Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 24, 1988

This is a double issue and there’s a lot to get through. First up, Dave’s hearing two conflicting stories on the Turner acquisition of the NWA. The first version is that a deal was made two weeks back and Turner assumes control on November 1. The second, which Dave believes more, is that the deal is expected to be signed this week, with a takeover scheduled for November 1. Dave’s sources on the NWA side say no names have been signed to any contracts yet, but it seems a verbal agreement is in place to do so soon. Yet again, Jim Crockett’s debts appear to be the holdup.
Dave’s also heard stories about Jerry Jarrett trying to acquire World Class. Like the above, he’s heard two stories. World Class claims that Jarrett has bought a minority percentage, but is in charge and has Eric Embry running the day to day of the office. Dave believes that one more than the other version: that the Von Erichs hired Jarrett to run the company. Some might say, given how much he talks in Memphis about money being tight, Jarrett wouldn’t want to spend that much money openly. On the other hand, if he devotes enough attention to it, he could well turn around World Class.
WWF’s preparing for their boxing ppv and Survivor Series. For Survivor Series, they’ve made some of the teams come together a bit more. Hogan and Savage will have Hillbilly Jim and Koko B. Ware on their team against Haku, Bossman, Akeem, and DiBiase. Dave wonders if 1989 is going to be the year of oversaturation in the ppv market for wrestling, with WWF and Turner planning four for next year and AWA/WCCW/Memphis talking about doing at least one. Also, completely ignore the above about the teams, since Dave gets new info later this week and gives a correct lineup for the show.
Trailers are out for They Live. If successful, it “would just about guarantee that Piper’s days as a professional wrestler are long behind him.” Dave notes the budget for They Live is $3 million, by comparison to the budget for No Holds Barred at $19 million.
Once again, the arraignment of Invader #1 (fuck Invader #1) has been postponed. Prosecution witness Tony Atlas failed to show up to the hearing, so the arraignment has been issued for November 2 and the court has issued a “body attachment” for Atlas, meaning he is legally required to appear and can be extradited to Puerto Rico to testify. Tony Atlas has told people he’s had his life threatened should he testify, and he’s a key witness, since he’s the one who told police he witnessed the stabbing.
With the Road Warriors’ heel turn, chaos abounds in the NWA. The Warriors turned heel on the October 7 tv taping, and they’ve been teasing it to try and pop a rating (and also so they don’t have to change the remaining babyface matches they have scheduled before the air date). In what will become true WCW fashion, the Warriors turned on Sting in a six man tag match after Sting got the hot tag and was on the verge of winning. Luger came in as kind of a savior for Sting, but with a more “let’s cool it, guys” vibe, only to get beat up too. The TBS morning show mentioned it, they promised to explain more in the evening show, they teased it throughout, and they may tease it another week before airing it on the 29th at this rate.
Good news, sort of, for the NWA: they exceeded the WWF’s syndicated rating for the first time ever for the week starting September 11. They drew a 7.8 to WWF’s 7.5, largely on the back of the Clash of the Champions special (which accounted for 2.7 of their points), so that’s artificially inflated. Meanwhile, WWF’s rating was low due to Prime Time Wrestling not being in prime time that week, though Dave notes that even accounting for that, WWF viewership has been dropping of late (and indeed, all of wrestling is facing this). The next week they were up to a 9.0, partially from picking up a few new stations, but still below their past performance on this metric.
All Japan and New Japan have largely set their end of year tag tournaments. Dave’s got All Japan’s lineup and calls it the weakest in company history. New Japan is going with a trios tournament with elimination rules within each match.
Dave hasn’t got a complete report on the October 15 Cotton Bowl show by World Class. Dave posts what he has from the partial report he got, which includes some results (Chigusa Nagayo indeed got to have a match with Candi Divine which was a bit of a waste of her talents) and that the crowd was pretty decent. Jeff Jarrett is now World Class lightheavyweight champion. Kerry Von Erich and Jerry Lawler’s unification match was done as a Texas Death Match and they did a screwjob finish where the referee took a bump and Frank Dusek fast counted Kerry to victory, which led to a whole bunch of stuff to kick off Tennessee vs. Texas as the main story. It appears Kerry won both belts, but Dave’s skeptical that this will wind up being recognized. More on this below.
WWF did their second annual Lord of the Rings tournament, which Ted DiBiase won.
