Wrestling Observer Rewinder

September 05, 1988

By the time Dave finishes typing this issue, Summerslam will be in the books. Dave says he’s holding space somewhere in the issue to cover it. Even though he’s writing the beginning of this issue on Sunday night and Summerslam is happening on Monday night, he notes that the past week’s tv tapings have cemented some of what will happen, so he “can already report that the Anabolic Warrior beat Honkytonk Man for the Intercontinental title tomorrow night as I’m writing this” (Rewinder note I've been correcting the spelling of Honkytonk Man’s name so it wouldn’t snag in the subreddit’s filter and especially made sure to do so with this quote, since Dave has an 'e' before the 'y' and that gets flagged by reddit as a slur for some reason). Also, what a weird and wacky fucking sentence that is. But, even though Summerslam is done by the time this issue goes to press, too much stuff winds up happening and there’s not room for it, so we’ll get the report on Summerslam next week.
No news on the Turner/NWA negotiations. Apparently things were closer to completion last week than they are now, somehow, and that appears to be in part because a bunch of people are trying to get into the mix of running the show once the sale goes through. Everyone assumes Dusty will keep the book, but it’s assumed that Turner will be crunching numbers and evaluating him and will force him out of the position if he doesn’t produce. You know, like an actual business does.
More info on the Steve Williams drug bust reported last week: spoilers, he had a whole lot more drugs than was initially reported. He was apparently detained on January 4 by Customs agents with various drugs hidden in his clothing and luggage. In addition to the cocaine, marijuana, and mushrooms mentioned last week, they apparently found barbiturates, more marijuana, 241 steroid tabletes, and 28 mL of injectable steroids. He was released on an unsecured $25,000 bond (meaning he didn’t have to post bond, but if he misses his court date he’ll be compelled to pay it) and he’s very unlikely to make his October tour in Japan. If convicted, Williams faces up to 18 months in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, though the court has already said they plan to drop the charge of intent to distribute and he’ll wind up with a misdemeanor possession charge, which would only carry a maximum penalty of a year in prison. And since it’s his first offense, it’s unlikely he’ll face any prison time at all. Must be nice being able to be given that much benefit of the doubt.
WWF will be doing a double taping of Wrestling Challenge followed by Saturday Night’s Main Event in LA on November 16. They also have a Superstars taping the 15th at the Cow Palace, but they may swap that with Wrestling Challenge for aesthetics.
Regarding the Sugar Ray Leonard fight, Dave has some more details on WWF’s involvement. The fight is scheduled for November 7, with Donnie Lalonde as Leonard’s opponent for both the WBC lightheavyweight and super-middleweight championships, and WWF has the closed-circuit and ppv promotion rights. WWF apparently paid somewhere in the range of $8-9 million, possibly as high as $15 million if some reports are to be believed, though sources from the wrestling business say it was closer to $5 million. Boxing experts think the show will bomb, but in boxing promoters sell the closed-circuit rights to local promoters for a guaranteed amount, while the local promoters then have to sell enough tickets to recoup that, so WWF is probably still in an advantageous position, as the recent Tyson/Spinks fight saw the local promoters lose money while the ppv buys were huge. Further proof to Dave that for both boxing and wrestling, closed-circuit is not the way forward and ppv is the future. If WWF can sell the show on closed-circuit to local promoters, they stand to make money well even if the fight is a bomb. If they paid $9 million (and Dave’s not sure he believes they paid that much), then the fight will probably need to hit 10 million ppv buys to profit, which is far from certain. But that’s assuming they paid $9 million and not $5 million.
