Wrestling Observer Rewinder

July 25, 1988

Bruiser Brody was stabbed by José González, known better by his ring name of Invader #1 (fuck Invader #1), and died early Sunday morning in a hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico. González was arrested and charged with first degree murder before being released on bond. As to the motivation, this appears to be the first time in the history of the business that business reasons have been the apparent motivation for the murder of a professional wrestler. Brody had just turned 42 in June and was one of the biggest wrestling stars in the world. The San Juan police have released no official information, and various sources have conflicting details. Yeah, this is obviously going to be an evolving situation as more information comes further and then we get to the trial, so the story will shift somewhat as things become clearer.
Near as Dave can put together at this stage, this was the known context to any issues Brody and González/the promotion may have had: Apparently, during one of Brody’s most recent tours of Puerto Rico there was an incident where Brody and promoter Carlos Colón nearly got physical with one another over a match in which Brody teamed with Rocky Johnson against the World Wrestling Council’s tag champions Kendo Nagasaki and Mr. Pogo back in January. Brody ran roughshod over the champs and didn’t let either of them get anything in due to the presence of Japanese photographers at ringside. As a leading star for Giant Baba, Brody didn’t want any photos of either Pogo or Nagasaki getting anything in on him because they worked for New Japan and weren’t even main event level talent in New Japan, so it would weaken his drawing power for Baba to have images of him getting beaten up by them printed in Japan. Anyway, fast forward to the day of the stabbing, and they scheduled Brody to wrestle Danny Spivey (who’s being pushed as a top heel in Puerto Rico) in a tournament semifinal and González, who books for the promotion, layed out what the promotion wanted in the match and an argument broke out. Up to this point, all accounts that Dave has heard agree. After this point, however, the stories diverge. The account Dave considers most reliable at this stage (a clearer picture emerges starting next week) says that González and Brody kept on arguing over the finish and Brody packed his bag and was about to walk out, when González asked for him to come back and then stabbed him twice in the liver. It took nearly an hour for an ambulance to arrive at the stadium to bring Brody to the hospital 9 minutes away, and the rest of the show went on as scheduled and González even worked his scheduled match (can we talk about how eerie and uncomfortable a similarity it is that both WWF and WWC decided to let the show go on when Owen Hart died in the ring and Bruiser Brody lay dying on the locker room floor until an ambulance could get him, and that Brody’s murder happened within a week of Owen making his debut as the Blue Blazer?). Brody died on the operating table the next morning from bile poisoning, and is survived by his wife Barbara, whom he met during a wrestling tour of Australia, and his seven-year-old son Geoffrey.
At this point, Dave provides a brief obituary for Brody, real name Frank Donald Goodish. He covers Brody’s pre-wrestling career playing football and basketball in high school, playing football at the University of Iowa (shoutout to me and Big E as UIowa alums) and West Texas State University (alma mater to Ted DiBiase, Stan Hansen, Dusty Rhodes, Tully Blanchard, Dory Funk Jr., Terry Funk, Manny Fernandez, Tito Santana, Dick Murdoch, Barry Windham, and Barry Duncum Sr.) and eventually for the NFL for the Washington football team. He then became a sportswriter and bouncer in Texas before beginning his pro wrestling career in 1973, where he was an instant attraction. Until 1976 and his stint in the WWWF, he wrestled under his real name. Vince Sr. gave him the name “Bruiser” Frank Brody and put him in main events against Bruno Sammartino, which launched him to superstar status and led to his debut for All Japan in 1979, where he was a smash hit. Some have said Brody was the last truly independent attraction in wrestling, the last remnant of a version of the industry that no longer exists, able to bring down six figures for himself without giving in and submitting to a single promoter or a demanding schedule. He had a reputation for almost never doing jobs, yet remained well respected because of his incredible ability to draw and bring a big payday for the rest of the card. As much of a hit as Brody was in the ring, he became almost legendary for his out-of-the-ring activities. His move from All Japan to New Japan in March 1985 was front page news in Japan, and in December of that year he was again the biggest story when he no-showed the big tag team tournament championship match over a dispute with Inoki over an unpaid “finder’s fee” (more detail on that next week). Inoki had promised the fee for Brody hooking him up with Fritz Von Erich for talent exchanges, and this dispute almost killed his career in Japan at the peak of his popularity. Brody’s status in Japan following that was off-and-on until last year, when he returned to All Japan as a replacement for Ric Flair and rapidly ascended once again to his status of being the most popular foreign wrestler in Japan. But that’s not going to be all for a Brody obituary. 60% of next week’s issue (and in reality 90% of the actual content) is a comprehensive overview of Bruiser Brody’s life, career, his final days, his stature within the pro wrestling industry, and the potential ramifications of his death on the pro wrestling scene. So we’ll talk about the full-length obituary next week.
