Wrestling Observer Rewinder

June 27, 1988

Rewinder note: With the news that Dave's mother is dying, I'd like to extend my well wishes to Dave and his family. This pandemic is awful, and for Dave to be unable to see his mother in her dying days so he can be there for her and say goodbye, that's rough. All best to the Meltzers right now.
The Powers of Pain jumped from the NWA to the WWF. This is more interesting to people than even Dave expected, and apparently negotiations had been on-and-off between WWF and the team for almost two months. Even more surprising than the jump is that they’re going to be pushed as babyfaces and be put immediately in a title program with Demolition. It also seems their sudden departure is in part due to not wanting to do the scaffold matches they were being booked for throughout the Bash tour (Dave mentioned them in last week’s issue but I glossed over that), since they were going to be required to do bumps off the scaffold. Warlord and Barbarian are huge guys, so that’s just a recipe for injury, and even if they lucked out once, they were being scheduled for over a dozen against the Road Warriors, and you know Hawk and Animal won’t bump. Ayway, the NWA had the Road Warriors and Paul Jones bury them on tv, and they’re replacing them with Ivan Koloff and The Russian Assassin.
Dave thinks this is only going to help WWF, but won’t really hurt the NWA. WWF can make something good out of them, given their size, look, and general level of ability. They were pushed well as an attraction team against the Road Warriors, but the feud wasn’t a draw and they never really did get over as attractions. Dave thinks this move also puts the kibosh on the Road Warriors going to WWF any time soon, since bringing the Powers of Pain in as faces cuts further into the appeal the Warriors have.
No Holds Barred has started filming in Atlanta. Filming is expected to last the next two months. Opposite Hogan, the other lead is Joan Severence. The film is being produced by “Shane Productions” and is the first film done by that production house. Dave has no idea that this is a shell that Vince made and named after the product of his semen, Shane McMahon, nor that it would ultimately be a precursor to WWE Studios. Anyway, it looks like it’s going to be a kid’s comedy/action movie aimed at being direct to video. I'm guessing some aspects of that change by the time we get a trailer.
Watch: No Holds Barred Trailer
By the way, the Powers of Pain quit without notice and will get to keep their name. Which means Crockett didn’t trademark it, and that kind of surprises Dave, but makes some sense to him. The value in a copyright is protecting your merchandising, and the Powers of Pain really didn’t have any merchandising value for Crockett to begin with.
The July 10 Great American Bash ppv hype train is full steam ahead. Dave says it’s pretty much guaranteed to do well financially, and the Luger/Flair main event has big interest as most fans expect a title change (ha!). There’s not going to be any direct competition by WWF, so Dave anticipates a buyrate of at least 4%, which would translate to at least 376,000 homes and a gross of $6 million. The way things split, Crockett may only get around a quarter of that, but still, it’s a big financial windfall. Dave hopes they don’t take the success as an indicator that their creative is righting the ship; it’s really just that the concept of the Bash is over, like how the concept of Wrestlemania is over.
The annual Wrestlethon on WATL-TV (Ch. 36) in Atlanta went on this past weekend. They were raising funds for the Atlanta police department to buy bulletproof vests and raised at least $6,000. Expect more info later on in the rewind when Dave gets more info because typewriters don’t allow you to easily go back up to a paragraph and keep a single story all together. What Dave does know, however, is that the highlight was a series of strange angles during the live studio matches from Southern Championship Wrestling. First, Paul E. Dangerously wanted to get Tommy Rich and Eddie Gilbert back together, but Rich refused so we got a main event set for later in the show. Over the next two hours they kept talking up the match in a spoof of Crockett’s tv right up until there were only two minutes left. They finally get down to the ring and the credits start rolling (this is Dave’s big complaint with NWA tv main events lately), and as the announcer started to sign off, Rick Stuart comes out and says the general manager of channel 36 has ordered them to keep the show on the air until the match ends. So fans got to watch the whole 13½ minute match uninterrupted and it was reportedly an excellent match with all kinds of shenanigans and swerves and ultimately sets up Gilbert, Rich, and Bruiser Brody against Dick Slater, Manny Fernandez, and a mystery partner for June 26.
Watch: Footage from the 1988 Wrestlethon
Rumor has it that Ted Turner has bought the NWA. The rumors are false. To Dave’s knowledge, no transaction has taken place, nor is one likely in the immediate future. The numbers both sides are talking about are still millions of dollars apart (Crockett wants eight figures and TBS apparently doesn’t want to spend near that much). Turner’s got other things going on, too, including hush hush negotiations to purchase CNN from Capital Cities. Talk between the two sides isn’t dead, but they’re still hashing a lot out.