Dave still has things to say about Jim Wilson and Eddie Mansfield after last week, because taking up half of the issue wasn’t enough, I guess. He spends a while covering the basics of Jim Wilson’s career, including how he came into the business as one of many football players who worked in wrestling during the off-season, which was common back in the day before the NFL cracked down on that (they often made more money wrestling than playing football back then, too, and Dave cites Ernie Ladd claiming he doubled his income by becoming a wrestler, and when he left football he was the highest paid lineman in the AFL). Anyway, onto Mansfield and Wilson’s attempt to regulate pro wrestling in Georgia. In 1984, wrestling was the biggest thing on cable, even as Georgia Championship Wrestling was falling from prominence. Even so, Wilson lobbied a state legislator to submit a bill to establish a state wrestling commission that would guarantee health insurance for wrestlers, have an independent agent count gate totals rather than promoters, worker’s comp, and guarantee that wrestlers received a percentage of the gate. Several ex-wrestlers testified in the hearings on the bill, but it wound up dead because the Georgia legislature didn’t take wrestling seriously enough to be worth regulating and because Ole Anderson hired former governor Carl Sanders to lobby for the bill’s death both times it came up. It also didn’t help that one of Wilson’s key witnesses, Claude “Thunderbolt” Patterson, a former star in the area changed his story completely after Ole Anderson and Jim Crockett offered him a job with Championship Wrestling from Georgia. When he got phased out again, he changed his views again. According to contemporary coverage on the story, Wilson didn’t help himself by quoting exaggerated figures and overstating issues to the point of unbelievability, even accusing a bunch of people including former president Jimmy Carter and Ted Turner of conspiring to allow promoters to defraud wrestlers. Apparently he’s still exaggerating. At the recent Democratic National Convention he and Thunderbolt Patterson were handing out leaflets claiming that racism in wrestling (which Dave acknowledges is definitely an issue and was surely even more of one in Patterson’s heyday, and he submits that any examination of the roles minority wrestlers have been forced to play will 100% prove racism) and that Black wrestlers generate 90% of the revenue but only receive 5% of the payoffs. 90% might be a bit of an overexaggeration if we’re being honest. Dave doesn’t say anything about the 5%, but I’m comfortable saying that while I don’t know of the veracity of that number, I would bet every cent I have that Black wrestlers were vastly underpaid in comparison to their role in bringing in revenue.
So that’s the Jim Wilson bit, but Dave also has stuff to say about Eddie Mansfield, though mercifully this is short. Mansfield was a proponent of Wilson’s bill. He also appeared on the 20/20 expose on wrestling, which gave him a good deal of fame, but he apparently thought the show would hurt the business while simultaneously getting him exposure and book and movie deals. But that’s not the case and he’s not even involved in wrestling now. Instead, he’s a small-time actor in New York now. Anyway, Dave’s overall take on the commission idea Mansfield and Wilson promoted is that the bill’s theoretical purpose sounds good, because all commissions should be designed to improve commissions for wrestlers. In practice, though, they just tax the wrestling industry to prop up boxing regulation, since boxing doesn’t generate enough revenue by itself to pay for its own regulation. So while Dave wants wrestlers to have health insurance, worker’s comp, and even independent oversight of their take from gate revenues because fraud in that area is something that occasionally happens, he’s not sure a commission is how you get that.
Stampede’s August 20 show in Edmonton had a match between Cowboy Long and Sky Low Low. Sky Low Low is a name that’s been used by multiple wrestlers, but Dave is pretty sure this was the original, who must be pushing 70 by now. 60, not 70, Dave, but I can forgive not knowing when you don’t have Wikipedia to consult.
Memphis has a big card set for September 19 which will be an ESPN taping featuring AWA guys and World Class guys. The show is going to be called Renegade Mayhem.
Deep South and Southern Championship Wrestling are doing very poorly at gates. The Georgia independent scene is basically on the verge of collapse, and over in Southern Buck Robley and Jerry Blackwell had a falling out, so Robley is out as booker. Tommy Rich and Blackwell are now handling the booking for Southern.
Jerry Lawler has cancelled all his upcoming dates with Continental, which has reignited the rivalry between Memphis and Continental. So, um, it seems Lawler just up and ended an AWA/CWF partnership by doing this, which I’m not sure would fly if Verne were still a competent promoter.
Generally speaking, Randy Savage’s WWF Title reign has been slipping in its drawing power, but he did have a surprisingly good gate for his defense against Dino Bravo in Montreal this past week. The Bravo defense did over $300,000. Savage’s defenses against Andre have been holding steady, but his defenses against DiBiase have stopped drawing really well. WWF’s other Canadian shows this past week all did big gates, really, which makes some sense - Summerslam won’t be available there and so they’re just putting on really strong shows and not pushing Summerslam.
Watch: Here's a clip from the Savage/Bravo match
The August 23 Superstars taping in Rhode Island sold out, and Warrior beat Honkytonk Man in a dark open challenge to kick things off and “win the title.” This let them announce Honkytonk Man as the “former champion” and Warrior as the “new champion” throughout the night, and after the taping Jack Tunney announced that since the match wasn’t signed, the title change was illegitimate and Honkytonk Man was still champion. It’s a clever way to pre-tape material for the first couple weeks of Warrior’s reign while still making Summerslam the real win. Also at the taping, Rick Rude showed off his Cheryl Roberts trunks, which Jake Roberts pulled off him to leave him in his underpants, which led to a match for Prime Time between the two that Dave thought was pretty good. Owen Hart also made his official tv debut as the Blue Blazer (this match winds up on Wrestling Challenge), but Dave thinks that’s a mistake they made in Philadelphia this past week and his real gimmick name is the “Blue Lazor.” Never let it be said that Dave is good at spelling or catching ring names the first time around. Baron Von Raschke is in as the manager for the Powers of Pain, though he’s just called “The Baron” now.
