Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 12, 1988

Dave opens this issue by dispelling some rumors. Lex Luger is rumored to have left the NWA for Japan or the WWF, but in reality he hasn’t left. He has been talking about wanting the new organization to show good faith to keep him, though. Ric Flair is also rumored to be leaving, and is supposedly already booked by WWF. It’s the same old rumor as ever, but it’s not true. It’s rumored that Jerry Jarrett has bought 30% of World Class. While he has been visiting Dallas to negotiate, and Ken Mantell would probably be willing to sell his 30% now that he’s out, but Dave thinks Jerry is too smart to buy in on WCCW unless he can get 51%. Well, we'll come back to that last one next week.
The biggest news of the week is that NBC has agreed to do three prime-time WWF wrestling specials this season rather than just one. They’ve also agreed to broadcast the Slammy Awards in prime time on top of that and several Saturday night telecasts for late night. This is a pretty big coup for WWF, and if a recent Forbes piece this week is accurate, WWF’s profit margin is somewhere around $19 million and the company would be worth around $100 million if it were publicly traded. Unfortunately, they also reported that ad rates for WWF programming are half what a regular sitcom or gameshow would sell for in the same time slot with the same number of viewers, so regardless of whether Vince has changed the audience makeup (he has), advertisers are still convinced his audience is poor and undesirable, and they primarily buy ad time on WWF tv because of the sheer number of viewers they can reach on the cheap rather than because they think the viewers are actually worth reaching.
As of the supposed Friday date for the NWA sale to TBS, the NWA remained unsold. Dave then heard that a deal was signed Monday, with TBS purchasing only 65% at that time and leaving an option to pick up the remaining 35%, but he’s gotten no confirmation of that. The wrestlers did receive paperwork to sign at the last taping for the TBS show which would transfer their contracts to TBS from the Crocketts, with no renegotiations to take place until May. TBS had recently been talking about picking up key guys from WWF in Bam Bam Bigelow, Ricky Steamboat, Greg Valentine, and One Man Gang, but the first two already left and the latter two aren’t really worth a lot. Bigelow debuted recently for the NWA, but receptions eems to be disappointing. They’re really high on getting Steamboat and there’s talk of Steamboat/Flair headlining the December ppv, but Steamboat doesn’t presently appear too interested. Gang’s not going to jump with his new Akeem gimmick. They’re apparently going to offer Valentine a major spot, which would be a big error. If they want someone from WWF, they should try to get Bret Hart or Jake Roberts - guys who have charisma and aren’t burned out (basically, the opposite of Valentine) should be their focus. They’re also looking at getting Eddie Gilbert back.
Dave went to Continental’s Road to Birmingham show on October 3. The gate was nearly double what the promotion was expecting at $12,600, and Dave goes over the show. They had a 10 man battle royal for the right to climb a pole and grab a bag of money, and Dave is super impressed with Kokina, who is an absolute monster and “the biggest Samoan I’ve ever seen.” The tournament matches early on kind of sucked, and the Dutch Mantell vs. Mr. Wrestling II match had literally exactly one fan cheering for II. Mr. Wrestling II accidentally took one of Mantell’s boots off and both guys got lost at that point. Terry Gordy and Austin Idol had the best match of the tournament in a 5 minute sprint where Idol advanced by DQ and caught a big post-match beating that included an incredibly unsafe looking chairshot attempt by Gordy that Idol smartly did not let hit anywhere near his head. Four of the first seven tournament matches all had foreign object finishes and it got tiresome. Tom Prichard won the tournament, and the final match of the show had Ken Wayne face Danny Davis in a lights out, hair vs. hair match. It was a bloody and hot match which Davis won, but he got blindsided by Wayne with a gimmicked coke bottle and Wayne shaved Davis’s head. Well, he tried to, but there was too much blood for the razor to get through the hair.
Before we leave Continental behind, Bob Armstrong is booking there now and Brad Armstrong will be starting for them this coming weekend. Also, the main event for next week’s tv show for them is Lord Humongous vs. Kokina in an I Quit match, and Dave talks a bit about their respective sizes. Humongous is very tall, but looks smaller than he does on tv. Kokina looks every bit of 400 lbs.
On October 2, Dave went to Chicago to watch a Bears game and an NWA show. They drew around a $65,000 gate for a card which turned out better than anticipated as Ron Simmons beat Rip Morgan, Mike Rotunda retained the TV title against the Italian Stallion, and the Midnight Express retained the NWA tag titles in a 30 minute draw against Dick Murdoch and Dusty Rhodes in a match where Stan Lane grabbed the house mic and said “This isn’t fair. You guys know I was out all night and Bobby has the flu” after a sequence with the Midnights bumping like mad. House show things and it was a really good match he gives 3.5 stars as the match of the night. The Fantastics beat the Sheepherders in a good match, the Russian Assassins beat the Koloffs, Sting beat Barry Windham by DQ, and Flair and Luger had their standard predictable Dusty finish.
