Wrestling Observer Rewinder

July 04, 1988

The big news this week is that the sale of the NWA to Turner Broadcasting System has become much more likely. There have been a lot of rumors saying otherwise, and no deal has been reached, but Turner put in a legitimate offer to buy the company. At the moment the two sides are working out the finer details, and those in the company believe a deal should be reached by the end of July. Dave’s not counting on anything until a deal is finalized, but this is the first time he’s felt more than 50% sure a deal would go through. There was some reservation on the part of David and Frances Crockett to going through with a sale, but they finally relented and gave Jim the all clear to negotiate the terms of sale.
So the big question about the NWA sale is what it means for the business structure of the company and to the wrestling product itself. It’s too early to make even educated guesses, but several in the industry think the sale may even be a mistake, that the NWA has “shot its wad, so to speak,” and that the NWA is just a sinking ship. And yeah, they’ve made a lot of bad decisions and their live gates aren’t what they should be, but Dave disagrees that they’ve shot their wad. They have enough national tv exposure and marketable stars (though they need to shuffle things a bit) to weather the storm, and access to ppv gives them a good source of income from big shows. The company has the potential to be very profitable. They just have to change their promotional philosophy to get with the times. It may take time to work out, but they can find a winning recipe. McMahon’s had to experiment and change things up in the past few years as well. So it might be rough in the early going for the NWA, but it’s probably the best thing for the industry in the long run for this sale to happen.
WWF will be holding a show in the Greensboro Coliseum on August 7. The main event will be Hogan vs. Andre, and it should sell out the Coliseum, which the NWA hasn’t done since Flair vs. Windham a few weeks after Ole Anderson turned face over a year ago. They were also highly successful in Richmond, Virginia this past weekend, another NWA stronghold, and reports suggest the WWF should be able to run shows in the new Charlotte Coliseum when it opens in the fall. WWF is making inroads in NWA territory. Moreover, these cities aren’t big enough to support two major promotions, so this is definitely a focused effort to kill the NWA’s drawing power in some of their major cities.
The WWF have managed to successfully turn the Powers of Pain into their own version of the Road Warriors, of sorts. They debuted as week ago and have had a rocket strapped to them and it’s getting over so far. Crockett claims to own the name “The Powers of Pain” and appears to be setting the stage for calling Ivan Koloff and Russian Assassin the Powers of Pain in order to confuse the issue. So yeah, this past week Warlord and Barbarian have been running through Demolition in short, fair matches, and they have Tito Santana in their corner to signal to the fans that they’re faces. Fans are hesitant at first, but get on board by the end of the match every single night. It’s weird, because otherwise Santana has been getting booed for months when Strike Force went up against Demolition, so who knows the logic there. Dave’s not sure what it says about wrestling fans, but based on reports from every arena show Dave’s heard back from, it seems that a lot of fans think the Powers of Pain actually are the Road Warriors, which is why they’re getting cheered so much. So that’s a thing.
At the tv tapings Tuesday and Wednesday night, WWF crowned a new king of wrestling: King Haku. Initial reports are that King Haku isn’t getting over at all, and the whole idea looks kind of bad on paper.
Watch: The Coronation of King Haku
Next weekend we’ve got the NWA Great American Bash in Baltimore, which ought to be the biggest money-making non-WWF show in history in this country. They’re building things up great, and Dave can’t see it being less than a major success. Fans seem absolutely certain this is the end of Ric Flair’s title reign, which is exactly the right thing you want to be promoting with this show. Based on the tv ads, it looks like only four matches are going to air on ppv: Flair vs. Luger, Arn & Tully vs. Sting & Nikita, Midnights vs. Fantastics, and the tower of doom. No word on tv about who will be in the tower of doom, which Dave thinks devalues the fact that the Road Warriors are in the match. So Baltimore is going to make a lot of money, but it remains to be seen whether that will help, hurt, or have any effect at all on the rest of the Bash tour.