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Watch: the TV debut of the Blue Lazor Blazer
[WWF] Beefcake was announced as injured and that appears to be legit. They did an injury angle to write him off on tv that aired on August 27 where Ron Bass came out and attacked him with his shears, and they didn’t show the attack, instead saying it was too violent to show on television. Dave thought that was a pretty neat way to do the angle.
[WWF] They did the same deal of the August 24 Wrestling Challenge taping with Honkytonk Man and Warrior, only with a DQ finish. I gotta say, this sort of thing is the fun side of pre-taped events.
Contrary to rumors, One Man Gang, Greg Valentine, and Oliver Humperdink are still with the WWF. Humperdink’s managing days are probably behind him, but he’s being retained as an idea guy.
World Class cancelled its Pensacola show, but are apparently teaming with Memphis and the AWA for a show on October 30 in the Omni. Dave says this is probably going to be a disaster because even Hulk Hogan can’t draw in the Omni, but maybe a one-off with Michael Hayes can save what’s a dud on paper.
Keiji Muto is back in World Class, wrestling as SuperBlack Ninja. Gary Hart gave Muto this gimmick seven years ago, and Dave says that other than Kabuki a long time ago and Kendo Nagasaki in his early days in Florida, no ninja in wrestling has ever gotten over. And yet, for some reason it’s now become the done thing that nearly every Japanese wrestler who comes along to the U.S. is given a ninja gimmick. In fact, Nagasaki will be joining Kabuki as his ninja tag partner. Ah, the smell of pigeonholing wrestlers into specific gimmick ranges based on their race. Where would wrestling be without the racism? Somewhere better, I’d bet.
Over in Puerto Rico, they built the main event angle for their September 10 anniversary show during their awards. For Wrestler of the Year, Universal Champion Hercules Ayala got up like he was going to win, but Carlos Colón won and then introduced his wife, because behind every great man is a great woman. Well, Ayala got up, attacked her, she bled, and they suspended him and stripped him of the title, then Colón demanded the suspension be lifted and they’ll face off in a match where the ring is surrounded by fire. Not the first time the promotion has had a fire death match, but still, it sounds a bit stupid to Dave and he hopes none of the booking geniuses on the mainland steal the idea.
Watch: Carlos Colón's wife attacked, blades from being pulled down by the shoulder I guess
Francisco Flores, whose father, Dave says, became famous promoting wrestling in Mexico, is considering starting a new promotion in Puerto Rico to oppose Colón’s World Wrestling Council. Actually Francisco Flores is the father Dave is thinking of. He founded the UWA in Mexico, and that promotion was still going pretty strong at this point. Nothing becomes of this, though Hugo Savinovich will play a role in 1991 in building the first major opposition promotion in Puerto Rico, the Americas Wrestling Federation.
Dave watched All Japan’s tv show from after their latest tour started on August 20. He sees a lot of upside in Johnny Ace and thinks he could become a star both in the States and Japan, though he’s still got work to do on getting smooth with transitions.
Bruiser Brody’s death has been like Elvis Pressley’s for the Japanese sports magazines. Photos and stories on Brody are still filling magazines four weeks after he died, and his name is mentioned dozens of times a night during All Japan’s shows.
New Japan’s latest tour started on August 26 and they’re talking about bringing in former WWF stars like Paul Orndorff in the near future. Orndorff has said he doesn’t miss wrestling one bit and has no plans to ever come back. There have been rumors that Orndorff died dozens of times over the past few months, but he seems to be doing pretty well for someone who’s been at the brink so many times. He even opened up a third bowling alley, this one in Tampa, to go with the two he has in Georgia.
Dave got to watch the Inoki/Fujinami 60 minute draw and thinks it would have been a great retirement match for Inoki. Major credit to Inoki for going so long at his age and the match was good throughout, and they built it in a way that it very much looked like a passing of the torch to make Fujinami the big star going forward.
An interesting note on Akira Maeda from Dave, thanks to a match New Japan aired where Shinya Hashimoto looked to be trying to land a shoot kick on Fujinami to make a quick reputation for himself: “There is a lot of danger in Maeda’s popularity because it encourages shooting, which is the antithesis of what pro wrestling should be and encourages gaining a reputation through cheap-shots, which ruins the business in the long run.”
