April 25, 1988
- The WWF and NWA have major events this coming week. WWF is having their first live shows after Wrestlemania with tapings Thursday and Friday, while the NWA has the Crockett Cup set for Friday and Saturday. Additionally, World Class and Memphis are preparing for their big shows on May 8 and 9, respectively.
- Rounds one and two of the Crockett Cup will take place on the first night. That’s roughly 14 matches, assuming a double elimination in the first round, plus a Jimmy Garvin vs. Kevin Sullivan blindfold match. The second night should have the quarter finals through the finals, Midnight Rider vs. J.J. Dillon in a bullrope match, and Flair vs. Koloff for the NWA Title. There are still two unannounced teams for the tournament, and Dave lists the ones he does know. One of the unannounced teams is simply listed as “The Japanese Entry.” Dave figures Luger/Windham or the Road Warriors should be the favorites to win, with the Fantastics as the longshot team.
- World Class has only announced four matches for the Mike and David Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions. King Parsons defends the title against Kerry Von Erich, Bill Irwin faces Angel of Death, and then two gimmicks. The first they’re calling a Texas Roundup. It’s a Royal Rumble, and since it’ll be Mother’s Day, every mother in the audience gets to pick a wrestler and if that wrestler wins, he draws a name from his supporters in the crowd and whomever he picks, she wins a prize. The other gimmick match is something Dave understands is brand new, but that’s about it - he’s unclear on the actual nature of the match. Let’s just say it’s called a “Triple Dome of Terror” match and wait for Dave to find out what that is and what it means.
- Memphis rarely pushes a card weeks in advance, but they’re making big efforts for May 9. The Lawler/Hennig match for the AWA World Title has a few stipulations attached to it. First, Lawler has vowed to retire if he does not win the title. They also have a special referee, with a 900 number set up to poll fans with the fan poll deciding whether the referee will be Larry Hennig or Jackie Fargo. Obviously, they’re going to bring in Fargo - he was the big name in Memphis before Lawler. And since it’s going to be Jerry Lawler night, they want to break the all-time gate record for the building (currently standing at $80,000 for a 1985 Lawler vs. Flair match), they’ve raised ringside ticket prices to $25 with ringside fans allowed to attend a post-match party for Lawler. Man, if they’ve got a party planned? I wonder who’s going to be AWA champion starting May 9.
- So those letters to Financial News Network that Observer readers have been sending seem to be effecting some change. They got a lot of letters asking about airing New Japan, so they’ve cleared a tentative time slot and seem ready to begin negotiations. There’s a lot to work out before any kind of deal can be made (cost of tape, commentary, etc.), but Dave thinks there’s a decent chance we could see New Japan on American tv sometime soon.
- It’s still a slow week, so Dave’s going to go more in depth on the reader poll about Wrestlemania/Clash and other stuff. He got over 600 responses, and the ratio since he first reported on the poll results still stands roughly 13:1 in favor of Clash, and only four picked a Wrestlemania match for best of the night while Sting/Flair beat Fantastics/Midnight Express by four votes.
- The non-Wrestlemania/Clash questions got much less response. Opinion split 55% to 45% against state athletic commissions. Most in favor said they don’t want regulation in the ring, but do think wrestling itself needs some regulations, while some of the votes against aren’t opposed to the concept, but voted based on how it works out right now. An overwhelming majority felt blood should be used in wrestling at least occasionally, with 67% even choosing “occasionally” as their response. Dave asked the same question two years ago, and comparatively it seems fewer fans these days want blood frequently and fewer want it outright banned as well. Only 8% wanted blading banned, and only 20% wanted more than one match a night to have blood. Stylistically, New Japan’s style won 53% of the vote for style preference, with Mid South’s style winning 16%; NWA, Memphis, and Stampede all winning 7-10%; and WWF style receiving 4% of the vote. Many votes for New Japan specified their junior heavyweight style specifically, effectively voting for smaller, faster, better conditioned wrestlers and maybe more technical wrestling than brawling. Or maybe just more action and cool moves as the basis for the action.
- Gordon Solie has been flown in to Memphis weekly lately to do voiceovers of Memphis matches for that new tv show he and Jerry Jarrett and others are trying to start up in Florida.
- A deal is in the works for Jerry Lawler’s weekly Jerry Lawler Show. It’s a 30 minute talk show he does on the local NBC affiliate on Sunday mornings, mostly about wrestling but sometimes other sports too, and there’s talk of getting it syndicated nationally or put on cable.
- [Memphis] Jeff Jarrett has a real problem here with getting over as a babyface. They’re booking him as this heartthrob babyface, but he gets major heat with the fans because he’s small and it’s well known that his father runs the company. Since most of the fans are men, this has led to his cheers from women and girls getting drowned out by boos because the men, particularly the teenagers and early 20s set, don’t want to cheer for a guy they perceive as skinny, and especially not for a skinny guy who’s marketed as a sex symbol for girls. Turns out Jarrett will never be a guy who can get over as a babyface. He just doesn't have it in him.