The October 17 card in Memphis is big news in Japan, since Lawler is defending the AWA Title against Tatsumi Fujinami. Chigusa Nagayo will also be there against Candi Divine again, which means this is the first time a Japanese men’s world champion has ever appeared on the same card as the top women’s star in the country. Expectations are low for attendance, as the Memphis crowd doesn’t really no Fujinami, though the promotion has made efforts to talk him up between a video package and Lawler doing a telephone interview talking about how he’s unsure of Fujinami’s style to hint that he might drop the title. Imagine, for a moment, how things might have gone had they unified the titles onto Fujinami.
Speaking of Fujinami, he appeared in Don Owen’s promotion and in a bizarre story, won the Northwest title from the Grappler. Dave’s still not sure what happened exactly, but they brought Fujinami in and billed him as the world champion (a surprise, since they just had Ric Flair in and billed him as world champion), and they set up a double title match where Grappler promised to give up his title if he couldn’t beat Fujinami. Well, they did a 30 minute draw, so yeah. There wasn’t any Japanese press, and booking a draw seems like a weird decision, since not being able to beat Grappler looks weak for Fujinami. Nevertheless, they had a match that got over very well with the crowd, almost entirely on stiff, solid ring work.
The Pacific Coast Wrestling Association starts up against Don Owen’s Northwest Wrestling on October 22. Moondog Ed Moretti will be booker, and Billy Jack Haynes is not only not involved, but the Oregon Athletic Commission made a firm point that he is not allowed to be involved. Also, the promotion won’t be allowed to run out of the Oregon City Civic Center, since Billy Jack Haynes fucked up so badly that the owners aren’t even sure of the tv deal they had been on the verge of signing before Haynes happened, so they’re kind of done with wrestling at this point.
When Ric Flair came in to Oregon for his September 20 match against Top Gun, the Commission decided to get a bug up their ass about passing a physical. Flair brought a doctor’s note, but since it didn’t say anything about a drug test, they made him leave the arena, go to a local hospital, and take a drug test before they let him go back to the arena. Flair passed the test and they had to stall a bit for him to get back, but he did eventually have his match.
All Japan is once again teasing the unification of their big titles to create a triple crown title. Jumbo Tsuruta (International champ) will go against Stan Hansen (PWF and United National champion) this week, with the winner of the triple crown set to defend against Genichro Tenryu on October 28. Let’s keep kicking this unification down the road until April. 1988 is the year of title unification edging, y’all.
New Japan’s latest tour began on October 7, with Steve Williams and Bam Bam Bigelow as the big attractions and the focus of the tour being Inoki returning to wrestle seven singles matches. Inoki’s opponents for these matches are Williams, Bigelow, Riki Choshu, Kengo Kimura, Seiji Sakaguchi, Masa Saito, and Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Well, two down already: Inoki beat Bigelow in about two minutes on the first show, and he won via forfeit against Sakaguchi because Sakaguchi was injured. All hail the great Inoki.
Southern Championship Wrestling drew probably their biggest gate ever, 1,500 fans and $15,000, in Marietta, Georgia on October 2. Jerry Lawler defended the AWA world title against Tommy Rich in the headliner, which probably accounts for most of the draw in my humble opinion. Kerry Von Erich was scheduled to make his Georgia debut at this show as well, but he wound up no-showing, so they put Bullet Bob Armstrong in against the Iron Sheik in his place.
The AWA is returning to the Twin Cities on November 26. They’ve announced Jerry Lawler defending the AWA title against Wahoo McDaniel and Kerry Von Erich vs. Jimmy Jack Funk for the World Class title as the big headliners.
It wouldn’t be right to talk about the AWA news without something that just sounds funny, so here’s the write up on how the Top Guns quit the promotion: “The Top Guns (Ricky Rice & John Paul) quit one day as they had a change of mind driving to one of the cities.” I’m not sure if it was before or after the October 15 Vegas show that they made that decision, but they were announced as injured at that event, while Ron Garvin and Col. DeBeers also no-showed. Garvin was announced as being stranded in Puerto Rico, which may even have been true.