[All Japan] The Road Warriors dropped the International Tag Titles to Jumbo Tsuruta and Yoshiaki Yatsu on June 10 in front of 11,800 fans at Budokan Hall to unify the tag titles. Did they avoid doing a clean job? Does a bear shit in the woods? Did they avoid doing a job at all? Does the pope shit in the woods? Did they not only avoid doing a job, but managed to even get the other guys to do a clean job to them? You know it. They changed the main event the night before in Kiryu to the Warriors vs. Yatsu and Tsuruta, which the Warriors won via pinfall. Then, in the big Budokan show, they used a typical NWA finish. Hawk knocked referee Joe Higuchi out of the ring. Another referee came in and counted the pin on Tsuruta following a double team on him, but Higuchi got up and reversed the decision, awarding Tsuruta and Yatsu the match via disqualification, which triggers title changes in All Japan. Therefore your winners and now unified tag team champions are Jumbo Tsuruta and Yoshiaki Yatsu. The Warriors are scheduled to return in September as challengers.
Watch: Yatsu and Tsuruta vs. the Road Warriors
Also on June 10, the IWGP Tag Team titles changed hands, as Riki Choshu and Masa Saito won the titles from Tatsumi Fujinami and Kengo Kimura after Saito made Kimura submit. Owen Hart retained the jr. title against Keiichi Yamada in a reportedly excellent match in the other main event.
Antonio Inoki is in Los Angeles training for his comeback in August. Since he’s been out with his broken foot, he’s also undergone surgery for his eye, elbow, and knee. Apparently it’s gratifying to his ego that crowds haven’t been super impressive without him, and he wants to have his big return match be against Hulk Hogan or Bob Backlund. You might remember that UWF wants Backlund in for December against Akira Maeda, but word on the street is that Backlund’s not interested in either offer and doesn’t want anything to do with pro wrestling right now. And the chances of getting Hogan in are probably worse than getting Backlund to agree to wrestle Inoki.
UWF’s second show drew a sellout in Sapporo. Interestingly, the demographic they draw is almost exclusively young men of high school and college age. Tetsuo Nakano and Shigeo Miyato went to a 30 minute draw where both worked so hard they collapsed at the end. Kazuo Yamazaki beat Norman Smiley by armbar, with Smiley delivering a performance that really impressed those who weren’t familiar with him. Finally, Akira Maeda made Nobuhiko Takada submit, and Maeda’s conditioning was much better this go around. UWF’s next show will be on August 13 at Ariake Coliseum, with an 11,000 seat capacity. Maeda’s looking for a karate champion from Europe or the U.S. to face on that night.
[All Japan Women/WWF] The Jumping Bomb Angels lost the WWF Tag Titles to the Glamour Girls by countout on June 8. There’s a lot of confusion about this, Dave says, because it’s Japanese policy for Japanese titles to be able to change hands via countout or disqualification, but American titles generally play by their home promotion’s rules, and so this shouldn’t normally be a title change. In January, they did a similar deal with Tiger Mask vs. Curt Hennig for the AWA title, where Tiger Mask won by countout, but the AWA title stayed with Hennig due to AWA rules. So something happened here, and it looks like Dave finds it confusing, but not fishy. Of course, this was due to Moolah calling in the title change without permission from the office because she knew it would get Kai and Martin in trouble (the office laid into them about it) and basically killed off the tag titles because of it. Leilani Kai talks about this in her shoot interview, and she mentions Wrestlemania being the end goal the office was upset about them screwing up, but given the timing I think she might mean Summerslam.
Watch: Leilani Kai shoots on Moolah sabotaging the WWF Women’s Tag Titles
With Devil Masami out of retirement, JWP is planning a big show on July 14 with Masami main eventing against Shinobu Kandori. Shinobu Kandori, for those who don’t remember, is a former world judo champion and in her rookie year as a pro wrestler she was JWP’s top star, won the Mexican women’s title, retired, regained the title, and retired again. Her last match, as far as Dave can figure, was in the middle of last year, so she’s also coming out of retirement. At some point someone should figure out how many times Kandori has retired so we can compare her to Terry Funk.
Steve Armstrong has returned to Continental, so he and Tracy Smothers are reforming the Southern Boys. And then they’re heading out to Japan in 3 weeks, so the timing could probably be better for Continental.
Continental GM Jack Curtis is out. Coming in to take over the position is Ron West, whose most recent position was with USA Wrestling, which split off from Continental, so that’s kind of interesting.
[Memphis] Dave gives the June 13 match between Curt Hennig and Jerry Lawler 4 stars. The lighting was bad on the tape that aired, so they’ve had to go back to editing for it, but Dave was told that it came off a lot better live than on tv. From what Dave saw, though, it was a great brawl.