- Stampede is doing really well still, though that may cool off once Owen Hart leaves for a tour of Japan in May. After that he’s going to join the WWF, where the speculation all seems to be toward the idea of him and Bret teaming as a babyface tag team.
- TSN is only three weeks behind on Calgary tapes for Stampede now. When they started broadcasting the shows they were 11 weeks behind, so this is a major improvement.
- Diamond Dallas Page debuted for AWA at the April 16 taping. Dave notes that he has a good look and seems like he can do well for himself, but he also appears to be 6’4”, which means he towers over most of the AWA roster. He’s also unique as a manager, being the first Dave’s ever seen to have his own valet.
- A little perspective on how shit AWA is at this stage: in one match on that taping, Wahoo McDaniel beat Curt Hennig in a non-title cage match with an Irish Whip. Also, they had Paul Diamond beat Greg Gagne by disqualification when Marty Janetty ran in and attacked him after he threw salt in Greg’s eyes. Dave asks how out of touch they have to be to use “that ancient salt gimmick.”
- Chavo Guerrero is in Mexico, teaming with his younger brother Eddie. Eddie is apparently really hot on the scene there right now.
- At AWA’s last ESPN taping, they had a graphic for this blond kid that labeled him Pistol Pete. Well, he’s not Pistol Pete, and most California readers would know that already. The real Pistol Pete balked at the idea of doing three jobs for only $150 and decided not to work the show, but since they’d already set the graphics, they grabbed another jobber and called him Pistol Pete.
- [USA Wrestling] Buddy Landel is doing an amazing job of making Doug Furnace look fantastic. Dave thinks it’s clear Furnas has potential, and Landel is doing splendidly at helping him showcase that potential, but the more he sees the less convinced Dave is that Furnas has it. He’s a tremendous athlete, but his promos and working just aren’t there at all. They’ve got their own name for their ripoff Royal Rumble: the Cyclone Stampede.
- Some correction and clarification on Chris Adams and his injuries from last week. He didn’t suffer a broken cheekbone, and he returned to the ring three days after the injury and is wearing a baseball catcher’s mask. World Class is ignoring that Mike George did it with a dropkick and are instead claiming that Terry Taylor paid “another wrestler in another territory” to hurt him. Why not just write that Taylor paid George to do it? That just feels easier.
- World Class is still advertising Fabulous Lance everywhere they’re going. He’s still not here. In fact, he’s very probably still in South Africa, where he’s been wrestling under the Lance Von Erich name.
- Another correction, this time to Dave’s prior correction last week. Black Bart and Buddy Roberts were in fact shining flashlights into fans’ eyes during the blackout during the King Parsons/Kerry Von Erich title match. As creative a finish as it was, Dave still thinks Parsons as champion was a terrible idea. A title means something when the fans believe it has value, and that’s why most titles in wrestling today mean nothing. It needs a world class performer to hold it to build that meaning, and the World Class title has meant next to nothing its whole existence, so for it to be won the way it was won and be held by a prelim guy like the Iceman means nothing good for the title or the promotion and does not help sell tickets. WCCW needs to put on good matches and sell tickets if they want to improve their standing, not hot shot a bunch of stupid creative gimmicks. Honestly, WCCW at this time almost sounds like post-Russo WCW.
- [All Japan] Yoshiaki Yatsu worked through a broken leg against Bruiser Brody on April 4. The winner would face Tenryu on April 15 to unify the titles. Brody won, obviously. Yatsu took a heavy dose of painkillers meant to last an hour at 7:30 pm, but since the card went long, his match didn’t start until after the painkillers started wearing off. He worked 15 minutes like that before losing by countout, causing Brody to retain the International Title.
- Watch: Yatsu vs. Brody
- All Japan is also planning to unify its three tag titles into one supreme tag title in May. Tenryu and Hara hold the PWF World Tag Titles, the Road Warriors hold the International Tag Titles, and Footloose (Samson Fuyuki and Toshiaki Kawada) hold the Asian Tag Titles. Well, not exactly, Dave. The All Asia Tag Titles will stay separate, but they will unify the PWF and International Tag Titles, but it won’t happen until June 10.
- Ivan Putski is a feature story in June’s Muscle Training Illustrated. He now owns a Gold’s Gym in Austin, Texas. Fun fact - Pustki was my dad’s favorite wrestler when he was a kid.
- There’s a guy on the independent scene in Ohio who’s still running shows and wrestling at the age of 67. Luis “Arriba” Martinez is said to be a physical marvel.
- Watch: a bit of Luis Martinez wrestling in 1980. If he looked even half this good 8 years later, yeah, that’s impressive
- New Japan ran a fan appreciation card on April 10 with a ton of gimmicks. They had a five minute judo exhibition with Seiki Sakaguchi (former 3rd place in the world in judo in the late 60s before becoming a pro wrestler) drawing against comedy jobber Don Arakawa. Tatsumi Fujinami went to a couple five minute draws, then Inoki also had two five minute matches, beating Masaharu Funaki before losing to Keiichi Yamada when Funaki interered, leading to Yamada pinning Inoki. That’s the big surprise of the show. Also, Hiroshi Hase won a sumo tournament on the show.
