Wrestling Observer Rewinder

September 12, 1988

Rumors have been out of control on the NWA/Turner situation. Anybody and everybody has been rumored to be jumping to WWF and even some rumors that the NWA has just folded. None of them are true. In fact, the sale still isn’t completed. It hasn’t fallen apart either. Turner is frustrated because they want to run a wrestling company and have it before they launch TNT, so either they start one on their own and the NWA loses its TBS timeslots or the Crocketts sell and the NWA becomes property of Ted Turner. They’ve even gotten feelers from Ole Anderson and Global wrestling about helping out if Turner doesn’t acquire Crockett, and if the NWA doesn’t sell, expect Turner to try and acquire their top guys anyway. It’d be a hard road for a lot of reasons, which is why just buying the NWA is their main goal. There’s no clear-cut person that Turner would put in charge of the actual wrestling booking, but it’s all gonna be under the management of Jack Petrick. Dusty might stay. He might go. Dave guesses he’ll stay long enough to be evaluated and that will determine if he ultimately stays or goes. Ultimately, the Crocketts aren’t succeeding at getting national ppv sales, and that’s where Turner really will be able to help them - they need to make inroads into the New York and Los Angeles markets.
New Japan has brought Hisashi Shinma back. If you don’t know his name, he’s well regarded as one of the best creative minds in wrestling. Dave says that many of Vince’s successes have been due to importing some of Shinma’s ideas to the United States. He started New Japan’s emphasis on junior heavyweights, created Tiger Mask, started the three-way faction warfare focus New Japan’s main events were big on in the early 80s which put the focus on Japanese wrestlers facing each other rather than always having the main event be a Japanese wrestler vs. a U.S. wrestler. He made Inoki a national hero with his gimmick of going against and beating legit fighters, which almost killed Inoki’s drawing power and severely hurt New Japan when Muhammad Ali refused to do the job for Inoki. In 1983, he got forced out when Satoru Sayama led a revolt against management because of how Inoki was using wrestlers’ income to subsidize his business losses in Brazil. He founded the original UWF and even got Sayama over there, but he ultimately got kicked out when Sayama made an ultimatum. We’ll see how long he stays and if he’s able to make a difference to New Japan against Maeda and UWF.
SummerSlam is in the books, and Dave’s unscientific poll of readers shows that it was a bad show to both people in the industry (92.6%) and those with no industry ties (85.9%). Dave looks at other ppv wrestling shows that haven’t been great. Starrcade had technical issues, but the workrate helped make up for that. Bunkhouse Stampede had too few matches and booking problems, but good action. Wrestlemania IV was overlong and the matches weren’t great, but Ventura is a world class announcer and the show looked like a major league supercard. Summerslam had bad workrate, bad matches, bad announcing from Billy Graham, and had an underwhelming card. In fact, the matches being bad wasn’t even the biggest problem. The card itself was so bad that you couldn’t expect a good show at all and they didn’t even deliver a major moment. They spent 30 minutes hyping up the Leonard fight and nobody paid to see them spend so much time hyping it. And the announcing was really bad because while Monsoon can work with a good foil, Vince is annoying but gets his points across, and Heenan is bearable even if his humor isn’t fresh, they can all work well with Ventura holding things together. Instead, Billy Graham was there and he has no business in that role. Also, the quality of the replays during the broadcast was way below WWF’s usual standard.
