Rhonda Singh.
- Stampede is hopeful that they can bring Ric Flair for a weekend to wrestle Owen Hart. This is a hope that’s full of political pitfalls, given Stu Hart is a WWF agent for their Calgary shows. Also, it’s just unlikely Crockett would want to give up Flair for a Friday and Saturday night. Indeed, this never goes anywhere, and the only time Ric Flair and Owen Hart would ever be part of the same match would be the 1993 Royal Rumble match, where they never shared the ring at the same time. It’s a shame, because I feel like Owen and Flair would have had some fantastic matches if things had ever shaken out so they could try.
- Crockett’s recent Omni (Feb. 28) and Greensboro (Feb. 27) shows were disappointments at the gate. They were coming off two 13,000 attendance shows at the Omni and making noise about selling out, but only pulled 7,300 (a good crowd, all things considered), but a lot of the crowd were in the upper deck where tickets only cost $5 rather than the seats closer to the ring that cost more. Same story in Greensboro, where they pulled 10,000 fans but again a lot in the cheap seats and few in the “good” seats. $5 is a hell of a deal for a card of that quality though. Anyway, the most notable thing from the Omni show was Sting calling Larry Zbyzsko an “asshole” and the crowd running with it chanting “asshole” at Zbyzsko for the entire match. They’re coming back on March 13 and the attendance will probably be lower. They’re running the Omni so often, probably because they’re cocky off how Ole Anderson drew when they brought him back, but likely because Wrestlemania is booked for the Omni as a closed-circuit site and Crockett are trying to kill the town before WWF comes (WWF has never succeeded in getting a foothold in the area, but you never know, maybe they could and Crockett want to prevent that).
- Crockett had to cancel the Feb. 23 show in Spartanburg, South Carolina because they got no advanced ticket sales and under 100 tickets sold the day before the show. The main event was to be Larry Zbyszko vs. Barry Windham.
- An anonymous reader writes in with a poem entitled “The Ballad of ‘The Bull.’” It’s clearly trying for a limerick/ballad/all rhyming couplets rhythm mashup and it manages to butcher the concepts of form and meter completely. In terms of pure poetic quality, it's garbage and irritating to me, but that's because I study this stuff. It’s also about Dusty Rhodes being a terrible booker, which explains why Dave printed it and looked past the… less than stellar quality of the writing (I give it -2 stars), saying he figures the writer clearly “took a lot of time thinking it up and the poem does get its message across.” Here’s the poem (and because reddit formatting is awful, I’ve put the first line of each stanza in bold so you know there’s a break before it):
- There once was a promoter named Crockett,
- Who watched his promotion take off like a rocket,
- His was the best of its day,
- The one we called the NWA,
- Its angles were hot and the talent was great,
- And these were the reasons for so many a big gate.
- The champion was a great one named Flair,
- To take his title nobody would dare,
- The action was heated with plenty of fightin’,
- Soon Crockett would challenge McMahon and his Titan,
- Jim’s business was strong, he possessed all the goods,
- But he had an egomaniac booker called “Bull of the Woods.”
- Fat like a whale, whose work was quite rusty,
- This scar-headed juice freak also called himself Dusty,
- He always put himself over, and formed his own clique,
- He created the Horseman--Arn, Tully, Lex and Ric.
- The angles grew stale and fans got tired of the crew,
- So Dusty turned Luger--a foolish thing to do,
- Lex is not a good worker, opponents have to take up his slack,
- He’s just a musclebound stiff with a human torture rack,
- They should’ve turned Flair, what a babyface he’d make
- Just chalk up another Dusty mistake.
- The UWF Jim Crockett did buy,
- Only to destroy all its talent, never give them a try,
- First Taylor and Williams, then the Freebird named Hayes,
- This goofball Jim Crockett must have been in a daze!
- His only salvation was pay-per-view cable,
- But Crockett showed the Nassau fans the same tired old stable,
- Vince McMahon had a great laugh indeed,
- When the fans booed fat Dusty when he won the Stampede.
- Egos die hard and wrestlers lose their fire,
- But some just simply refuse to retire,
- Crockett and Dusty are two of a kind,
- Greed and ignorance like theirs simply boggles the mind,
- And I never thought that I would live to see the day,
- When I would truly disdain the NWA,
- The Dream and his cronies have sold themselves short,
- And deserve to be second in the great wrestling sport,
- Give me Andre and Hogan and all of the rest,
- For Titan have proven that it is the best.
- There’s some good discussion of long matches and audience interest in the letters this week. One reader argues that a small regional promotion can afford to cater to the kind of fan who gets invested in matches for the sake of matches, but that to succeed nationally, you need the much larger audience and that means matches have to go down the priority list - the fans of WWF don’t watch Hulk Hogan to see him wrestle. They watch Hulk Hogan to see him pose. It’s about the storyline around the matches, the hype, the pre- and post-match antics. The matches are incidental. And as Crockett tries to compete nationally, they’re finding that a lot of their fans are similar. It's a lot of the stuff we see in discussion about wrestling today. Can you really build around workrate first and succeed, or is that just going to cause you to have a limited audience? NXT is far more workrate focused than the main roster has ever been, yet its viewership has not gone past a certain level. Another reader chalks it up to this instant-gratification, non-thinking, give it to me now (give me what I want!) attitude that is all “too common today.” The same reader can’t comprehend how people can look at wrestling and vote for Bobby Heenan as a worse manager than Slick or Johnny V, or think Steamboat is still a great wrestler. Oh boy.
- Last letter I’m going to pull from because there are three and a half pages of these concerns the place of shooting in pro wrestling. Namely, the writer notes that he believes there is a legitimate place for it and brings up Bruiser Brody. How did Brody get to be where he is today? By beating the shit out of anyone who didn’t sell for him the way he wanted to be sold for until they did it right. A “friendly shoot” now and again keeps wrestling more fun. The writer condemns Maeda’s actions - cheap shots, attempts to injure, etc. aren’t the kind of “friendly” shooting the writer means. Wrestling is weird, y’all.
- At Crockett’s February 26 show in Cincinnati (taped for their syndicated package for March 12) the ring broke during a suplex. It was a Windham vs. Rotundo title match, and Rick Steiner and Kevin Sullivan interfered to cause a disqualification, with Luger making the save. After the ring broke they needed 45 minutes to fix it to continue the show. Lex worked three matches at the taping, and was already blown up after the first (which was the last match of the first block of the taping, whereupon they immediately had him give an interview, then shoved him out for the first match of the second block of the taping). The third match was immediately after the second, so he did all three matches in a row, and the third match was against a jobber. He was supposed to lift the guy but was so exhausted he couldn’t. Way to not at all try to hide the weaknesses of the guy you’re building as your big face.
- Dave’s heard no talk of Crockett bringing any outside teams for the Crockett Cup. It’d really help flesh things out if they did, though.
- The Fantastics have put themselves in an interesting predicament. They debut on WTBS for Crockett on March 2. They agreed to work Bruiser Brody’s independent show in St. Louis on March 4. But Crockett is going to St. Louis on March 6, so in a sense, they’d be working in opposition to their new employer by working the show. At the same time, who the hell would want to no-show a card produced by Bruiser Brody?
- WWF is releasing a Best of Brutus Beefcake tape. They’re going to have to put it in slow motion if they want to hit their running time.
- AWA won’t be going completely dark for the next four weeks. The’ve got some small town spot shows booked in Minnesota, but that’s about it.