- Leilani Kai and Judy Martin will be showing up in AJW to work with the Jumping Bomb Angels for the rest of their time there, until the end of June or early July.
- Reborn UWF officially announced its formation at an April 8 press conference. Maeda says they’ve learned from their mistakes and are claiming that the reason they can only run one show a month is because since they are promoting “shooting fights” the punishment involved precludes more frequent shows.
- Road Warriors aren’t on the next tour for All Japan, so it looks like title unification plans need to be postponed.
- The NWA looks poised to lose access to the Nassau Coliseum. Coliseum officials want to go back to WWF, which won’t run shows there as long as they let NWA run shows, and that puts the proposed June 24 Crockett show in jeopardy. It also means Crockett’s got a tough road ahead if they want to keep promoting shows in New York, because that leaves them the Westchester County Center as their best option. And while that building is more accessible than the Coliseum, it has the reputation of being a minor league building, so the draws will be less.
- The scoreboard at the end of the NWA’s April 15 Boston Gardens show read “We hope you enjoyed tonight’s WWF event.” LOLNWA
- If you missed any NWA tv this week, you didn’t miss anything. Commentary and interviews talked about nothing but Dusty Rhodes and Midnight Rider. We’re a week out from the biggest event of the year to date for them, so you’d think they’d acknowledge the Crockett Cup. Nope, only barely acknowledging that. Not one first round pairing was named (probably for the best to make people actually want to go to the Greenville show), no teams listed, nothing but a shitty skit between J.J. Dillon and Jim Crockett and an announcement that Flair is defending against Nikita Koloff. They’d better hope Dusty can draw for the next four months with the Midnight Rider gimmick, because that seems to be the only thing they’re banking on. Dave thinks NWA have already managed to piss away whatever momentum they had coming out of Clash by refocusing everything back on Dusty, when what helped make Clash work was Dusty taking a back seat. He’s not saying Dusty should retire, but he shouldn’t be the top star. Take a role more like Jimmy Valiant had for a while - he’s got a big following, could sell some tickets, and could be used to feud with low or midcard heels in short, bloody matches that the crowd ate up.
- Not much of consequence in the letters, but one guy thinks Dave is unfair to Stan Kowalski and thinks if “we had more of the old crop of wrestlers still active, this sport wouldn’t be a one promotion business as it is today.” If more promotions embraced the aging part timer, we’d have a healthier business, I guess is the logic.
- Looks like Hillbilly Jim is not on the WWF spring cleaning list after all. And also looks like most of the releases will happen in May or June.
- WWF has put out ads in some cities for Honkytonk vs. Beefcake listing Honkytonk as the challenger. So expect a title change soon, Dave reckons. It may be a misprint, but Dave doesn’t believe in misprints on this kind of stuff. Yeah, not yet and not Beefer.
- There’s talk of WWF doing a big show at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto again. WWF’s last show there had Hogan vs. Orndorff drawing just under 70,000 fans. Andre/Hogan again would pop a big turnout, and Ontario was the only place where Wrestlemania this year drew enough at closed circuit for it to be worthwhile.
- In the wake of the David Sammartino attacking a fan thing, WWF has sent letters to all wrestlers and office staff saying that such incidents are grounds for immediate dismissal. Linda McMahon even sent a “personal nasty letter” to Sammartino as well. Sammartino had been booked for several independent shows in New York against Iron Sheik, but the state commission has suspended him for three months. Dave commends the WWF for instituting such a policy, but wonders where this energy was in previous years when other wrestlers did such things. In Fresno, Randy Savage went into the stands once some time back to hit a guy and according to newspaper reports the guy ducked and he knocked out a 14 year old girl. There’s rumor of a San Francisco lawsuit coming against a WWF wrestler who knocked a security guard over in February. So this smells like a double standard of sorts to Dave, just like the drug policy, which the wrestlers joke about, saying you catch a suspension if they find coke in your system and you catch a suspension if they don’t find roids in your system. So this feels like PR rather than real, substantive policy.
- Dave’s got some word on the gimmick for the Memorial Parade of Champions at Texas Stadium. It’s going to be called something like the Triple Tower of Doom and have three rings put on top of each other with a cage around them and matches going on in all three simultaneously. The top two rings will have some kind of hole cut through them with a firefighter’s pole allowing the wrestlers to slide down to the other rings when they want to. Apparently Dusty is pissed off about this because it was his idea for this year’s Bash (a la WarGames last year) and Michael Hayes has beat him to it. Dave wasn’t wrong about not quite understanding the gimmick earlier, because that description is off. Rather than explain it myself, I’ll let WCCW do that for me and you can marvel at how awful this is. If this really was a Dusty idea, then I’ll say it straight up: Dusty lucked out in coming up with WarGames.
- Watch: The Triple Dome of Terror