Dave also wants to address the biggest complaint he's seen about the finish to the main event before he gets into the card. In short, he says that the finish was sexist, but they advertised it in advance, so if you have a problem with that you shouldn’t have watched the show. Cutting off Dave for a moment here, yeah, we can talk about whether wrestling is a nuanced medium of entertainment, but WWF/WWE markets itself as for children and while children are not capable of articulating complex analyses of sexism, they are very capable of internalizing sexism they pick up from the media they consume, especially when it involves someone presented to them as a role model. The issue, as Dave sees it, is that parents ordered the show and got upset at the finish and they should have known better. Don't like, don't watch, basically. But Dave is managing to miss the point that's right in front of him. The real issue is that WWF marketed a show to kids and then proceeded to have their biggest female role model take off her clothes to secure success for her team and frame that without any nuance or assurance that this was aberrant on her part and not role model behavior. Here’s what Dave says specifically, full context:
There is one more complaint I have to address because I heard a lot of it, but while I understand it, I don’t really find it valid. That is the finish of the main event. A lot of people, particularly those with young daughters, were really upset because of Elizabeth, as a role model, taking off her skirt at the finish. I understand the point, because it was a very sexist finish to be sure, and also a very ludicrous one for other reasons. I understand the implication is that the most important thing a woman can do is take off her dress to get attention. However, they advertised that finish on the TV show that weekend. They told you what they were going to do. If you didn’t like it, you didn’t have to order it. While even wrestling should have some limitations, it is not promoted in a manner in which its characters should be examined that closely for strict moralistic fiber.
Wrapping up, Dave talks about the card. The Bulldogs vs. the Rougeaus were a decent opener, 2.5 stars and the highest rating outside the main event. Badnews Brown vs. Ken Patera wasn’t terrible, but Patera is too old and tired these days. Rude vs. JYD was bad, but the run-in by Jake Roberts kept it from going to negative stars. Powers of Pain vs. the Bolsheviks had no heat and any hope of them getting over seems to have faded. Jim Duggan was the guest on the Brother Love show, as someone “who has never appeared in Madison Square Garden before” which sets the expected memory span of WWF fans at about five weeks, since he main evented their July 25 MSG show. Warrior blew up in 13 seconds and Dave makes a really weird comment about steroids: Warrior blew up “so bad I thought it would be the first case of a man giving birth (I really am believing it’s possible, all those artificial male hormones makes the body produce its own female hormones--honest).” I’ll just say trans women wish it were that easy, Dave. Sugar Ray Leonard hype was overdone. Dino Bravo vs. Don Muraco was so slow and so low-action it’s a dud. Demolition and the Hart Foundation saved their match from being a dud with a really well-done last minute and a half. Bossman vs. Koko B. Ware was the best squash of the show. Roberts vs. Hercules was well-executed but slow and dull. Somehow, the main event was the best overall on the card at 2.75 stars of an acceptable but unspectacular match that gives us just enough in the celebration to hint at Hogan and Savage facing off at Wrestlemania. The match did kind of function as a squash of DiBiase, and Dave is surprised they just squashed him and didn’t do anything to keep heat on him (like split up with Virgil there by kicking him to the curb) so that fans would have something to think of him at the end other than him being squashed. Overall, a pretty dull show.
Watch: the Mega Powers vs. the Mega Bucks
Watch: Ultimate Warrior vs. Honkytonk Man
Dave got an advance copy of the Penthouse issue with the Von Erich story, and it’s the best researched piece on wrestling he’s read in any national media. He says the original article, before it got edited and delayed was even better, but this is still excellent. What got removed was way more damaging to the myth of the Von Erichs than what was left in, so Fritz, Kevin, and Kerry should all feel relieved.
Read: The Von Erich Penthouse story
Dave’s hoping for Summerslam buyrate info next week. WWF was projecting around 6%, which would translate to around $8-9 million gross and approximately $3 million for WWF’s take, which does give a sense of how hard it will be for WWF to make back their money on the promotion rights for Sugar Ray Leonard, which itself might make selling Survivor Series harder too due to how close the two are to each other.
Variety Magazine will be covering WWF and NWA ratings again. They won’t be putting them in with single-show packages like Wheel of Fortune or Oprah, though, which was part of what made wrestling seem hotter than it actually was. In their return, WWF’s syndicated package had a 9.4 for the week of August 7 while the NWA had a 6.1, both lower than their last reported numbers, though the decline is at least partly due to the summer slump, though NWA’s numbers are too low for that to account for most of it.
All Japan’s Bruiser Brody Memorial Show had both Brody’s wife and son as special guests and drew the biggest gate for All Japan of any show since December 1978. Given ticket prices, this show probably has the sixth largest live gate in wrestling history.