This is unconfirmed, but Dave’s been told that rather than calling the Thanksgiving week shows “Starrcade week,” the NWA will be calling it “Battlestar week” and that Starrcade will be the December ppv.
Learning the Ropes, the tv show the NWA has been involved in, is set to debut this weekend. Lyle Alzado stars as a teacher whose night job is pro wrestler the Masked Manic (portrayed in the ring by the Italian Stallion).
A late update on the NWA/TBS sale matter: still not finalized as of Wednesday. It appears the debt issue, possibly along with a couple lawsuits against the Crocketts, that is the main holdup.
WWF will be doing a European tour headlined by the British Bulldogs beginning this coming week, with the big show of the tour set for October 6 in Paris.
WWF’s current plan for Survivor Series is a four-match card. One match will be five teams of faces (Powers & Roma, the Powers of Pain, the Bulldogs, Rockers, and Hart Foundation) vs. five heel teams (Demolition, the Rougeaus, Tuly & Arn, the Conquistadores, and the Bolsheviks) in an elimination style match, along with three more Survivor Series elimination matches, with the headliner being Hogan and Savage leading a team against a team headed by Bossman and Akeem, another match with Andre and Dino Bravo leading a team against Jake Roberts, Jim Duggan, and their team, and finally a team led by Honkytonk Man and Ron Bass against Brutus Beefcake and Ultimate Warrior’s team. Ignore a lot of this, next week Dave will get a full card about halfway through writing the issue.
Some legitimate backstage heat between the Bulldogs and the Rougeaus. The inciting incident appears to be Jacques Rougeau shaving a ring attendant’s head (a local ring attendant in one of the cities they go to who has Down Syndrome whom the Bulldogs had befriended). Dave notes the irony of the Bulldogs being upset, since this is one of their go-to moves (they’ve done it to Outback Jack and Joey Marella in the past), but it wound up in a fistfight where either Dynamite knocked out Raymond or they both knocked each other out, depending on whom you believe.
Here's Demolition talking about this
George Steele has been out due to a medical issue that required hospitalization.
Syndicated ratings for the week following Summerslam had the WWF’s lowest rating in years, an 8.2 overall. This is a 2% drop from the previous week, so Fed dead, all. Pack it up, Crockett’s won the war. But seriously, even though WWF doesn’t seem to have anything they can easily use to pop a crowd, they’re still in a better spot than the NWA even as they discuss internally whether they need to cut back the C and D tier shows since they draw so little. The NWA held steady at a 6.1 overall, but they also don’t have any matches capable of popping a big crowd either and the Flair/Luger feud seems to be cooling down. Dave thinks WWF really needs to heat a heel up, and it looks like Hennig will be the guy, but him getting to Savage is probably six months away and he’s not likely to go up against Hogan, so expect it to be a slow period going forward. Hogan’s return has been disappointing in terms of drawing power (Dave thinks part of it is his opponents - Summerslam hurt DiBiase badly, while Bad News Brown and Haku aren’t positioned at main event level, and Bossman doesn’t have an angle and is too similar to One Man Gang. Hogan used to draw regardless of opponent quality, but here we are with Hogan’s drawing power seeming to falter for the first time.
The live gate for Summerslam was a combined $418,721 between Madison Square Garden and the Felt Forum, making it the new third largest live gate in the New York area and fifth largest in the U.S. overall for pro wrestling. The largest overall in the New York area remains Bruno Sammartino vs. Larry Zbyszko in 1980 at Shea Stadium, which drew $541,730, with second place going to the first Wrestlemania. The largest in the U.S. is Wrestlemania 3, which drew a live gate of $1,599,000, while this match bumps Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich from Texas Stadium in 1984 from the top five list. Speaking of live gates, the Forbes article Dave mentioned earlier seems to indicate live gates are a bigger part of WWF’s overall revenue than previously believed. Dave had always been told by WWF people that gates were gravy and the real money was in merch sales, but Forbes revealed that only 3% of WWF’s $150 million in merch sales (or $4.5 million) actually comes back to WWF, which means WWF is probably grossing only around $100 million per year when you add up all their revenue streams. It’s definitely a healthy business (they employ around 166 front office employees and 80 wrestlers), but they’re definitely not raking in quite as much as we might have expected from their merchandising deals.