Here’s the deal with what Score/FNN’s wrestling line-up looks like for July. Memphis moves to Sundays and Continental to Saturdays, but Continental is pre-empted this weekend and for the weekends of the 17th, 24th, and 31st. There’s talk of putting them on mid-week during that period, but no definitive word yet. July 3 for Memphis has Lawler vs. Kerry Von Erich in a title for title match. And on July 21 they’re going to have a two hour Jerry Lawler special showing his wins over Rick Rude, Bam Bam Bigelow, Kimala, Randy Savage, and Hulk Hogan.
World Class is taking a risk by running four shows in the Metroplex in an eight day period to combat the July 4 Great American Bash. They’ve got the Sportatorium on July 1, July 4, and July 8, and a Fort Worth Show on July 3. The cards aren’t being pushed too hard (the July 3 lineup won’t even be announced until the July 2 tv show), but Kimala will challenge for the World Class title and Kevin Von Erich challenges Terry Taylor for the Texas title in his last match for the company. They’re also going super cheap for entry fee: $5 tickets for everyone and 50 cents for all concessions, discounts on merch, and two hours of autograph signings before the show starts. That’s an effective way to hurt your competition, but Dave thinks in the long term they might be better off letting Crockett run unopposed because this might just kill the town for them. The July 1 show will be headlined by the Von Erichs defending the tag titles against King Parsons and Terry Taylor.
Just a funny moment from WCCW’s June 19 show, involving the Terry Gordy vs. Kerry Von Erich title match. They went to a time limit draw, but first had a double disqualification when Parsons and Scandor akbar came down to attack both of them until Kevin Von Erich and Michael Hayes came to make the save. This was about 18 minutes into the match (both Kerry and Gordy were bleeding by 10 minutes in, despite next to nothing happening in those ten minutes). After the ring was cleared out, Kerry took the mic and said they’d wrestle the last 15 minutes to finish out the time limit (so 18 + 15 = 60 in Von Erich math). The next 15 minutes had Gordy with the spike on Kerry for 7 straight minutes, then Kerry with the claw on Gordy for 7 straight minutes, and then a bunch of near falls for one minute.
Dave got to watch the tv shows from All Japan’s last tour. Rip Rogers was a jobber, but he got over like Rover with the gay gimmick. He might actually be the first wrestler in Japan to do that act, and little flourishes like hiding a mirror in his trunks and always combing his hair helped him. He also did great work in the ring, so showmanship and ringwork go great together.
Dave says the match where Tenryu and Hara dropped the PWF tag titles to Tsuruta and Yatsu on June 4 was good, but no match of the year candidate to him. As for the June 10 unification match with the Road Warriors, Dave gives it 3.5 stars and says Hawk impressed him a lot. There was a point where he was on the top rope but slipped and fell and the crowd started laughing, but Hawk immediately just started pounding on Yatsu outside the ring and was so vicious it shut the fans up good. Recovering from missing a move like that can be really hard and Dave’s seen a lot of wrestlers get psyched out from it and the crowd’s reaction, so major credit to Hawk.
Inoki’s comeback to New Japan will be on August 8 for the big prime time special on TV-Asahi. He still wants Hogan or Backlund for his opponent, but that’s super unlikely and Dave thinks he’ll wind up going against the IWGP champion.
Dave’s not sure, but he’s heard the August 8 New Japan show might not wind up in Sumo Hall but rather in Yokohama, about an hour out of Tokyo. Apparently Sumo Hall got upset about their decision to re-allow pro wrestling leaking out. Tokyo Sports broke the news before the deal was completed. So they’re canceling the plan, and that means New Japan is losing out on several hundred thousand dollars of potential profit by having to go to Yokohama rather than Sumo Hall.