Plans subject to change, especially if the sale goes through, but NWA’s Starrcade is currently expected to be a weeklong event. Apparently the idea is to have five shows in five big cities, with no ppv or closed circuit, running from Wednesday-Sunday of Thanksgiving week. The NWA still has a ppv set for December 26, and it appears they don’t want to undercut that by putting Starrcade on ppv. They also have another Clash of the Champions on December 7, so there’s that to consider too.
In All Japan Women, the Lioness Asuka vs. Chigusa Nagayo world title match on August 25 ended with a vacant title. Asuka won the match via referee stoppage due to an “arm injury” to Nagayo, but she refused to accept the championship and they’re planning a rematch, probably for November, to decide the champion. I’m linking the match below. If you watch any match linked in the rewinds for 1988, watch this one.
Watch: Lioness Asuka vs. Chigusa Nagayo, August 25, 1988
Speaking of Chigusa Nagayo, she’s trying really hard to get booked in the U.S. for October, even asking for only $75 as an appearance fee, and she’s getting no bites. She’s trying to build some tv and magazine publicity around this tour by getting with as many promotions as possible, but Dave’s just not sure how many bookings she’ll be able to get, realistically. This is the state of women’s wrestling in the states, where one of the all-time, absolute best in Japan (and one of the best in the world regardless of gender, really) struggles to get bookings because American wrestling doesn’t see value in women, meaning there are only a tiny handful of women like Leilani Kai, Susan Starr, and Debbie Combs who could even hang with her to any degree.
Baseball Magazine Sha in Japan came out with its mid-year reader awards. The top five for Wrestler of the Mid-Year were Tatsumi Fujinami, Akira Maeda, Genichiro Tenryu, Riki Choshu, and Chigusa Nagayo. Like with promotions in Japan, women’s wrestling has its own set of magazines dedicated to their coverage and the men’s wrestling magazines rarely touch on them, so Nagayo’s appearance on this list is further testament to her incredible appeal. Maeda won most popular, Brody won best foreigner, winning nearly double the votes that Vader did (and Owen Hart edged out Stan Hansen for third place on that, while Norman Smiley was a surprise winner for fifth place).
[Memphis] Austin Idol let the promotion know last Thursday he wouldn’t be there for this past Monday’s show, but they promoted him anyway. They knew he wasn’t going to be there, so they flew Buddy Landel in from Puerto Rico, all while promoting Idol. The main event wound up being Tommy Rich and Landel vs. Lawler and Kerry Von Erich, with Rich and Landel getting disqualified for cuffing Lawler to the corner and piledriving Von Erich on a chair. No excuse for such blatant lying to the fans, Dave says.
[NWA] Jimmy Garvin needs knee surgery, so they wrote him off with Kevin Sullivan breaking his leg with a pair of bricks.
NWA’s debut show at the new Charlotte Coliseum drew 16,000 fans. Clearly, Crockett country knows what they want and it’s the NWA’s style.
Over in Southern Championship Wrestling in Georgia, Tommy Rich has finally turned heel after a decade as a babyface. He made his turn on August 28. He lost a popularity contest to Scott Armstrong, and later in the night wrestled Joel Deaton in a match where the winner got to give 10 lashes to the loser. He hemmed and hawed and acted like he wasn’t going to do it and asked the fans if they really wanted him to, and when they told him they wanted it, he proceeded to whip Armstrong, who was at the commentary desk.
Tommy Rich won’t be in Continental’s Road-to-Birmingham tournament and will be replaced by Austin Idol. Fallout from the feud between Continental and Memphis, and Eddie Gilbert blasted Rich on tv and Rich will not be coming back.
Continental definitely needs someone in the office whose sole job is to handle tv scheduling. Their Chattanooga debut was pre-empted and wound up airing at 2 am locally, while their August 29 tv taping in Birmingham got canceled due to low turnout, which is partly because tv that week was also pre-empted, so there was no push in the local tv. These things happen, but it’d definitely help them out to have someone who can focus on managing these things and keeping tabs on when this happens. The taping in Birmingham was moved to September 4 in Montgomery, which drew a near sellout.
