Wrestling Observer Rewinder

September 19, 1988

Rewinder Note: Rest in Peace, Jim Crockett Jr.
This week’s big story is that Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson quit the NWA on September 10. They dropped the NWA tag titles to the Midnight express in an unplanned title switch - there weren’t any cameras around at all to catch the match, not even for the Apter magazines. Dave’s heard that they’re set to debut for WWF on their October 4 tv taping. This follows months of rumor that they’re jumping - at a tv syndication convention early this year, Anderson and Vince McMahon disappeared together during lunch for several hours which started the ball rolling on the rumor. Most recently, they and a third wrestler (I wonder if this wrestler might be Flair) threatened to quit if Dusty wasn’t replaced as booker. Well, Dusty’s still booking, and now Arn and Tully are gone, though if that were the main reason they’d have left earlier. The balloon payments that they were supposed to get in May still haven’t come in, and the NWA still seems to be a financial mess. This is definitely a major loss for the NWA, not only because they’ve been a major fixture of the tag division, but because it kills the Four Horsemen without even getting a breakup feud out of the deal, which makes any prospective Flair face turn much less impactful.
As for the sale of the NWA to Turner Broadcasting, we are (for what feels like the tenth time) closer than ever to the completion of a deal. Jim Crockett has agreed to terms, but his brother and sister David and Frances are holding things up because they haven’t agreed. Turner also wants the Crocketts to clear their debts before they sell, and they reportedly expect everything to be final within two weeks. The precise details of what’s being sold are that Turner is buying the company assets: the tv syndication package, wrestler contracts (which may or may not even be valid contracts at this point, what with Crockett failing to uphold their end of the balloon payment situation), and tangible assets such as rings, production equipment, and arena contracts. Next week, Dave promises a deep look at what he thinks is necessary to save the NWA.
Former wrestler and promoter Leroy McGuirk, father of WWF interviewer Mike McGuirk, passed away on September 9 at the age of 78. Dave recounts his career, including his 11 year reign as world junior heavyweight champion from 1939-1950, when he went blind and had to retire from wrestling as champion. That reign, Dave believes, is the longest world championship reign (of any weight class) in wrestling history. McGuirk won the national high school championship in wrestling in 1928, the NCAA championship in 1931, and was a runner up in qualifying for the 1932 Olympics. McGuirk lost the sight in one of his eyes in high school, and in 1950 he lost the sight in his other eye when he was in a car accident that cracked his glasses into his good eye. He wound up getting involved in the NWA booking office, working in the Ozarks, in what would eventually become Mid South Wrestling. Among the wrestlers whose careers got started by McGuirk are Bruiser Brody, Danny Hodge, and Bill Watts, the last of whom learned promotion from McGuirk. McGuirk’s ethos as a booker (and even blind, he continued to provide color commentary on his show) emphasized strong storytelling because he couldn’t see the matches, so they needed to have a story to hook in the fans. McGuirk retired from promoting in 1982, when he sold the remainder of his territory to Bill Watts.
Leroy “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” Rochester died on September 6 at the age of 38. He had a stroke on August 27 and had been hospitalized ever since. Also known as one half of the Zambuie Express as Elijah Akeem with tag team partner Kareem Muhammad (Ray Candy), Brown was a 6’5”, 350 lb. big man who was a main eventer right from his debut in 1975. He was also the first wrestler to use entrance music, taking his name from the Jim Croce song he used as entrance music (and he’s not the only wrestler to take his name from the song - Sylvester Ritter did as well, since Bad, Bad Leroy Brown was not only badder than old King Kong, but meaner than a Junkyard Dog). Brown worked most of the major U.S. promotions early on except for the WWF and the AWA, and Dave notes that the AWA has a pretty clear policy of rarely pushing Black wrestlers, before fading from the main wrestling scene in 1985. He worked a short stint in 1986-1987 in Watts’ UWF and since 1987 occasionally worked independent shows in Georgia until his stroke and untimely passing.
Here's a 1980 Leroy Brown match
Huracán Castillo, Sr., a retired wrestler who now works as a babyface manager in Puerto Rico for the World Wrestling Council, was shot on September 4. He may be paralyzed from the waist down. The suspected shooter is not a wrestler, since I guess the Brody murder has us wondering now about whether that’s the case any time a wrestler is attacked in Puerto Rico.