New Japan put the Fujinami/Vader match from May 8 on their May 27 tv show. Dave watched it, and gives it 4 stars and says that Fujinami worked a miracle. Vader’s improved tremendously, but this was still a great effort by both guys. They also showed part of the match where Owen Hart won the jr. title from Hiroshi Hase and what they showed was super. Dave talks about some of the really cool moves Owen does, but there’s a tear in the paper that this was scanned from, so I have no idea what he’s trying to describe. Suffice it to say, Owen Hart innovated the move that Heath Slater used to beat Curt Hawkins at Great Balls of Fire.
UWF announced their August 13 card. Maeda will fight a karate champion, name to be announced, though they are saying he’s Dutch. Caser Takeshi, the most famous martial arts champion in Japan, will face a former Thai muay thai champion named Paryhap Premchai. Nobuhiko Takada will wrestle Kazuo Yamazaki, with the winner facing Maeda in September. Also on the card will be Norman Smiley vs. Yoji Anjo and Shigeo Miyato vs. Tetsu Nakano, and two more martial arts matches.
Gong Magazine published a letter from Steve Williams in their June 30 issue. It’s one part call-out for a potential match with Maeda, one part establishing character motivation, and one part Jim Ross wet dream. Williams has the same kind of appeal as Maeda, so there’s no doubt they’d go over like gangbusters with UWF’s target audience. The letter reads:
Dear all my Japanese fans: I am looking forward to go to Japan again. However, I have a very important thing to do right now and that is to prove myself against the best World champion nowadays--Ric Flair. I think he is good enough to spend my time on. Also, I promise to all of you that I’ll go to Japan as soon as possible. I want to wrestle Choshu, Fujinami and Inoki again. However, I heard that Maeda left New Japan. I wonder why he never came after me like he did to Choshu. I think it’s because he’s a smart man. I enjoy teasing him in the ring all the time. Please tell Maeda about it. I am ready anytime, and I think most smart fans know that I am tougher. But let me show all the people.
Southern Championship Wrestling has a new champion: Chris Adams.
Dave has a lot of not kind things to say about Tommy Rich. He’s 32 but he looks 42, he’s out of shape, his promos are gibberish, and he’s just not cut out to be a babyface. Tell us how you really feel, Dave.
Over in USA Wrestling, Hector Guerrero and Ricky Morton are feuding after Guerrero threw hot sauce in Morton’s face. I’m getting flash forwards to Jericho and Kane.
[Stampede] Chris Benoit regained the Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Title on June 17, beating Johnny Smith under strange circumstances. According to two reports Dave got, this wasn’t supposed to happen and if you don’t watch Stampede, it’s a bit involved to explain. And as we all know, everyone reading these rewinds is super up to speed on everything about Stampede. Okay, so Dave explains that they have two regular refs. Jurgen Hermann isn’t really a heel ref, but more of a bumbling ref. The other ref is usually a Hart brother, Wayne or, more recently, Dean, whose deal isn’t that he’s a face ref, but the competent one. So on June 17, Jurgen was supposed to referee the match, but Dean wound up doing it because Jurgen was unable to be there for reasons unrelated to the business. So the finish involved a foreign object spot where Smith’s manager threw it in, but Benoit got to it and used it, while the referee was apparently supposed to figure it out and reverse the decision but that part didn’t happen. So… uh, more on that in the future maybe?
The big thing in Memphis this weekend was Jeff Jarrett’s return from a “broken arm.” He came out in a sling and did an interview where Robert Fuller and the Stud Stable came out to attack him. Jerry Jarrett came out and ordered the heels away because of Jeff’s injury, so they attacked Jerry and Jeff had to make the save using his cast. Later on Jerry did an interview and talked about how he knew Robert’s father and that for him to have turned out how he has makes him a “bastard child” and he wonders “who the milkman was.” I wanted to make a joke about most of this subreddit being too young to know what a milkman was, but fuck it, I honestly couldn’t come up with anything good but I’ll at least tell you I tried because there’s no sense crying over spilled milk.
Lawler, as AWA champ, will be doing some matches in Continental this week against Austin Idol and Eddie Gilbert. Dave gives Lawler credit for raising the prestige of the AWA title by defending it around the remaining territories as much as he has.