A few new details have come out about the car accident that resulted in the deaths of Adrian Adonis, David McKigney, and Pat Kelly. Pat Kelly was driving the minivan and swerved off the road to avoid hitting a moose. The swerve caused them to hit a rock that threw Mike Kelly and Adonis out through the windshield. McKigney and Pat Kelly drowned in the vehicle, while Mike Kelly’s legs were badly crushed and Adonis died in the hospital. Investigators have found that Pat Kelly had a blood alcohol level of 0.06, under the Canadian legal limit of 0.08 and well under the U.S. legal limit (in 1988) of 0.10. Mike Kelly has undergone surgery to repair his legs, but it’s pretty much a given that his wrestling career is over.
UWF’s incredible popularity in Japan may very well change the nature of the business in Japan, and that has New Japan and All Japan concerned. Last week, Dave reported that the UWF sold out their August show in under 6 hours to take the largest one day gate sale in wrestling history, and a top seven overall live gate for any pro wrestling event. This popularity has gotten the attention of the Japanese media, and they’re orienting their coverage of wrestling to make UWF a major focus. Gong magazine found themselves struggling with features of All Japan and foreign talent and eventually bowed to the market and started featuring UWF more prominently, picking up sales as a result, while the daily papers that cover wrestling are still primarily featuring New Japan and All Japan, though that’s mostly because of their more frequent schedules allowing for more material to be published at a daily schedule. Baba and Inoki have made significant changes in response to this popularity. Inoki made his comeback a few weeks early on the July 16 show during a prime-time tv special, and they’ve rebuilt August 8 in Ariake Coliseum as a tournament show with the winner facing Fujinami for the IWGP title in the main event. As an additional element of heat for the show, Inoki has declared that if he doesn’t win the title he’ll retire. As for All Japan, Baba’s putting on a major show on August 29 in Budokan Hall with a series of dream matches voted on by the fans. When this was announced, it was expected by everyone that Bruiser Brody vs. Stan Hansen would be voted to be the main event. Sadly, well, you read two paragraphs up and know why it can’t happen now. Dave doesn’t know it just yet, but this event will be rebuilt from the ground up as a Bruiser Brody memorial show.
At this time, Dave still doesn’t have final numbers from the Great American Bash ppv. He’s heard two very different figures: a 1.9 buyrate and a 4 buyrate. 1.9 would be a disaster, while 4 would be in line with expectations and came to Dave in “a roundabout way from a TBS source,” while 1.9 came from a source Dave has found very trustworthy and accurate in the past and would apparently be the result of the show doing buyrates of 4 to 5 in areas where Crockett is strong, while everywhere else they did much worse with sub-1 buyrates on the west coast. Dave also notes that there are two different ways to calculate buyrate (percentage of homes out of the total subscriber base of the cable company or percentage of homes which have addressable converters, the latter calculation method being the one Dave reports from), so it’s technically possible both numbers could be correct and it’s a matter of correctly assigning number to method. The difference, financially speaking, is that Crockett could either have an unprofitable total of $3 million, or a very profitable gross of $6 million.
No news on the Turner/Crockett negotiations. Internally to the Crockett camp, it seems all disagreements have been smoothed out, so they’ll be presenting a united front when it comes time to resume negotiations.