In a display of Dave’s complete inability to transcribe anything from another language at all, the wrestler Puño De Hierro #1 (translation: Iron Fist #1) or, as Dave writes, “Tuno DeHierro,” died this past week. De Hierro, real name Edwin Vargas, was a big star in the Dominican Republic with his partner Puño De Hierro #2 (better known as former WWF jobber Frankie Williams), where they were a top tag team. He also wrestled in Puerto Rico, where a young Invader #1 (fuck Invader #1) cribbed his mask style and gimmick to achieve success in Puerto Rico.
After the folding of the OWF in Oregon, there was noise about some of the wrestlers starting something up for themselves, but that appears not to be happening. Don't worry. Another entirely unrelated effort to compete with Don Owen comes up next week.
Dustin Runnels, the 18-year old son of Dusty Rhodes, will be making his pro debut for Gordon Solie and Mike Graham’s Florida Championship Wrestling as Dustin Rhodes. He’s 6’4” and 245 lbs, and his trainer Scandor Akbar speaks really highly of his potential. Credit to Dusty for not bringing him in and pushing him right off the bat.
Bruno Sammartino will be inducted into the Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame in January.
Bam Bam Bigelow won a fishing contest in New Jersey and won $4,500.
Global Wrestling is doing an angle claiming that Reverend Johnson bought the show and it’s now called the Black Wrestling Alliance and only Black wrestlers will be on the tv show from now on.
Bruce Prichard and Houston Post reporter Ken Hoffman apparently have a bit of a feud. Hoffman’s been writing mean things about Prichard for a while, and Bruce fired back in a radio appearance in character as Brother Love.
Great Lakes Wrestling had a show in Medina, Ohio on September 3 featuring Jerry Lawler vs. Wahoo McDaniel, Kevin Von Erich and Michael Hayes vs. Adrian Street and “Spoiler” Don Jardine, and Kimala vs. Jimmy Valiant. But the best match on the card wasn’t any of those, but, and I cannot believe I’m saying it and it’s the only reason I’m mentioning this show in the rewind at all, Moolah vs. Medusa in a double dq that wound up becoming a wild brawl all through the building. The word is they planned nothing out at all, which usually is a bad thing considering both Moolah’s age and Madusa’s ability, but somehow it worked out.
In this week’s absurd claims from the AWA, they’re claiming to be opening offices in the Carolinas and Florida and that all the big names will be signing with them. Sure, Verne. Sure.
UWF and All Japan are vying for Joe Malenko’s attention. UWF offered him a spot in their September show, while Baba countered with an offer for both him and Dean to do a three week tour for him. Joe is perfectly suited for UWF’s style, but the pay for a single appearance with UWF is probably about a third of what he’d make for a three week tour with All Japan. On the other hand, Joe and Dean’s size probably mean they wouldn’t get a huge push in All Japan.
And in a late update, negotiations between the NWA and Turner have gone back to square one. Turner made an offer, but only Jim Crockett wanted to accept it, while David and Frances have no interest in accepting because they wouldn’t be involved under that offer. More on this next week.
More of Dave's awards picks this week. Dave thinks that the Most Outstanding Wrestler award favorites should be Owen Hart, Tatsumi Fujinami, and Ted DiBiase for the top three. For Most Underrated, he thinks Tiger Mask #2, Toshiaki Kawada, and Chris Benoit are probably the top three picks for guys who are great but just aren’t as well-known as they should be. Ultimate Warrior is Dave’s pick for Worst Wrestler, even though Andre could easily win it but Dave doesn’t want to pick Andre because at least Andre has a legitimate medical condition underlying why he’s no longer good in the ring.
Kevin Von Erich has been hospitalized following his appearance for Great Lakes Wrestling. Well, at least that gives another reason to have mentioned that show. He was diagnosed with a concussion and severe migraine headaches.