Japanese Wrestling Journal reported the UWF gate for August at $500,000, which Dave thinks is more realistic than what he reported. Still impressive, considering it was an outdoor stadium and it rained all day. Of course, that doesn’t matter much since it sold out so far in advance.
Chigusa Nagayo wants to tour the U.S. in October and work with every promotion that will have her. Dave thinks she might be on World Class’s October 15 show, but the issue for Nagayo will be finding worthwhile opponents. The only woman in the country who Dave can see being able to keep up is Leilani Kai, though Dave doesn’t see her working for anyone but WWF right now, even if Vince has phased out all the women except Sherri Martel and Rockin’ Robin, who get occasional matches on the D-tier touring shows.
Entertainment Tonight will do a piece on Bruno Sammartino where he’ll speak about the WWF. They wanted to use footage and talk to WWF wrestlers about Adrian Adonis, but WWF didn’t want to cooperate, proving that their policy remains that if you don’t work for them, you don’t exist, even if you’re dead. Good thing that’s relaxed a bit in more recent years.
Nord Motors filed for bankruptcy last week, which might mean John Nord will come back to pro wrestling.
Bad News Brown won $68,000 in the Canadian lottery, picking five of six numbers. One off from a cool $6 million jackpot. Still, winning $68,000 is definitely not bad news, so his name did not check out here. Other wrestlers to luck out in the lottery include former wrestler Joe Millich (won $6 million in the Missouri lottery some years back) and Keith Hart, who won $25,000 or so a few years ago.
A Current Affair has an episode on Bruiser Brody planned. Barbara Goodish declined to interview with them.
”AWA manager Diamond Dallas Page was the ring announcer for George Foreman’s recent boxing match.”
Chigusa Nagayo is hoping to work with Susan Starr or Rhonda “Monster Ripper” Sing if she can get dates in the U.S. Indeed, she will get a couple matches with Singh in Stampede in October.
The Jumping Bomb Angels may come back to the WWF in January. Nope, doesn’t happen.
Kerry Von Erich no-showed the August 19 show for Central States, where he was supposed to wrestle Kimala. Bob Geigel picked him up from the airport and drove him to his hotel, then when he came to pick Kerry up and bring him to the arena, Kerry was gone. They drew 900, 120 of which requested refunds because Kerry skipped town.
Lou Thesz has opened a wrestling school. He only has one student right now, a Yukimasa Watanabe. There is remarkably little online about him. Apparently he’s just very obscure and went by “Sad Genius”?
The latest on AWA’s attempt to do a ppv show is that nothing is certain. The date is in flux, maybe they’re going to be in Chicago, Jerry Jarrett is telling guys he’s in charge while Verne is telling others he’s in charge, and who knows how World Class fits in. The most discussed scenario is having Lawler win both belts in Memphis, then Kerry winning a rematch in Texas, and this show being the rubber match.
Dave’s got a complaint about how the NWA handled Ron Garvin quitting. On the TBS show this weekend they said Dusty beat him up and they made it out like it was an altercation outside the ring. That’s all well and good. But then they said Dusty broke his ribs and he’d be out 4-6 months, which again, if he were going to Japan or Puerto Rico, all well and good. But he’s going to the AWA and will be on tv within the month, on ESPN at that. Why make unnecessary lies that insult the intelligence of your viewers like this? What good does it do? Compared to this, WWF’s policy of ignoring guys who quit and pretending they don’t exist is far better. Hell, say Dusty beat him up and ran him out. That’s fine too. But to make up that he’s too injured to work for up to half a year when that’s going to be clearly not the case just makes no sense and only makes Dusty look like a fool when Garvin does appear on tv elsewhere, not to mention shows the AWA has in the Carolinas.
Kendall Windham is heading to World Class. If there is a logic to it, nobody knows what it is.
The NWA is the center of a rumor storm right now. Dave thinks 90% are probably completely baseless, and there might be something to the remaining 10%, but it’s just a massive storm of rumors like the AWA taking over the Carolinas, all their big stars jumping to WWF, everyone quitting, and so on. And there’s no real stopping the rumor mill until a final deal is reached or negotiations fall apart with Turner. The NWA is highly unstable right now and these rumors are one of the results.