Bam Bam Bigelow has quit WWF. Apparently it’s because WWF has made the travel schedule harder again (they’re making the wrestlers drive for any trips under 600 miles) and cutting back on payoffs. He also wasn’t being used well and he was unhappy with his direction and that his misuse kept him from getting over as much as he and WWF had expected. Dave expects he’ll strike out to Japan and may do a few dates in Continental, since he and Paul E. Dangerously have an association - even before he became a wrestler, Norm Keitzer’s Wrestling News Magazine featured the first national press on Bigelow written by one Paul Heyman.
Owen Hart has re-injured his knee and will be out of action for a few weeks. Dave thinks if he returns, he’ll come back without the hood.
Rick Rude has debuted new tights with Cheryl Roberts’ face on them at the recent tv tapings. The audacity of Rude’s character here is just amazing, and I love it. In other news from those tapings, Hogan and Savage came out unscheduled and destroyed the Brother Love set and Demolition vs. the Hart Foundation was announced for Summerslam. Terry Taylor made his debut teaming with Sam Houston, with Taylor turning heel on Houston after the match. Despite the strong start, Taylor has been jobbed out to Iron Sheik’s camel clutch every night since. He’s not the Red Rooster yet, though. Right now he’s “Terrible” Terry Taylor, and his finisher is the scorpion deathlock.
Watch: Rick Rude debuts his Cheryl Roberts tights
The July 9 Chicago Bash show saw the Road Warriors and Dusty Rhodes beat Flair, Anderson, and Blanchard to claim the vacant NWA six-man tag titles in a cage match where surprisingly nobody bled.
Dave has a question about the WarGames matches from this and last year. “Have you ever wondered how come in 19 War Games matches this year and three or so last year,” he ponders, “that in each and every match, the heels win the coinflip to gain the man-advantage situation? If you did, you are incapable of being a first-rate wrestling fan. But they ought to investigate that coin.** Well, Dave, 32 years from now you’ll get the chance to have some thoughts on the faces having the nominal advantage to start.
Crockett will be beating WWF to having the first wrestling show at the new Charlotte Coliseum, debuting in the building on August 27.
To show that the Alliance to End Hulkamania was just Hogan ripping off Dusty, recent NWA tv has been teasing a “council” made up of all the heel managers working together. And they have one goal: to rid the NWA of Dusty Rhodes. If it did end up happening (I'm honestly not sure it did and a quick search didn't help me figure that out), too bad the wrestlecrap from this wasn’t as memorable as the Doomsday Cage match or “Ah! It’s not hot!”
Mike Renfro, a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, owns a horse he named Dr. Death. Yes, the horse is named for Renfro’s favorite wrestler, Steve Williams, and it’s winning more often than he is, too.
[NWA] The Greensboro Bash on July 16 went big with a pair of excellent matches and a $100,000 gate. Dave gives ratings from two of his sources. The reporters gave the Fantastics vs. the Midnights 4/3.5 stars and the wargames match 3/4 stars.Also, the July 14 Chattanooga Bash’s wargames match got a 5 star in the report and Dave reprints that and endorses it.
Those in charge in the NWA seem to have recognized how over Sting was on the ppv, and are preparing to push him after the Bash tour concludes. The plan is to put him in a feud with Windham as a co-main to the Flair/Luger rematches.
AWA had a very successful show on July 9 in Columbus, Nebraska. Curt Hennig was scheduled to main event against Washoo McDaniel but no-showed, so they changed the main event to Ricky Rice and John Paul vs. Diamond and Tanaka, while putting McDaniel in a team with Baron Von Raschke vs. Tijo Khan and Soldat Ustinov. Other no-shows included Jerry Sags and Brad Rheingans, the latter of whom Dave didn’t even know was back in AWA.
In a first, AWA had a wrestler turn out to be available when not advertised, when Jimmy Snuka was available for the July 16 tapings in Las Vegas. Two weeks ago on tv they announced that Snuka would not be there as originally advertised due to commitments in Japan. Snuka does have Japan commitments, but they’re not until late August. AWA being AWA, they didn’t use him. As for the taping, the program advertised Snuka, Roddy Piper, and Sgt. Slaughter as coming to AWA, and Dave really doubts that Piper’s actually going to work there. Anyway, there were a couple significant happenings, none of which were supposed to happen. Medusa beat Brandi Mae and was supposed to roll her up from behind off a distraction by Curt Hennig, but it didn’t really work right. Rocky Mountain Thunder came out to Brandi’s aid, and Hennig clotheslined him off script, which got him a chewing out from Verne. The other main events for each show of the taping all ended in over the top rope disqualifications. Oh, also Rice and Paul are going by the Top Guns rather than the New Midnight Rockers. AWA might want to check what happened in the leadup to Lethal Leap Year last year before they stick with that. Next month’s card is advertising Hector, Chavo, and Mando Guerrero vs. Diamond, Tanaka, and Diamond Dallas Page.