Chigusa Nagayo’s American tour had her scheduled for October 14 and October 16 AWA spots in Denver and Minneapolis, but of course the promotion didn’t actually run shows on those dates at all. Thus, she wound up making a surprise appearance at the October 15 AWA show in Vegas, where she beat Madusa by over the top rope disqualification. She had an afternoon show in Dallas that day, booked it to Vegas for the match, then took a red eye back to Dallas and drove four hours up to Oklahoma City for an afternoon match against Pantera Sureña (a luchadora who was a fixture of the Mexican women’s scene back in the late 70s), before heading to Memphis for a Monday night appearance against Candi Divine (originally Dave had heard Debbie Combs, but Candi got the match instead). She has some matches in Stampede next week against K.C. Houston, and surprisingly nobody contacted Leilani Kai about working with Nagayo, which Dave thinks might be because they think she still works for WWF. First of all, I’m reminded of a time when Tessa Blanchard seemed to be getting her shit together where she pulled a similar travel schedule one SHIMMER weekend, which included wrestling a 75 minute match on Friday night in Chicago, flying out to Texas for a match the next day, and returning to have two more matches Sunday to close out the second day of SHIMMER tapings. Anyway, digression aside, this match is actually the genesis of Madusa getting invited to go work in Japan, improving to be an actually good wrestler, and eventually from there the mid-90s AJW/WWF partnership. And it’s all because AWA booked Chigusa Nagayo for shows they never ran and then called her in to pull a mad dash of travel to fit the one show they did run in the window they had her for.
Watch: Chigusa Nagayo vs. Medusa
Over in Stampede, Gary Allbright is a really promising rookie. He’s big (320 lbs) and is already top heel. He’s got an impressive collegiate wrestling background, comparable to Steve Williams, and he’s super agile for his size (he can do the somersaults into an elbow drive move that Keiji Muto does, though less fluidly). He’s also the Alicia Fox of the belly-to-belly suplex.
In Continental, changes they made to the Road to Birmingham show screwed up some of the promos they taped before the show happened. One involved Ken Wayne claiming to have won the new car by beating Danny Davis in Birmingham, which, well, the original finish was to have Wayne win, but they changed it so Davis won but got his head shaved after) and they just left the interview alone and it went to air in total contradiction to what actually happened.
All Japan lost two weeks of television because Emperor Hirohito was in critical condition and so almost all the stations were doing 24-hour coverage.
The coverage of the Emperor’s condition also pre-empted the airing of a 30-minute UWF tv special originally scheduled for September 28 with clips from their September 24 show. As of the September show, UWF has instituted a new rule where a match is stopped after five knockdowns, which was the cause of the finish to Maeda vs. Yamazaki. The kayfabe is that this is to protect the wrestlers from unnecessary damage, but they didn’t communicate that to fans, so some fans were upset at the finish.
According to the Japanese Wrestling Journal, Fujinami’s recent U.S. tour comes down to another move in his power struggle with Inoki. Dave prints a translation of the piece they had on the matter, and it boils down to the following: Inoki has massive debt from failed business ventures in Brazil (the same failed ventures that led to revolt in 1983 when Inoki started shorting wrestler pay), so he couldn’t retire even if he wanted to, and after getting Hisashi Shinma back in the fold, he and Shinma had a meeting with the guys running the show on August 26 where he refused to wrestle on the show or do commentary unless he was reinstated as top star. This led to the September 5 retirement from Japanese wrestling announcement, as Shinma tried to get the crowd on Inoki’s side, and Inoki came to the U.S. to negotiate with Vince McMahon and Jack Petrick, though nothing came of that. New Japan has three factions running the show, effectively: camp Inoki, camp Fujinami, and camp Choshu, with each group supporting their guy being the top guy. Since Choshu doesn’t seem interested in being the guy, he and his supporters are effectively the swing vote. Inoki’s supporters claim he’s the biggest draw, which yeah he has the most name value with casual and non-fans but is less popular with devoted fans, while Fujinami’s supporters argue that continuing to build around 45-year old Inoki and his ego will leave a vacuum into which the promotion will collapse when the day of his retirement actually comes. So they did four weeks with no Inoki and with Fujinami on top and only got 3 sellouts and Inoki stepped in on September 19 and declared that as president of the company, he’s in charge and if anyone disobeys his orders, they’re fired. So Fujinami took the world title and refused to work the recent Taiwan tour and went on a U.S. tour and shows no signs yet of returning. So the power struggle in New Japan is heating up pretty big.
World Class’s Cotton Bowl show drew around 4,500, and one of the big angles going on involved Super Black Ninja (Keiji Muto) using the Von Erich claw hold to build toward a feud with Kevin Von Erich. The story pre-dates Jerry Jarrett coming into the picture, and is something like Fritz Von Erich used the claw to beat and humiliate Muto’s father in Japan, which led Muto’s father to obsess over training a super wrestler to use the claw to beat Fritz’s sons in the future. You can guess how likely this story is to ever result in Kevin losing.