According to TV Guide, Summerslam got a million buys on ppv. Electronic Media Magazine (which reported Wrestlemania 4 as grossing $40 million which is almost certainly more than double the actual gross) reported 900,000 homes and a gross between $13-15 million. WWF is claiming 880,000 homes (an 8% buyrate). These claims, however, don’t seem to match up with the reports from cable companies, which suggest an actual buyrate far below the projected 6% buyrate, with Request TV specifically reporting disappointment in the buyrate. The Bay Area and Chicago are usually 40% above the national average for WWF, and their numbers fell in the 5-6% buyrate range, which suggests the real buyrate to be around 4-4.5%. That’s profitable for WWF, but still a significant disappointment compared to their expectation. Figuring off that, the real number of homes would be around 450,000 and a gross between $7-8 million, which nets WWF between $2.1-2.5 million in ppv revenue. This really shows how razor thin WWF’s margin for success with the Sugar Ray Leonard fight would normally have to be. They spent $9 million for the ppv and closed-circuit rights, and they reportedly don’t plan to run closed circuit at all outside of maybe one area where ppv isn’t available. For the fight, they’re cutting out the middleman and syndicating the fight themselves, which means that their break-even point moves down from the $30 million mark (which they’d need to clear if all they were getting was 30% of ppv revenue) to around $20 million. The brevity of the Tyson/Spinks fight, along with the facts that Leonard’s opponent has no drawing power and Leonard isn’t the biggest draw in boxing anymore, all mean the road to profitability for WWF is going to be hard - if they can get a 5% buyrate at $30 on ppv, which is what boxing sources are predicting, WWF will come out with a $1 million loss. But maybe that’s a price Vince is willing to pay to get into the boxing business.
NWA’s Clash of the Champions 3: Fall Brawl did a 5.4 rating and 8.9 share nationally, which means 2.5 million homes on average. The audience for the show steadily increased throughout the show (the lead-in, Sanford and Son, did a 2, the first match opened with a 3.5, and the Barry Windham/Sting match peaked at a 6.5 rating or just over 3 million homes). Clash 3 is therefore the second-highest rated NWA show ever, just behind the first Clash back in March. After the show, there was a Braves vs. Giants game, and the rating for that fell to a 1.5, which means around 4.5 million people tuned out after the wrestling ended. Jeez.
Speaking of the Clash, mixed feelings from readers, and Dave says he “basically enjoyed the show, although some parts were so bad it was inexcusable.” Workrate was good, and none of the matches were bad (none were great either, though). Camera work was also good, but John Ayres was worse than anything on Summer Slam, and now Dave runs down his list of the really bad parts of the show. They had him as a referee with the idea that he would be less “bumpable” than the typical referee, but he was the least-known guy on his team when he won the Super Bowl, so he’s not selling tickets and having him do two interviews and a run-in is really silly, especially when a lot of leading attractions (like Luger, the Road Warriors, and Flair) weren’t used in the card. They also cut to commercial while Ivan Kolof was being attacked by Paul Jones and the Russian Assassins, and returned without acknowledging the incident again. Dusty’s match against Kevin Sullivan wasn’t bad, but the change from a tag match to a singles match came with no explanation, and the finish was egregious, as three guys beat Dusty with a chain in front of the referee without a disqualification, and then Dusty pinned Gary Hart, who wasn’t even in the match, to win. The opening of the show with Sting was great, but they dropped the ball by not following it up with a promo or winning the title here, or really anything to push him as the star of the show. Also, they never even mentioned where the show happened, and Dave says if they “were that embarrassed about being live from Albany, GA, they should have taped it from some other city.” Ric Flair and Tony Schiavone were kind of off on a scaffold away from the ring as “hosts” of the show, and that was a waste of them, particularly Flair, who basically wasn’t there at all other than a brief promo in the last minute of the show. Dave runs down the Clash card, giving results and match ratings. Nothing remarkable there.
The arraignment of Invader #1 (fuck Invader #1) on the murder of Bruiser Brody was postponed to October 11. Both the defense and prosecution agreed to a delay because each claimed to need more time to interview witnesses and prepare their cases.
