Wrestling Observer Rewinder

April 18, 1988

Akira Maeda announced that he’s restarting the Universal Wrestling Federation (the Japan version, not the one Bill Watts had) and they’re running their first show at Korauken Hall on May 12. Nobuhiko Takada and Kazuo Yamazaki, along with Yoji Anjo, Tetsuo Nakano, and Shigeo Miyato are also going with Maeda. All of them are members of the original organization, which closed in September 1985. The official announcement was set for April 8, but the story broke early. Expect matches to be in the style of the original UWF, focusing on a hard martial arts style of kicks and holds with next to no showmanship. UWF lasted 17 months in its original incarnation and gathered a cult following in Tokyo, but it couldn’t draw on the road because they had no tv and the style was fairly impenetrable to all but the hardest core fans. Like, I love Shayna Baszler, but I also don’t want an entire promotion of Shayna Baszlers, and that’s UWF. Anyway, they’re not going to do tours like the other big promotions in Japan, but rather do a big show each month in the big cities only. Their next planned show in Tokyo after the return isn’t until August, and they won’t hit Osaka until December. Back in November Maeda shot on Riki Choshu, breaking two bones under his eye and getting Maeda suspended, before ultimately getting fired on March 1 after he wouldn’t come to terms on a new contract. Dave expects UWF 2.0 to have a hard time making it with only one show a month and videotape as their only revenue streams (yeah, tapes are too expensive for the PWG model to work).
And tying into all this, Takada and Yamazaki’s last match in New Japan saw another shoot incident. On March 19 in Korauken Hall, they wrestled Kuniaki Kobayashi and Norio Honaga, and Kobayashi slapped Yamazaki hard at the opening bell. Since he apparently was already going to quit, Yamazaki then shot on Kobayashi, kicking him in the face and they then brawled until several wrestlers broke them up. Later on he tried again when Kobayashi had Takada in an abdominal stretch.
Watch: Takada and Yamazaki vs. Honaga and Kobayashi
Outside that news, the world of wrestling is quiet in the post-Wrestlemania season. WWF will have tv tapings on April 21 in New Haven and April 22 in Springfield, Massachusetts, as well as a Saturday Night’s Main Event taping that week and a Madison Square Garden show on the 25th. The line-up for the New Haven taping has DiBiase vs. Beefcake, Savage defending against Andre, Honkytonk vs. Bigelow (may not happen, since Bigelow underwent double knee surgery last week), and Strike Force vs. Demolition. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of rating they pull for an entire show without Hogan.
WWF released information on their internal projections for Wrestlemania IV, and in hindsight they’re laughable. They anticipated a gross of $40 million when adding the gate, ppv, closed circuit, and projected videotape sales. As for their reports on what they did take: they’re claiming $1.5 million for the live gate (probably accurate, if you include the site fee Donald Trump paid), $20 million on ppv (they’re claiming a 9.8 buyrate), and $4 million incoming from the 100,000 video tapes they project selling. (Dave’s been told that’s never going to happen). Even adding up those figures, you fall ludicrously short of their projected $40 million, and yet publications are running with the numbers and even the $40 million number and not even bothering to add things up. And that really gives proof to the fact that it does not matter what the actual numbers are for WWF - they are entirely built up on image, and the whole wrestling business is too, for that matter. WWF needs to claim Wrestlemania IV was a bigger success than Wrestlemania III for three key reasons: 1. Advertisers and the media have predicted the end of the “wrestling fad” since the beginning and anything that would make them think it actually is dropping off will make sponsors drop WWF real quick, 2. WWF can’t allow an image of failure (and let’s be clear, Wrestlemania IV wasn’t a failure, it just wasn’t as successful as projected), and 3. It keeps people from looking into why it wasn’t as successful as projected. Now, the reasons there are that the tournament as an idea wasn’t as strong as they thought it would be and that weakens the image of Vince as a genius, but he can’t be blamed here because it looked like a good idea until the ticket sales numbers started coming in. And if someone got the idea that Crockett’s show hurt them, well that makes them competition, and WWF’s official company line is that there is no competition to them. So if you’re WWF, you have to project strength on all fronts and positive momentum no matter what, and in a way that’s what keeps them running - the momentum of their own image of success is more powerful than the reality of their actual numbers. And since to the wider world Wrestlemania was not a failure and Crockett doesn’t even exist, that might just be the biggest hurdle they have to overcome and should be Crockett’s number one goal. And indeed, WWF/WWE has always managed to keep a stranglehold on the public image of wrestling in the United States, even in the Monday Night Wars to an extent, as evidenced by the many times WCW’s contributions would be ignored or even labeled as WWF stuff.
Syndicated ratings for the week ending March 20 had WWF at number 3 with an 11.2 All-Star Wrestling network (AWA, Memphis, Pro Wrestling this Week, POWW, GLOW) got an 8.6 and 6th place, while Crockett had a 7.8 for 7th place.