Continental has also really started turning around of late. Dave watched the show they put on tv on June 19 and is amazed that they managed to get both Willie B. Hert and Lord Humongous over as faces. This Lord Humongous is our beloved Sid, and he’s pretty green, but you can certainly expect him in WWF in the future. Dave hopes he gets at least two more years under his belt first so he can learn something, but he’s already better than Warrior.
Billy Jack Haynes’ OWF is looking to be in rough shape. Haynes dropped the belt to Rip Oliver on June 4, but he lost it a week later to Blackstudd Williams, and though it’s unconfirmed to Dave, the office’s telephone hotline says Williams dropped it to Haynes three days later. Hotshotting the title, a bunch of guys quitting, shows getting canceled, crowds under 400. It’s not a good spot to be in.
Chris Adams managed to hold onto a wrestling ring long enough to run a set of shows over the past week. He had shows in Royce City and Amarillo, Texas and at Dogpatch, USA (which Dave believes is an amusement park in Arkansas). At the Royce City show the big news was Bruiser Brody beat Jeep Swenson in a wild brawl that saw Brody bust up Swenson’s nose and jaw with some stiff kicks to the face.
Here, enjoy a short documentary called Dogpatch USA - the Life and Death of a Theme Park
Speaking of Swenson, he's in Atlanta now with Stan Hansen, because both are involved in the Hulk Hogan movie. Dave guesses this means they’re both doing jobs for Hogan in the movie, and Dave wonders how seriously wrestling fans will take it. This just makes me wonder if Dave understands that wrestling fans understand that movies are fiction. Anyway, they’re filming all the wrestling scenes over an 8 hour film day on July 16 at Alexander Coliseum. Dave supposes Swenson and Hansen might be angling for a job with WWF if they impress in filming. Cheekily, Dave says Hogan might have his best match of the year with Hansen, considering all the ways they can edit it. It’s not gonna be Randy Orton vs. Edge good, though. We all know that.
Jerry Lawler is scheduled to be at the July 16 taping for AWA in Las Vegas. That’s the same day he’s supposed to wrestle Kerry Von Erich in a title for title match in Kansas City, and Dave notes that this is why long-term cooperation between AWA and WCCW (or any other group that tries to work with the AWA) is doomed.
The Morton Downey Jr. show on westling was taped and probably has aired by the time readers get this issue. It was a shitshow, which apparently means it was so far above his usual that it was among his best ever. Watch for yourself.
Watch: The Morton Downey Jr. Show
In case you were wondering about Fabulous Ladies Appearing in International Rings (FLAIR), they’re already defunct. Turns out drawing only 50 fans isn’t enough to make it work.
The main stars (and only decent workers) of a Michigan Championship Wrestling show on June 11 were the Fantastics - Al Snow and Mickey Doyle. As Mick Foley might joke, that’s the first and last time Al Snow was ever considered the main star of a show. Snow and Doyle are also wrestling under the name The Sensationals in other areas.
A couple of old-time wrestling deaths. Gentleman Saul Weingeroff, who managed the Von Brauners back in the day, died at home on March 14 of complications following a stroke at the age of 72. Mike Clancy, a former NWA jr. heavyweight champion, died on June 11.
Apparently Lia Maivia has maybe not the greatest reputation for being a successful promoter, because she ran a show in Hawaii on June 19 that Dave calls “another of her dynamic disasters.” The show drew under 150, and based on the fact that Lars Anderson’s son was in the main event, it appears Lia and Lars have mended fences.
A federal grand jury indicted Karl Kenert of West Lafayette, Indiana of fraudulently promoting pro wrestling. He claimed to be bringing a show featuring Ric Flair, Ron Garvin, and other NWA wrestlers to Camp Lejeune and sold advance tickets, pocketing $3,500 in sales. This was something he told the camp’s recreation director he would arrange, but according to the indictment he never even contacted the NWA or the wrestlers. He faces up to 20 years in prison and $750,000 in fines if convicted.