[Memphis] They’ve got yet another unification match scheduled between Lawler and Von Erich for September 19. Dave thinks if they don’t actually unify the titles on this one, it’s going to kill the unification gimmick dead.
Sgt. Slaughter is set to appear on the ESPN tapings for Memphis on September 17-19. Slaughter recently raised his appearance fee from $2,500 to $3,200 per appearance, but Dave thinks he must be going lower for this because there’s no way Verne or Jerry Jarrett is paying that much for him.
[World Class] Kevin Von Erich still hasn’t returned to action following his concussion. He was still in the hospital as of Friday.
Fritz Von Erich’s attorney has gotten a delay on the closing of the Sportatorium. Dallas had ordered the building would be shut down if $40,000 in repairs weren’t completed before the end of September, but the delay buys more time to get the repairs.
[All Japan] At the Bruiser Brody Memorial Show, Barbara Goodish gave her husband’s chain to Stan Hansen. Dave expects Hansen may bring the chain out as a gimmick on future Japan tours.
At present, Chigusa Nagayo is set to be in the U.S. from the 12th through the 26th of October and is still trying to get booked as many dates as possible. Dave put September, but he wrote it wrong. It’s October.
Former New Japan CEO Hisashi Shinma made his public return to the promotion on September 5. He got in the ring and addressed the audience and said that before Inoki returned (Inoki hasn’t returned to the ring since his August 8 broadway with Fujinami), he would do a world tour. Further update on that next week. Inoki’s absence is giving them a chance to gauge how well Fujinami draws as champion without Inoki around to muddy the numbers.
Mel Saracema bought the assets of the OWF from Billy Jack Haynes and plans to run a new promotion, the Pacific Coast Wrestling Association. They’re planning an October 1 debut, with rumored talent including Joey Jackson, Tiger Chung Lee, Coco Samoa, Rip Oliver, and Tim Flowers, among others. Dave just doesn’t see how the Oregon-Washington area can support having two full time promotions, especially not with WWF running shows in Portland and Seattle every month. Even without another local promotion to worry about, simply surviving that is a tough order for Don Owen’s promotion, so the competition really doesn’t do anything but hurt independent wrestling in the area.
[Oregon] They were running a funny gimmick around the debut of former Masked Assassin David Sierra’s new gimmick, The Top Gun, but they abruptly dropped it. Sierra lost a loser leaves town match to Buddy Rose of the Beach Boys, so he returned under a new gimmick on August 20. Later in the show, they had a best 2 of 3 falls Beach Boys (Avalanche and Buddy Rose) vs. Art Barr and Billy Two Eagles match. During a break between falls, and it’s unclear from Dave’s writing how they would have time to make this happen, Rose came out under a hood with Top Gun scribbled on a piece of tape on his ring jacket and did a promo calling the Top Gun from earlier an imposter. And since he was in the middle of a match, technically, he was super blown up for the promo and the interviewer asked him why he was so blown up. Rose responded that he had been running laps around the building. So did a mask vs. mask match on August 27, but Rose put the mask on Avalanche, who lost and had to unmask. Later in the show, Rose came back out as Top Gun and said he’d missed his plane and asked his friend Avalanche to sub for him. By the next week the whole thing was dropped.
The Oregon Athletic Commission met on September 1 to rule on a petition from Don Owen. Owen was asking them to reverse their ruling requiring a metal barricade between the fans and the ring area and mats on the floor to protect the wrestlers, citing the cost of buying and driving a second truck for every show, since his current ring truck can’t fit the mats and barricades as well as the ring. David Sierra testified that mats weren’t safe and he had twisted his ankle on them often. The commission ruled that Owen had two months to comply, and also questioned Sierra about a fresh looking wound on his forehead, reminding him about their policy against all blood, whether from blading or hardway, and that they would stop any match with blood and suspend the bleeder for thirty days. Owen’s promotion has long had a reputation for bloodbaths and being the only territory to encourage wrestlers to bleed hardway in when faced with an anti-blade commission, so Owen and Sierra’s response that they were fully on board with that ruling feels, shall we say, disingenuous at best.
[Puerto Rico] The WWC’s anniversary show took place the day after a hurricane, and considering that, the show was successful. They drew 23,000 at two sites. In case you’re wondering, Carlos Colón won the fire deathmatch against Hercules Ayala, which wasn’t for the vacant Universal title. That’ll be up for grabs in a tournament soon.