[OWF] Billy Jack Haynes and Kevin Kelly are feuding over both the OWF title and who has the best full nelson. Yeah, that’s a storyline that’ll keep them afloat. They’ve recently lost Blackstud Williams, Rip Oliver, Ricky Santana (didn’t even last a week), Johnny Ace (for a bit, he’ll be back in August), and Steve Gatorwolf (fuck Steve Gatorwolf). Rip Oliver was the booker, so now they have Dale Gagner (our future Gagne family impersonator) and Mike Miller booking for them. And if you wanted a good sense of how much effort Haynes is putting into his promotion, he’s only working the tv tapings in Oregon City and doesn’t work the road shows. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d think a performer running a small promotion should be working every show, if for nothing else than to show the roster that you’re in it with them.
Black Bart was a last minute replacement for Bruiser Brody during a weeklong tour of Austria where he did the honors for Otto Wanz in a match for Wanz’s version of the world title on July 9. Brody had been originally scheduled to work with Wanz and do the job, but Brody worked out that Japanese press have been heavily covering Austrian wrestling because Masaharu Funaki is working there right now, and so he changed his mind and canceled his appearance because he didn’t want all the Japanese wrestling magazines featuring photos of him losing. In case you get any ideas and are going to ask in the comments, no, taking this booking wouldn’t have saved Brody’s life, because the tour didn’t overlap with his Puerto Rican dates. I checked.
Watch: Black Bart vs. Otto Wanz
[All Japan] Ashuara Hara suffered a big cut on July 5 and returned to action on July 9, but reinjured and is out for the rest of the tour. They’ve changed the July 29 tag title match to have Tatsu and Tsuruta defend against Stan Hansen and Terry Gordy instead of Tenryu and Hara as a result.
[New Japan] Inoki returned in a 6-man tag match on July 16, and it looks like he came back way too early. He teamed with Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Shiro Koshinaka to beat Cuban Assassin, Manny Fernandez, and Buzz Sawyer. Not only did Inoki not look good, but it’s reported that privately even he admitted that he was returning before he was ready because he needed to counter Maeda’s publicity.
[UWF] Maeda’s opponent for the August 13 show will be Gerald Gordeau (Dave writes Goldor), the World Karate Association superheavyweight champion in savate. His record is 55-5, with 46 knockouts.
[All Japan Women] The July 5 show saw the Crush Girls over the Fire Jets (Yumiko Hotta and Mitsuko Nishiwaki) and Bull Nakano and Dynamite Jack (the future Aja Kong) over the Jumping Bomb Angels. How far Dave’s opinion on the Angels has fallen, because he’s given them the nickname the Stationary Bomb Angels.
Another new women’s promotion is forming in Japan, to be called the NWA (Nagoya Wrestling Association). They’re aiming to do UWF style with women’s wrestling and are set to start on July 23. Given that the only other references to this promotion I can find are basically other recaps of this issue, I’m going to take a guess that this goes nowhere.
Watch: Did you guess right?
”A former WWF TV personality is suing the federation for $5 million over unauthorized use of his work without his consent in a videotape.”
Apparently NWA’s original plans before giving up on the Midnight Rider were wildly different from what we got. Tully Blanchard would have won the US title and defended it against the Midnight Rider in a mask vs. title match at the Bash ppv. Tully and Arn Anderson weren’t supposed to have been the tag champions, but that changed when they turned Windham heel without having an actual plan. After turning Windham, they put the belts on Arn and Tully, which led to them deciding that Windham would win the U.S. title tournament.