The third Crockett Cup takes place on April 22 and 23 in Greenville, SC and Greensboro, NC, and it’s the least hyped yet. The Crocketts are projecting a sellout and $307,000 at the gate, and advance sales have been good, but Dave gets the feeling it might be too soon to run a big show after a big show, since it’s hard to get a crowd up in interest again so soon after a big peak point for interest. And then there’s the build, which has been awful. Flair vs. Koloff, the main event for the second night, won’t even be announced until April 16, like it’s a throwaway. Midnight Rider vs. JJ Dillon in a bullrope match probably won’t be announced until then too, and not even all the teams for the Cup have been announced yet, let alone the bracket. Dave knows about 14 teams, some of which haven’t been announced officially, and they have every name guy there is in the company, which means ten teams of jobbers. And that’s going to make the Greenville taping suck. Much better to limit things to 16 teams, but that’s not the Crockett way.
Gordon Solie leaving Global may be the biggest burial Dave’s ever seen. Bob Roop, the face commentator, talked about Solie as a once-great announcer and former legend who has absolutely lost it, while Red Roberts played heel and “portrayed Solie as someone who never [was] what he appeared to be” and said he was a “very ordinary man who was a different person when the camera was off.” They referenced little off-camera remarks Solie would make denigrating fans and brought up all the jobs he’s lost in the past few years (TBS, Pro Wrestling This Week, Championship Wrestling from Florida, which really isn’t a lot in wrestling, but whatever). Obviously, lots of hard feelings about Solie quitting Global to go work with Steve Keirn and Jerry Jarrett in their proposed Florida promotion.
Central States is now working with World Class to get big names for their big shows, and the first outing of this joint venture was a total disaster. It mostly comes down to the World Class guys not being able to get enough work in Texas. Anyway, they had Mike George defend the “World” title against Chris Adams, and George accidentally hit Adams really hard in the face with a dropkick. He broke Adams’ cheekbone and nose, and knocked out several teeth as well. No word on how long Adams will be out of action, but he’s going to have to have reconstructive surgery. Considering he just came back from a broken hand (which didn’t heal correctly in the first place), he may have the doctors re-break it to let it heal correctly.
Stampede had a near sellout in Calgary on April 1. The main event had Owen Hart and Jason the Terrible vs. Johnny Smith and Makhan Singh in a street fight (Owen and Jason won by DQ, so I guess those are possible in Calgary street fights). Everybody bled and Kerry Brown and Rip Rogers ran in to attack Owen and Jason, which caused the disqualification. At one point Smith hit Jason with a 45 gallon drum. For April 8 they announced an eight-man street fight, but due to the mayhem the Calgary Boxing and Wrestling Commission is refusing to authorize a street fight, so it’s going to be a regular eight-man tag match.
May 9 in Memphis is going to be Jerry Lawler night. They’ll have Curt Hennig defending the AWA World Title against Lawler, and if Lawler loses he’ll retire from wrestling. Their April4 stretcher match drew 6,500 on the strength of $1 student tickets. Lawler was going to win, until Scotty the Body (the future Raven) interfered ineffectively, and Eddie Gilbert came out after and used chloroform to knock Lawler out and put him on the stretcher. A riot almost broke out. On April 9 Scotty and Lawler had a grudge match where Scotty would get a date with Missy Hyatt if he won. He lost, bad, and Missy slapped him, and he’s back as a babyface since Lawler saved him from a beat down afterwards.
Dave hears that AWA is trying to get out of being a wrestling promotion and operate more as a booking office. The idea is to showcase as many wrestlers as they can on the Las Vegas tapes, use ESPN to sell shows for local promoters, and farm their talent out. We’ll see how that goes.
AWA is bringing some dude named Diamond Dallas Page in to manage Diamond and Tanaka. Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson are apparently also being booked out of the AWA now, which should end rumors of them going to the WWF.
Bob Orton signed a three year contract with New Japan.
Fabulous Lance still hasn’t arrived in World Class.
Correction on the description of the King Parsons title win in World Class. Black Bart and Buddy Roberts weren’t shining flashlights in fans’ faces when the lights went out.
New Japan had no tv for the past three weeks but returns on April 16 in a 4 pm to 5 pm Saturday timeslot. It’s going to get pre-empted regularly for the rest of the year due to TV Asahi having other sports they have higher on their priority list.
The departures from New Japan in the wake of the UWF announcement have them hurting pretty bad for roster depth.
Bob Orton’s getting over well in the small towns with his Billy Gasper the pirate gimmick. He’s doing lots of clowning around and that works in the small towns. It’s going poorly with the Tokyo fans, though.