Dave has a more complete report of the Lawler/Von Erich unification match he talked about near the start of this issue. Both guys went down with the referee on the ref bump, which led Frank Dusek to run in and count the fall and start the ten count. At 8, Kerry reached his feet and Dusek fast counted the remainder of the ten count to grant the match to Kerry. On tv, they announced that since Dusek wasn’t an AWA-approved referee, his decision did not stand, and there was no winner and each guy gets his belt back (even though nobody was champion, at least in Texas, since the whole point was that both belts were held up in Texas, so this just adds more confusion to the mix).
Verne Gagne apparently hates the idea of the lingerie match for Superclash III, but thinks it’s needed to get the card over. I think we’ve solved the mystery of why the Attitude era worked. It was the lingerie.
One reason for the subpar action at the Continental Road to Birmingham show was that they had a board on one side of the ring about to break. So all the wrestlers tried to avoid bumping near it to avoid breaking it and causing a holdup for repairs.
Lord Humongous got hit by a 2x4 by Allen Martin, which pressed his hockey mask into his face and caused a 20 stitch gash.
A Kentucky lawyer filed a lawsuit in Nashville to prevent Rip and Randy Tyler from doing bear wrestling exhibitions. The suit claims that they’re violating state laws against cruelty to animals and that the bear, Ginger, is partially blind and so hurt she can’t hold her head up. The Tennessee Humane Society and Friends of Animals in Tennessee have joined the suit. The original incident here involved a fan breaking his leg wrestling Ginger at a bar in Lebanon, Tennessee.
Watch: Ginger the wrestling bear
Bob Orton was arrested on his flight to Detroit from Taiwan for getting drunk and beliggerent on the plane. He was seated next to a sports reporter who was returning from covering the summer Olympics, so he wound up with a big story about him in the Detroit papers by pure happenstance. Work that hustle, reporter.
Dave says ignore the lineup he gave for Survivor Series up above, because he just got the complete card. Here we go: Hogan/Savage/Muraco/Patera/Hercules vs. Akeem/Bossman/Valentine/Brown/DiBiase, Warrior/Beefcake/Blue Blazer/Sam Houston/ Koko B. Ware vs. Ron Bass/Honkytonk/Danny Davis/Red Rooster/King Haku, Roberts/Duggan/Killer Bees/JYD vs. Andre/Rude/Bravo/Hennig/Harley Race, and Powers of Pain/Bulldogs/Harts/Young Stallions/Rockers vs. Demolition/Conquistadores/Tully and Arn/Rougeaus/Bolsheviks. Dave’s not so sure they’re going to be able to get this one over. Last year worked because it had Andre for the first time since Wrestlemania and was also the first, so it had intrigue, while this year doesn’t have either of those factors. We'll get more changes next week.
Another altercation between Dynamite Kid and the Rougeaus, apparently. Yet again, there are two versions of the story - Jacques either held Dynamite so Raymond could punch him and knock some teeth out, or Raymond suckerpunched him with a roll of coins.
WWF has informally approached several athletic commissions asking about whether they’d allow blood capsules. They seem interested in using blood to help get their heels hot again and drive audience interest, while avoiding running afoul of blading regulations or creating bad publicity. Interestingly, blood capsules used to be used in wrestling, but they weren’t a very well developed technology at the time and kind of sucked and looked bad, which is why blading became the standard method of getting color.
A few weeks back the NWA started alluding to a returning wrestler, and it was supposed to be Ricky Steamboat, but they’ve stopped hinting at it lately. The last plan Dave had heard was that they wanted Flair vs. Steamboat for Starrcade as a one off and they’ve offered him big money for an appearance, but that all plans thus far are for one show. There’s interest in doing more, but they seem only interested in locking him in for one show first, and even there he hasn’t actually accepted a deal.
There’s talk of Greg Valentine coming to the NWA as a Horseman. Dave thinks this is just something Valentine is using to strengthen his bargaining position with Vince and it’d be a mistake to seriously consider doing this.
Dave thinks it’s about 80% likely that Paul E. Dangerously, Dennis Condrey, and Randy Rose will come to the NWA in the next few weeks. This should lead to a complete face turn for Cornette’s Midnight Express and a feud between the two Midnight Express teams, which ought to get over great because of Cornette and Dangerously’s ability as managers.