Ray Miller, a pro wrestler in Dom DeNucci’s stable, died of a heart attack following a match this past week. Miller was only 24 years old and was doing some kind of Arabian gimmick, as Dave understands it.
The first letter this week is from our graduate student in Radio and TV at Auburn University who wrote in about Wrestlemania and Clash I back in April. He praises Jim Ross extensively, offers thoughts on the matches, etc. He also offers several thoughts on production quality and where NWA has improved and where they still need to put work in. They could have done with some cuts to bits in the dressing room for interviews and showing Flair and Luger preparing for the main event, he suggests. Post-match interviews are nice too. Lots of options to avoid the dead tv time of putting up the tower of doom, where some of these things could have fit in nicely. An aerial camera in a cherrypicker or something similar could have made the tower of doom more palatable to watch. He concludes by saying he hopes Turner does buy the NWA because that’ll get some people with a great deal of experience in television production involved, and that should significantly improve the NWA’s production quality to suit the level of show they’re attempting to put on now.
The finish to the Flair/Luger match at the bash is almost universally panned in several letters this week. One points out the irony of the Maryland commission, which prohibits blading, allowing the blade for this match “just so they could exercise their pretend authority and get on television.” He’s got a great point, Sting.
The other big theme in the letters is sadness at the loss of Adrian Adonis. One writer hopes that WWF does some kind of tribute to Adonis and his career, given the fact that he and Jesse Ventura were once partners (spoiler alert: WWF will not even acknowledge Adonis’s death at all). Surprising to that same writer is that his death has gone unnoticed in the media.
Another writer observes that Dave ran down a recent AWA tv taping despite many of the wrestlers being guys Dave’s raved about in the past and sees this as an inconsistency. Skimming through, some of the other points being brought up are “AWA is a business a family relies on” so you can’t be too harsh on them, and “they never geared up for war with other promotions” so concepts like marketing and promoting are new for them, cut them some slack. At the end, the writer asks Dave if he’d take a job as a booker if given a guaranteed salary for 2-3 years.
Anyway, Dave actually responds at length to this one and addresses all the questions. The show Dave went to was terrible, and that opinion was shared by literally every other person Dave talked to, readers and wrestlers involved alike. It doesn’t matter if the performers are great performers. If they shit the bed, they shit the bed. Moving on, Dave doesn’t feel sorry for the AWA. “Most of its problems were self-inflicted, they destroyed their promotion by not treating talent fairly and more importantly, not treating fans fairly.” Dave’s never been here for falsely promoting appearances you know won’t happen, and AWA makes a routine of that. They’ve had four years to get with the times. Being unprepared may have been a reasonable excuse in 1985, but it no longer serves as an excuse for failure at this point. He points out that they market themselves as the only serious place for real wrestling, but then you’ve got Madusa, Brandi Mae, Iron Man Miller, Rocky Mountain Thunder, and a bunch of others who utterly contradict that image. His ultimate point? “If the AWA was a successful promotion, I’d be a lot more complimentary to them. They have to decide exactly what they want to be and what they can afford to be. If they can’t afford to play with the big boys, they should concentrate on being the best minor league promotion around, develop good talent and don’t run off the few bright spots like Dangerously or the Rockers that you stumble into. They have to make a commitment to a solid product, maybe push some lighter weight guys and smaller guys like Memphis and Stampede that Titan wouldn’t be as quick to steal and promote the fact they’ve got the fastest and most high flying wrestling around. More importantly, they have to get a young booker to give the wrestlers gimmicks that the young fans can relate to and try to instill a week-to-week soap opera on TV so viewers will be drawn to being regular viewers.” But the AWA? They’ve got Verne. They continue to make laughable claims about being the major leagues. The majority of their talent is either a joke, in their twilight years, or both, and most of the roster needs to go. Finally, Dave says no to being a booker and nobody should speculate that such a thing will ever happen. One reason is he has too much heat with people in the business for that to ever be offered to him. Secondly, he doesn’t believe he’d ever be able to actually effect any change anyway because the wrestlers wouldn’t take direction from an outsider. And besides, Dave’s a writer, not a booker, so who’s to say he’d even be good at it anyway, he asks. Still, DAE Dave is on the WWF payroll to provide biased reporting against the AWA?