[Bob] “Holly is kind of green, but tries to work like Bret Hart.” He’s working the Southern territories, Continental and Memphis mostly.
AWA billed their June 12 Las Vegas tv taping as “The Night of the Champions” and in true AWA fashion most of the advertised main events didn’t happen. They drew 750 fans and the card was reportedly worse than the one Dave went to in May. Medusa Miceli retained the AWA Women’s title in a 10 minute draw against Farmer’s Daughter Brandi Maye in a horrible match that fortunately only actually went 8 minutes. This set up Magnificent Mimi to challenge Madusa for the July tapings and Dave makes a vague “political reasons” statement about Mimi getting a push. Lawler’s title defense against a mystery opponent turned out to be against Soldat Ustinov. Otherwise, the scheduled Diamond and Tanaka vs. Rock & Roll Express match didn’t happen because Ricky Morton took a vacation since they’re heading back to Crockett, so they subbed in Greg Gagne for him. Gagne defended his tv title against Hennig and retained via double countout. Also, Cousin Luke debuted on these tapings as a babyface and looked so bad that when he went around to shake fans’ hands most wouldn’t do it.
With WWF in town at the beginning of July and the annual Calgary Stampede, Stampede Wrestling won’t be doing new tapings on July 1 or July 8. They seem to be taping extra stuff each week right now, so the idea seems to be they’re making a buffer for those weeks and giving the guys a little rest.
Les Thornton’s promotion running opposition to Stampede ran its first show in Calgary on June 11. They drew 200 and didn’t do much promotion, and the fans were clueless whom to cheer for and whom to boo. Most of the wrestlers were fairly green trainees, but none of the matches were bad, according to reports. Even a couple guys trained by the Harts worked the show.
So we finally have clarification on the Brick Bronsky and Brian Pillman fight. A letter recently reported that it was because Pillman and Bruce Hart were ribbing Bronsky too much but it apparently was a slow-burning resentment from a series of events that included the British Bulldogs egging Bronsky on to get in Bruce’s face because he wasn’t getting a push, which led to Bronsky punching Pillman because he reasoned he’d lose his job if he punched Bruce.
Dave has results from the Southern Championship Wrestling show during the Wrestlethon. Nothing too notable here, with the only exceptions being Jerry Blackwell (as Mr. Big) winning a handicap match against Ricky Starr and Tim Anderson that was so bad Dave gives it -2 stars, and the Tommy Rich/Eddie Gilbert match described earlier, which he gives 4 stars.
World Class has three shows this weekend in the Chicago area on June 24-26. Also Michael Hayes got a haircut and his hair’s now the same length as Kerry Von Erich’s.
A movie company is trying to raise funds for a movie called “Death Match.” They’re claiming they’ll have Ric Flair, Sgt. Slaughter, Stan Hansen, Bruiser Brody, Dusty Rhodes, Roddy Piper, and Lou Albano in it. As far as I can tell, nothing about this becomes anything.
Madusa Miceli did her photoshoot for a proposed Playboy feature. Playboy wants to get other wrestlers as well. No date has been announced, and indeed no date will be announced, and the photos will never make it into the magazine.
As for the Von Erich Penthouse story, that won’t be happening in the August issue despite the recently-released July issue’s assurance that it’ll be in the August issue. It seems to be being pushed back to the October issue. Who knew one of the longest running stories of 1988 would be the continual delay of publication of an expose on the Von Erichs in Penthouse?
A former WWF jobber named Larry Finnegan is being held on $150,000 bail on the charges of murdering Hazel Koppel. Koppel, 20, allegedly bit Finnegan while they were having sex in his moving van, and he responded by stabbing and strangling her.
That big meeting in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport between the heads of the various promotions? It led to sweet fuck all. Ken Mantell (World Class), Barry Owen (Northwest), Eddie Gilbert and David Woods (Continental, Jerry Lalwer and Jerry Jarrett (Memphis), and Mike Shields (representing Verne Gagne) all met, and the only agreement they came to was not to invade each other’s territories. They apparently said words about trying to work together too, but no concrete plans for how to do that were drawn up and it seems to have been a waste of everybody’s time.
[NWA] Clash of Champions II peaked at a 6 rating during the Dusty Rhodes and Sting vs. Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson match. That translates to about 2.66 million homes. The Atlanta Braves vs. San Francisco Giants baseball game after the Clash only got a 1.5 rating, which means that after the wrestling ended over 75% of the audience tuned out and didn’t stick around for the baseball game.
According to one of the letters this week, Wrestlemania will finally air in Australia on June 17. Talk about a delay.
Scott McGhee, who had a stroke last year and looked to be on the way to potentially reviving his career, collapsed at the beach this past week. Preliminary reports are that he suffered another stroke.