Watch: Fire death match
Eddie Gilbert ruptured a disc and suffered severe nerve damage to his shoulder and neck, as well as bone spurs and chips in his C-5 and c-6 vertebrae, which are also fusing. Doctors have recommended he have surgery, which might well end his career, but he’s opted to undergo at least two months of physical therapy before coming back without surgery. Gilbert has a history of neck problems. He broke his neck in 1983 in a car accident during his WWF stint. While he can’t wrestle for now, he will continue to book for Continental. Since he was the top heel wrestler, it’s going to be a real challenge to overcome. Even when you have great heel managers like Jimmy Hart in his Memphis run or Paul E. Dangerously today, you can’t carry it all on the back of an extraordinary heel manager - there needs to be an excellent heel in the ring as well.
Next week Dave will have the official details of the AWA ppv, and he promises it’ll be worth the wait before you commence laughing.
Jesse Ventura is in Toronto filming a movie called “Thunderguard.” He’s got the lead role and has no big names are attached. It’ll actually release as Thunderground, and the story is about two hobos traveling cross country and doing bare knuckle boxing. It’s apparently really bad, so watch the whole thing if you can.
Watch Thunderground
In an absolute coup for WWF, they have signed away Rod Tronguard from the AWA to work alongside Alfred Hayes and Billy Graham. That's sarcasm. Dave was being sarcastic. Tronguard sucks, and wasn’t even WWF’s first choice apparently.
Based on Hogan’s return so far, it’s actually in question whether he still has it as a draw. He worked this past weekend in Springfield and Boston, Massachusetts against Ted DiBiase, where they drew only 3,600 and 8,000, respectively. His match against Badnews Brown at the Meadowlands only drew half capacity. On the plus side for him, his Edmonton debut, against Big Bossman, is selling well enough that they’re expected to get close to 20,000 (7,000 tickets sold in their first five days on sale). Also, with the movie, he’s got a helmet as a gimmick and they’re using it in all his matches and you can bet WWF will be selling replica helmets to the children by Christmas.
One letter this week pitches the idea that a union is unlikely to catch on in wrestling, but perhaps a voluntary association of wrestlers contributing together to fund disability insurance and pension benefits for all involved could work. It would be great if that were to happen, Dave says, but he cautions that promoters would get spooked about it leading to a union and would move to snuff it out early. He also notes that too many wrestlers would likely view it as a scam to dip into their money, so you’d not have as many wrestlers contributing as would be necessary for it to work, and the whole thing would go under anyway. Promoters are shitty people and a sufficient proportion of wrestlers are shitty people, so nothing good can happen as long as they’re that way.
This letter is brief, so I’m going to print it in full here, and it’s something I feel like is worth laughing at a little. If I ever get to the point where I say the opening sentence of this letter about myself, please do me a favor and ban me from this subreddit.
The only thing left that I enjoy about the entire wrestling business is the Wrestling Observer. The television is unbearable to watch. The live match crowds resemble visitors night from the local prisons. Vince McMahon and Jim Crockett should thank you for my interest and viewership because I do watch their crap only to see what you write about in the Observer come to fruition. But then again, I don’t call their wrestling hotlines, eat their ice cream, take their vitamins, so I guess they don’t really need me.
Once again, Dave closes the issue with more awards favorites. Hogan has won Best Babyface for six years running, but with his relative inactivity this year other contenders might have a chance. Overall, Dave thinks Hogan, Maeda, and Chigusa Nagayo are the top three. For Best Promotion, financial success and quality of the wrestling product should be considered equally. Given the NWA has great wrestling but is a step from being bought out or going bankrupt, they can’t be considered. The WWF has the financial success, but the product is bad and even their biggest shows this year have been poor. Ultimately, Dave goes with UWF, New Japan, and All Japan as the top three, though he feels conflicted on the last bit because it gives Japan a clean sweep. Worst Tag Team is a tough one this year, as no team has been completely horrible, so Dave pegs the Bolsheviks as the favorites for this one.
The NWA lost their tv in San Jose, California (which also takes out their tv in San Francisco and Oakland) and Pittsburgh. They’re on the verge of losing other syndication deals, and Crockett’s paying 40 cents on the dollar to settle debts. All around, their financial situation is not good.