Dave responds to a letter critical of Bruno Sammartino’s interview, which argues that Bruno killed attendance in the Pittsburgh area in the late 60s. Dave says while it’s true that New York was nearly dead in the late 60s and Bruno wasn’t selling out every show, Bruno was still the greatest draw in the history of the Northeast. Hogan’s a great draw, but his sellout rate is significantly less than Bruno’s second reign, which is even more impressive for Bruno given he was appearing monthly in every major arena in the region, while Hogan does them only a couple times a year. Dave does grant the writer that there are too many variables at play to make a 1:1 comparison between live crowds in 1988 and live crowds in earlier eras. Dave concludes by asking if Bruno is responsible for the decline in attendance in the late 60s, isn’t he then also responsible for the big crowds in 1970?
Other letters concern whether Dave puts too much of his own opinion in the newsletter. They broadly agree that a good newsletter doesn’t focus solely on results, but that opinions make it interesting and provide wrestling fans with a forum for connecting and trading tapes with other fans and the chance to read some “literate opinions on a sport I enjoy but can find few local fans to talk about with,” as one writer puts it. Another agrees broadly, but does note that Dave may show a bit too much bias toward some of his favorites and that his bias does influence the readership. The writer takes the case of Owen Hart as an example and talks about the heaps of praise Dave puts upon him, but argues he’s unlikely to ever be a major superstar given the era he’s in where gimmickry and size are everything. He’s really skilled, but the writer doesn’t think he has the legitimate collegiate background that would get him over despite his size or lack of gimmick. Dave’s response to this criticism is to note that Owen does have a collegiate background and he got through all four years of college without ever getting pinned, which lets him completely sidestep the point.
Last letter I’ll pull from, just because it again furthers one of our biggest discoveries in these rewinds that the 80s are no different from today, we get an interesting critique of people caring too much about Meltzer and wrestling at all. So like, chill, y’all. This is a hobby, like reading books or watching movies. Enjoy it, criticize it as art, but don’t forget your relationship to it. The letter reads:
The lines are drawn. Is Meltzer a babyface or a heel? These letters are really cracking me up. How can they be serious? With all the work you do, you can say whatever you want to. People should open their eyes and learn from others.
Chuck Shepherd was exactly right with his comments on Dusty Rhodes. That’s why I like Dusty so much. He is true Americana regardless of what anyone else says. When I go to wrestling, I don’t see any Lex Lugers in the crowd, but I see a lot of Dusty Rhodes [sic] with David Allan Coe T-shirts. I’m amazed how 90 percent of your letter writers criticize the business as if they were part of the business. It’s embarrassing to read some of those self righteous quotes from people who don’t even know anyone in the business.
I go to the matches with my wife, drink beer, b.s. with my friends and watch the matches. It’s a great Saturday night out. I could care less who holds the title. Some of your readers seem like wrestling would be a religious experience.
NWA's approach to promotion is a mess. On Worldwide, Tony Schiavone is plugging one lineup for the July 7 Bash, while on NWA Pro Jim Ross was plugging a completely different lineup. And this is the second week in a row. So fans now have no idea if they’re getting an 8-man cage match or a War Games match.
Kevin Sullivan’s interview on the TBS show this week makes Dave think he knows what the finish will be to the triple tower of doom at the Bash ppv. He says unless they film a big angle beforehand, listen closely and you should hear a few key phrases and the idea should become obvious.
WWF’s June 24 Madison Square Garden drew 18,300 for DiBiase vs. Savage in a cage match. Word is it was a great match. Also, a fan tried to attack Virgil and climbed the cage.
At the latest Wrestling Challenge taping, they had the Powers of Pain squash Demolition in a 4 minute dark match. Other notables from recent tapings saw King Haku getting no reaction, a Brother Love segment with Jake and Cheryl Roberts, Savage vs. DiBiase, and some fans with signs mocking the faces that the WWF had confiscated lest the tv audience see that not everyone loves Warrior.