The NWA’s August 26 Omni show drew a good crowd and a gate north of $100,000. The show itself was a bit all over the place. The Road Warriors did their no-selling on Tully and Arn and the match got virtually no heat because of it. On the other hand, the Flair/Luger match got a great response, especially with the initial announcement of Luger as champion before they pulled the rug out from under the audience with the disqualification call for the fact that Ric threw Luger over the top. Also, a lot of the audience was apparently first-time attendees, and so Flair’s usual spots felt fresh to them.
The NWA are making a concerted effort to get the Midnight Express over as faces. They did an angle on their most recent tv taping where Tully and Arn beat up Bobby Eaton in the dressing room while Stan Lane was in a match and Cornette was with him in his corner. Even so, the reaction in Greensboro was pretty mixed. Might be because Cornette’s incapable of being a babyface.
Have some promos from the September 3 NWA tv for this feud
Bruiser Brody’s death still dominates the letters. One of Frank Goodish’s friends shares anecdotes about what he was like. How he fought the immigration system to get his wife naturalized so she’d be able to visit her family back in New Zealand and be able to return to the U.S. without issue, how bought needlepoint blocks spelling out his son’s name, how he invested to provide a solid financial basis for his family, his love for Jewish delis, how he’d talk about becoming a preacher after wrestling and that “people would take one look at [his] face and know when [he] talked about sin and damnation, [he] knew what [he] was talking about, how he hated World Class’s exploitation of David Von Erich’s death and how his upset at that is why Barbara wasn’t happy about their Bruiser Brody memorial show. Most of the letters are very positive on Dave’s issue on his life, but one (written by the editor of the Ringside Bulletin, J.D. McKay Jr.) says that it was “overdoing it” to devote over 60% of an issue to his obituary, no matter how important to the business he was.
There’s also a letter by Steve Beverly, who is the editor of Matwatch (another newsletter, mostly devoted to commentary on wrestling) and a tv historian based at Auburn University. Beverly’s got something to say about a lot of recent critical letters about the Observer, and that’s that Dave doesn’t need a defense or people rallying behind him, but people need to stop calling on Dave to be a cheerleader for any specific promotion. In other words, it’s not the role of someone covering an industry to propagandize for that industry or a particular company involved in that industry. He even says that if he were still a tv news executive, he’d try to hire Dave as a mainstream journalist because he’s “as thorough and investigative as any reporter” who ever worked for him. That’s a high compliment, but man, it seems like Dave’s gotten so in the bubble today that this just doesn’t ring true of him anymore a lot of the time. Don’t fall in love with your sources, people.
Finally, we’re getting closer to award voting, so Dave covers some of the big awards and notes favorites. For Wrestler of the Year, Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Tatsumi Fujinami, Ted DiBiase, Eddie Gilbert, and Owen Hart have to be considered favorites, each for different reasons. Owen’s spectacular, DiBiase is arguably the best worker on Earth and has been high profile all year, Savage is hugely popular, Flair is Flair, Fujinami’s a fantastic work and hugely influential, and Gilbert has single-handedly saved Continental from dying and made it hot. And yet, most people Dave’s talked to think the nod ought to go to Maeda. For Most Overrated (which means most overpushed commensurate to their ability and marketability), obvious picks include Kevin Von Erich and Dusty Rhodes, since they book themselves despite fading ability; Beefcake and Honkytonk Man, who have had ludicrously sustained pushes for no real reason; Warrior, well, still hasn’t really even learned the basics. Dave’s top three picks are Dusty, Kevin, and Warrior. Dave thinks Steve Williams is the favorite for Strongest Wrestler (which thankfully just isn’t an award anymore, but was meant back in the day to be for the wrestler who displayed the most strength in the context of a match). Finally, in the category of Most Embarrassing Wrestler, you might expect Dave to pick Warrior. And Warrior’s embarrassing, but he doesn’t require shameful explanation to non-fan friends - they can get what he’s about because as bad as he is, he does have clear appeal. Dusty is less explicable without familiarity with the history, but even just saying “he’s the boss” is enough that anybody will get it. George Steele won last year, and Dave still doesn’t know how you explain him to anyone in a way that doesn’t make you feel embarrassed about watching wrestling, so he’s happy to pick him in the absence of a better option, but he notes that if he actually watched AWA these days, he’d have to try and explain pushing Madusa Maceli as a world champion, and that might give George a run for his money on this award (Madusa still hasn’t gone to Japan yet, so she’s pretty damn rough at this point, for whatever that’s worth).
And we’ve reached the end of the issue without a Summerslam report. Dave says if he had included one, getting the issue together would have led to it arriving late. So next week we’ll get the report.