Supercash III’s full card is set now. Lawler vs. Von Erich to unify the AWA and World Class titles; the Rock & Roll Express vs. Robert Fuller and Jimmy Golden; King Parsons vs. Brickhouse Brown for the Texas Title; the Samoan Swat Team vs. Michael Hayes and Steve Cox for the World Class tag titles; Wendy Richter and a babyface tag team vs. Medusa & Paul Diamond & Pat Tanaka; Jeff Jarrett and Jimmy Valiant vs. Tommy Rich and Buddy Landel; the 10-woman lingerie street fight battle royal thing that somehow they intend to make “acceptable for the family” while also luring the Playboy crowd; Guerrero brothers Chavo, Hector, and Mando vs. the Rock & Roll RPMs and Cactus Jack Foley; Wahoo McDaniel vs. Manny Fernandez in a strap match; Ron Garvin vs. Greg Gagne for the AWA TV title; Sgt. Slaughter vs. Col. DeBeers in a boot camp match; and a battle royal featuring a bunch of guys including Lord Humongous, Abdullah the Butcher, and maybe some football players. Yeah, that looks really exciting.
World Class’s October 15 Cotton Bowl show will be headlined by Lawler and Von Erich in a death match to unify the titles. How will they get out of it this time? We’ll find out. Also, Chigusa Nagayo got booked for it and will face Candi Divine.
The UWF in Japan ran their September show on the 24th, drawing a sellout 4,000 in Fukuoka.
Former pro wrestler Animal Hamaguchi won the Mr. Tokyo over-40 bodybuilding championship.
UWF has a magazine in Japan and they did a feature on the “toughest shooters” in the U.S. Their list named the British Bulldogs, Steve Williams, Bob Backlund, Badnews Brown, the Malenko brothers, Rick Steiner, Brad Rheingans, Buzz Sawyer, Mike Rotunda, David Schults, and the Iron Sheik as the baddest men on the U.S. side.
The September 18 New Japan show very nearly got out of hand during the Saito & Vader vs. Kokina & Bigelow match. The idea of this one getting out of hand is a scary thought - Saito was an Olympian, Vader’s 340 lbs and a former college football star, Bigelow is 380 lbs, and then you have Kokina who’s 400 lbs - that’s a lot of beef. Apparently Bigelow and Vader had problems working together which is where stuff started falling apart.
Dave saw the Lioness Asuka vs. Chigusa Nagayo match from August 25 where they had Asuka refuse the title. He says it’s “four stars plus” and speculates that with the rise of UWF’s popularity, we might see more of a vogue in submission heavy wrestling rather than high flying if the women in AJW want to keep on the pulse. He commends them on the most legitimate looking worked shoulder separation he’s ever seen.
Billy Travis has some kind of legal issue going on so he’s not wrestling right now and Dave expects to know more next time.
Florida State University will be retiring Ron Simmons’ jersey number this weekend.
Hulk Hogan’s debut in Tallahassee, Florida against Ted DiBiase was expected to draw 12,000 but only drew 3,200.
The City of Dallas has given World Class a break with the Sportatorium. City officials have agreed to overlook the building’s problems (namely, it not being up to code, particularly for fire safety) so long as World Class agrees to only have pre-packaged food sold for concessions during their shows and they spend $40,000 on building improvements by the end of the month. If they don’t, the building will be condemned.
Angelo Poffo, Randy Savage’s father, is working independent shows in Florida under a hood as The Miser.
Watch: Here's an Angelo Poffo clip as The Miser
Dustin Rhodes is getting a big push in FCW, and he’s getting over well thanks to the connection with his father. He’s still green, but it’s early yet for him. I’m sure he’ll strike gold.
Another issue, another three awards where Dave weighs on his picks. For Tag Team of the Year, Dave says there are basically four teams in the running for him. The Fantastics, the Midnight Express, and Tully & Arn are easily the best in the U.S. and all about equal. Over in Japan, Foot Loose is Dave’s favorite and he gives them second place after the Midnight Express and ahead of the Fantastics. For Rookie of the Year Dave confesses that he’s been dreading this category because you don’t have any Owen Harts running around making things easy. He talks a bit about how smaller groups faltering has caused a tightening of the belt by other companies, including a squeeze on the number of jobs, which has prevented many rookies from really any traction. Dave hasn’t seen him work, but he is highly impressed with what he’s heard of this Kenta Kobashi kid, so that’s just who he picks. Worst Match of the Year is fortunate, because every year consistently delivers one match so bad that it is a clear-cut favorite. Dave picks Hiroshi Wajima vs. Tom Magee in All Japan, which was so bad that “Anabolic Warrior vs. Hercules from Wrestlemania was not a close second.”
Dave runs a column by Jeff Bowdren in this issue, weighing in on his thoughts on who the ten most complete packages are in wrestling. Bowdren lays out his personal criteria: workrate is most important, so that gets 50%. Overall charisma counts for 25%, while it looks like drawing power makes another 25%. I’m not clear how he’s discerning between the two nor am I entirely clear he is, but anyway. From #10 to #1, Jeff’s picks are Ted DiBiase, Stan Hansen, Randy Savage, Akira Maeda, Tatsumi Fujinami, the late Bruiser Brody, Chigusa Nagayo, Satoru Sayama, Terry Funk, and Ric Flair. He gives a good paragraph about each, and it’s all very interesting, but it’s basically a very long letter and yeah.