Dave gives a report from the United Association of Wrestling Fans convention in Memphis. This was the first such gathering for the group, which splintered from the Wrestling Fans International Association (est. 1967) after last year’s WFIA convention led to a lot of dissatisfaction among members. Dave goes on for a few pages on this, and I don’t want to make this too long, but some key things from the convention - the group inaugurated a Ring of Immortals, since someone has copyrighted the idea of a Wrestling Hall of Fame, with members voting on Lou Thesz and Bruiser Brody for wrestlers, Wild Red Berry and Ernie Roth for managers, and Sam Muchnick and Vince McMahon Sr. for promoters going in. Lots of people from the wrestling press and industry were there, including Lou Thesz, Paul E. Dangerously, Missy Hyatt, Eddie Gilbert, Al Costello of the Fabulous Kangaroos, and more, and there was a press conference where everyone I named answered questions, including Thesz talking about Maeda’s UWF and the economic hardships faced by wrestlers today. Thesz also called Kerry Von Erich the least qualified wrestler to ever hold the NWA World Title until someone reminded him of Dusty Rhodes, which made him say it was maybe a tie. They went to the live taping of the WMC-TV show in Memphis which airs live in Memphis and is edited down and aired later in the other cities the promotion runs. Dave takes a moment to note that contrary to WFIA conventions in the past, where the promotion worked with the group cooperatively, this convention did not have cooperation from the promotion other than being given tv tickets. Dave also went to the Monday night card in Memphis and runs through the card, which included Cactus Jack Foley doing a “hideous bump, by which I mean he nearly killed himself.” It was the same bump from Inoki’s 1983 match against Hogan that almost killed Inoki’s career, falling backwards off the apron. Dave heard a thud on the concrete and there was a puddle of blood, but fortunately Foley apparently only had the wind knocked out of him. Finally, there was a trivia contest which Dave blew his shot at winning when he first got the wrong answer on who the first wrestler Jim Cornette managed was (Sherri Martel, which Dave isn’t even sure Jim would get right), and then in the first tiebreaker he guessed wrong on who Jay Strongbow and Sonny King beat to win the WWWF tag team titles (the answer was Baron Scicluna and King Curtis, not Dave’s guess of Luke Graham and Tarzan Tyler).
A bunch of letters this week offering ideas for Turner and the NWA. One letter says push Ron Simmons (and more Black wrestlers in general), and also get the Guerrero brothers in and give them a big push. Also, more junior heavyweights.
Someone asks when Dave’s going to report on Dusty’s legal situation in Las Vegas. Dave says he’s checked with both the courts and police department in the area and there’s no record of any such incident or legal situation. So yeah.
Once again, we come up to Dave’s award favorites. For Most Improved Wrestler, Dave thinks Samson Fyuki of the Foot Loose, Biff Wellington, and Sting should get the top three spots, while for Most Unimproved Wrestler, he thinks Shunji Takano, Ricky Morton, and Bam Bam Bigelow are the big three. Manager of the Year will be a debate between Cornette and Dangerously, and Dave thinks Cornette edges Dangerously out by being better at ringside. Jimmy Hart is Dave’s pick for third. For Best Television Announcer, Dave thinks Jim Ross, then Lance Russell, and finally Tony Schiavone are the top three. For Worst Feud of the Year, Dave goes over a bunch of options but picks Tully Blanchard vs. Midnight Rider because they spent so much effort to try and get it over then just dropped it. Last, for Worst on Interviews Dave quotes Steve Williams and says there’s no contest. “When you’re the best in wrestling, they don’t call you a great wrestler. They call you The Grappler. Beat me if you can."
Jeff Bowdren contributes another column, this time ranking the top ten tag teams of the 1980s so far. He gives each a paragraph, but I’ll just give you the list: 10. The Freebirds, 9. Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood, 8. The Midnight Express (Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condrey), 7. Riki Choshu and Animal Hamaguchi, 6. Riki Choshu and Yoshiaki Yatsu, 5. Akira Maeda and Nobuhiko Takada, 4. Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane, 3. The British Bulldogs, 2. Bruiser Brody vs. Stan Hansen, and 1. The Crush Girls (Lioness Asuka and Chigusa Nagayo).
Rick Steiner is probably the only act in the NWA that isn’t either getting stale or in a state where their role is confused. Which means he’s become one of the hottest acts in the company.
NWA’s Thanksgiving week cards will be headlined by Flair vs. Bigelow. Windham vs. Dusty and Road Warriors vs. Sting and Luger are going to be the other big matches for those cards. Expect Road Warriors vs. Bigelow and Rhodes at Starrcade.