Masa Saito did an interview on March 18 saying the guys in the pirate masks aren’t real pirates and he’ll bring real pirates to New Japan. Orton then did an interview and said they were real pirates, and said a third Gasper brother named Barry coming to Japan.
Two more All Japan Women retirements have been announced. Kazue Nagahori (age 19) and Condor Saito (age 20) announced their impending retirements on April 2. That brings us to 7 women leaving the promotion since December (including Dump Matsumoto, Yukari Omori, and Devil Masami). Losing Dump has done a huge number on their ratings - Dump’s retirement show drew a 13.2 (compared to an average range from 8.5-11.5), but their first show without her drew a 5.7.
The Jumping Bomb Angels returned to AJW and were billed as WWF Tag Team champions. They’re defending the titles over there right now. We’re a couple months from Moolah getting the titles and division killed off.
All Japan is building toward an April 15 match between Genichiro Tenryu and Bruiser Brody to unify the singles titles. Tenryu has the United National and PWF Titles and Brody has the International Title. This doesn’t go anywhere. This issue’s street date is one year to the day before the Triple Crown Championship is established.
Tom Magee is wrestling preliminary matches in All Japan, and Dave gives an overview of his career thus far. He debuted in October 1985 and everyone thought he’d be a future superstar. Built like Lex Luger, strong as an ox (he’s a three time winner of World’s Strongest Man competitions), 6’5” and north of 270 lbs, and experienced in gymnastics and karate so agile as all hell. On paper, he’s kind of like Lesnar: just a freak specimen of an athlete. Only, unlike Lesnar he couldn’t transition that into learning to wrestle even a lick. He started out in Stampede and his very first match was his best because he just kept getting worse. He had a terrible match in Japan against Riki Choshu where a spark of potential might have shone for a millisecond. WWF signed him and debuted him in a match against Bret Hart, and Hart made him look incredible and Vince was convinced he had the guy to replace Hogan., only to find out later that the match was all Bret and nobody else knew what to do to make him look good. They had him on the C string house show tours with no improvement in sight, and he left to go do strength stuff in Europe. Unlike Ultimate Warrior, whose build is similar and wrestling ability is even more negligible, Magee had no charisma or personality to save him. So 2.5 years after supposedly being the next Hogan, he’s still no better than he was on his first match and has no discernible future in the wrestling business. The match is on the WWE Network on the special Holy Grail: The Search for WWE’s Most Infamous Lost Match.
Watch: Tom Magee vs. Riki Choshu
Watch Tom Magee reminisces about his match with Bret Hart
Vince McMahon is trying to get lobbyist support to abolish the Washington State Athletic Commission.
April 2 in San Juan Puerto Rico drew 10,000 for WWC with Hercules Ayala beating Carlos Colón to retain the Universal Title by disqualification. On the same card, Invader #1 (fuck Invader #1) regained the TV title from Super Black Ninja (Keiji Muto).
Madusa Miceli is doing a test shoot for Playboy. Playboy’s wanted to do a spread with a pro wrestling personality, but several women have turned them down and Dave won’t name names, but you can probably guess accurately anyway if you know the major women in the business right now. I can’t decide if the extremely minimal coverage Dave gives American women’s wrestling at this point is an advantage in guessing (if you go by Dave’s coverage, Candi Divine, Sherri Martel, Medusa, Rockin’ Robin, The Glamour Girls, the Jumping Bomb Angels, Precious, Missy Hyatt, Misty Blue, Baby Doll, and Elizabeth are basically the only women in the United States), or if it’s an indictment of his coverage of women’s wrestling. Anyway, Medusa does the shoot, but doesn’t authorize release because she gets an offer to do a tour with AJW, and with the strict code of conduct in Japan for performers, she made the smart move for her career here.
Northeast Championship Wrestling is trying to get Iron Sheik and Sergeant Slaughter together for a match. The big wrench in the works there is Vince McMahon. If Sheik can clean up his act, he’s likely to get re-signed by Vince because McMahon still sees some cartoon villain value in him on the lower card.
Everything in Global is still revolving around the Dr. Red Roberts and V.C. Minh vs. Col. Kirchner and G.I. Joe Palardy feud. But worry not, they’ve got a guy named Steve Collins who’s turning heel because he’s got two valets called the party girls, and one (Dominique) is a heel. The other is apparently the hottest valet in the business right now, and I cannot believe that sentence is basically verbatim.
We get a letter from a graduate student in the radio-tv department at Auburn University (nowadays he’s a professor at Union University) who wants to offer his professional take on Clash and Wrestlemania. He says Clash definitely wins for best show and Sting/Flair wins best match, then runs down positives and negatives for each. For Wrestlemania, the camera setup, lighting, roster, Ventura, and quality finals are all big pluses for the show, and the venue had the requisite glitz and Bob Uecker fit in well with the zany cast of characters as well. For Clash, the big pluses were solid feuds, minimal Dusty, better lighting than their previous shows, good use of interview segments, Bob Caudle, three really excellent main event level matches, limited ad breaks, Jim Ross emerging as the best commentator in the company, better wrestlers, and a really hot crowd from start to finish. Negatives for Wrestlemania include Gorilla Monsoon’s cliches, the unwieldy tournament, too long a card, a weak main event compared to the match they had on Saturday Night’s Main Event (it seemed rushed for time), and the non-tournament matches were largely garbage, leading the whole show to feel unfocused, confused, and unprepared compared to Wrestlemania 3. Clash had some minuses as well though: too many crowd reaction shots, timing miscues on shots going wide, why were Jason Hervey and Ken Osmond at the judges’ table, the cop-out finish to the main event (they could have saved it with Osmond playing his character to break a 2-2 tie for Flair), maybe a bit more context on a couple things like Dusty/Tully/Magnum would have helped out, and they could have really used a video package for Flair/Sting to set the stage for new viewers. He rates both shows out of five on several fronts. For overall production, Wrestlemania wins 4.5 to 4 over Clash. For match quality, Clash gets 4.5 to Wrestlemania’s 2. For crowd enthusiasm, Clash wins 5 to Wrestlemania’ 1.5. Clash gets 4 (for Jim Ross) and Wrestlemania gets 3 (for Ventura) on announcing. For overall excellence, Clash wins 5 to Wrestlemania’s 2, leading to overall totals of Wrestlemania 12.5/25 to Clash’s 22.5/25.
The rest of the letters are more thoughts on Wrestlemania and Clash. You can guess fairly accurately that the vast majority agree Clash was better. One ridiculously long letter takes a contrarian view and tries to argue that Flair looked like a sad, tired old man and the match gave him all the Sting he’ll ever need to see for the rest of his life.
In Global, there’s a team called Death Row and they beat up a plant in the audience. Dave thinks this is the stupidest angle ever, because why would fans buy tickets if they think it puts them in danger of getting beat up by the wrestlers for no reason?
Also Global, Rusty Brooks and Jumbo Barretta won the tag titles in a match where they were on opposite teams. Brooks was teamed with Tom Nash and Barretta with Matt Oddo, and somehow Brooks and Nash won when Barretta wouldn’t get in the ring to fight Brooks, but somehow Brooks and Barretta wound up becoming champions out of it. Nobody understands what happened.
Joe Pedicino is running a 20 hour wrestling telethon on May 28 to benefit the Atlanta Police Department. It won’t be just wrestling - there will be some movies and sports interspersed in. So I guess it’s not exactly a 20 hour wrestling telethon, now, is it, Dave?
So that Hogan movie? Not a biopic. It’s going to star Hogan and the story will be built around a toughman contest. Dave notes that every movie with that concept has bombed. Well, Dave’s wrong about this being a toughman movie, but he’s right about it bombing. We’re at least somewhat conceptually closer to No Holds Barred, at least.
Roddy Piper signed a three movie deal with John Carpenter for several million dollars. Good for Piper, but he needs to hope his movies continue to do well - one flop and Hollywood is likely to move on from him and the other movies will likely be forgotten.
WWF has done some spring cleaning. S.D. Jones, Iron Mike Sharpe, Sika, Outback Jack, Hillbilly Jim, Johnny V, and Terry Gibbs are all gone. Craig De George, an announcer, is also gone.
Vince McMahon is privately blaming himself for Wrestlemania not being as successful as expected. Particularly, he’s beating himself up for letting the creative slide. Is this where the beginning of the creative slide that gets us to the New Generation doldrums began? I don’t know, so I guess we might see.
Last week Dave incorrectly reported that Brad Armstrong had knee surgery. He didn’t. He just took off the week to rest up, but his knee is messed up and he probably should get surgery.
[NWA] Midnight Rider (Dave calls him Midlife Rider) debuted on the tv tapings on April 10. If you somehow don’t know, it’s Dusty. Anyway, he came in on a horse with Magnum T.A. leading the horse, then came out later and choked Tully Blanchard with a lasso.
The April 30 Saturday Night’s Main Event will be taped on April 22. They’re taping an episode of Wrestling Challenge too, so expect a 5 hour card if you’re there live. And bring a pillow, because this sounds dreadful: Savage vs. Gang for the title, Honkytonk vs. Beefer for the title, Bulldogs vs. Demolition non-title, DiBiase vs. Muraco, and Andre vs. Jake the Snake.
Big John Studd was set to return to WWF, but has pushed his planned return back to the fall. Push that back until December. It’ll be Studd’s final run in the company and it’s only going to last until June next year, but at least he’ll have a Royal Rumble win out of it. After that he’ll do occasional independent dates and retire in 1990 after discovering he has Hodgkin's Lymphoma.