Wrestling Observer Rewinder

November 07, 1988

The NWA is dead. Long live WCW. Ted Turner has officially bought out the Crocketts and it is a new day (yes it is) in the world of wrestling. And that means the future is completely up in the air. Turner is taking over at a low point for the promotion, but there’s a core audience even while attendance and ratings are down, so between that and the talent available, there’s room to build. Jack Petrick will be overseeing the wrestling division and will be hiring someone to run the promotion starting on December 1. No word on who it will be (the Jim Herd era is about to begin).
On a smaller scale, a similar story is playing out in Texas, as Jerry Jarrett is negotiating a deal with the Von Erichs to take majority interest in World Class Championship Wrestling. Kevin and Kerry Von Erich are set to retain their minority stakes, and all three parties agreed to put money up front to clear the company’s debts. Late in negotiations, Kevin and Kerry tried to get a clause insured that would revert controlling interest back to them after a defined period of time. Jarrett is understandably not in favor of this clause, and no papers have been signed as of writing. Dave’s honestly not sure Jarrett could turn World Class around enough for such a clause to matter, but we’ll know soon enough what the result is, since as of the Friday before readers get this issue the deal will either be signed or dropped. World Class needs this deal to really have a chance, since their Dallas tv time slots are in jeopardy due to overdue bills.
Back to Turner/NWA, TBS bought the company despite the outstanding debts. Bill Watts, for one, still has not been settled up with, and other creditors are also still unsettled. There are even a couple lawsuits filed to recover debt. Good way to start out.
As for WWF, the Sugar Ray Leonard fight on November 7 is turning out to be a massive headache. National stories have run calling it a “financial bloodbath” and it’s not hard to see why. As Dave is writing, one week before the fight, just over 9,000 tickets have sold (out of 15,200 capacity), but WWF’s interest is in the pay-per-view numbers, since they paid a reported $9.5 million for the rights to promote the fight. WWF is trying to sell the fight for $29.95 and one report is predicting a buyrate of under 2%, which would mean WWF is looking at losses of around $6.5 million on this fight. Dave thinks the worry is a touch exaggerated and that this is in part boxing promoters not wanting WWF horning in on their turf. WWF is publicly predicting an 8% buyrate, and they have some stuff in their contract that would take the sting out of any losses. All that said, expect WWF to come out of this with less money than if they had not tried at all, and why the promotion seems to be in a panic the last couple weeks to try and right things as much as they can in the three weeks left before Survivor Series.
As a side note to the above, WWF is telling cable companies to keep buyrates for both the boxing match and Survivor Series secret. Makes sense. WWF loves to exaggerate their buyrates and other numbers, since it gives them the air of success. And because wrestling is largely ignored by the mainstream media, most mainstream media outlets don’t question their claims and are less likely to if they’re the only ones making any claims. But boxing is a different kettle of fish which the mainstream media actually cares about. And the media is looking at that and some mainstream sources are already calling this a bloodbath, and it’s unlikely WWF will be able to keep the numbers secret. Going against Jim Crockett? WWF wins promotion all day every day because Jim Crockett had no idea how to play the media game and expose opponents’ weaknesses. Against seasoned boxing promoters like Bob Arum? WWF is chum in the water.
The lineup for Survivor Series has changed once more. The changes are due to personnel changes. They may announce this on tv, but it may not be the final lineup. You’ve got Hogan/Savage/Hercules/Koko/Hillbilly Jim vs. Akeem/Bossman/DiBiase/Haku/Red Rooster for the headliner. You also have Ron Bass/Honkytonk/Danny Davis/Valentine/Badnews Brown vs. Beefcake/Warrior/Blazer/Sam Houston/TBA (probably Jim Brunzell). The match with the ten teams hasn’t changed, but it may depending on what happens with the British Bulldogs (more on that below). The final match listed has Jake Roberts/Ken Patera/Tito Santana/Brian Blair/Jim Duggan vs. Andre/Dino Bravo/Rick Rude/Curt Hennig/Harley Race (if he’s good to go). Some changes had to do with new ideas for what to do, while Don Muraco and JYD are no longer with the company following insubordination in France. The talent have been told that they were fired, while word in the office is they’ve been temporarily suspended (WWF does have a tendency to ask guys back after firing them). Muraco’s already got himself bookings for independent shows, while JYD is trying to get on a tour in All Japan.
Davey Boy Smith and Dynamite Kid gave WWF notice that they’ll be leaving soon. They put their notice in before the European tour and have begun talks with Giant Baba. They weren’t at the tv tapings this past week and word is they’re already done, though that’s not fully certain and they may finish out Survivor Series before going. While they certainly are no longer the same wrestlers they were in 1986, the Bulldogs were so over in Japan that they ought to be able to coast on that for a while if they do go back to Japan.
Third quarter (July-September) tv ratings have come out and they’re pretty inconclusive. All wrestling shows dropped from the first to second quarters, and third quarter ratings either stayed steady or continued to drop. WWF’s Prime Time Wrestling got a 3.1 rating, making it the third-highest rated show on cable for the quarter, and WWF’s All-American Wrestling ranked 9th with a 2.6 rating. The NWA’s World Championship Wrestling show fell to 11th place with a 2.5 (it peaked at a 6.6 in the early 80s and was the king of wrestling ratings), dropping 7% from last quarter’s rating. Their Sunday Main Event show stayed steady at 17th place with a 2.4, which was a small surprise.
They Live was moved back to opening in theaters November 4. For three weeks they’ve run national ads saying the movie will “debut Friday” so… good work. Halloween Four did good enough business after bumping They Live back a week that they pushed it back again. Seemingly unable to connect the genre to the time of the year, Dave notes that he’s been told that horror movies tend to do really well for a couple weeks before dropping off.
On October 25, WWF aired Saturday Night’s Main Event, and it was better than average for the show. Andre the Giant’s acting ability really helped it out, because he’s just so good with his facial expressions that he really got over the angle and got Jake and Damien over as well with the cartoonish fear of snakes. Dave talks about the synthetic boos sounding obviously fake (they’re never going to fix that, Dave). Anyway, Dave runs through the card. Jake vs. Rude was a good match and the angle with Jake, Damien, and Andre at the end was excellent stuff. Demolition beat the Hart Foundation in a short but good match with some solid action. Hogan beat King Haku and the notable thing is they seem to have dropped the whole helmet from the No Holds Barred movie idea. Dino Bravo beat Ken Patera in a three minute match for some reason. Finally, Big Bossman squashed Jimmy Powers.
Watch: Jake Roberts vs. Rick Rude
Remember last week’s talk about steroids? Well, last Wednesday gave us a couple of viewpoints. Jesse Ventura went on the FNN call-in show and talked about wrestling and his anti-steroid views. More on that once Dave’s had a chance to watch the tape. Lyle Alzado of Learning the Ropes, on the other hand, has been an outspoken promoter of steroids and made a statement on WRC-TV in Washington D.C. that all world class athletes in all sports have used or are using steroids. He says he used steroids for a decade with no negative side effects. Also, the October 24 issue of Sports Illustrated had a story about steroids in sports. Dave reiterates his opinion - if an adult wants to take steroids and is aware of the risks, fine. But he doesn’t like how it’s created an environment that almost coerces those who don’t want to take those risks to do so as well to have a chance at a push. He also doesn’t care for how many people refuse to take a wrestler seriously if he doesn’t use steroids.
Over in Memphis the big angle this week was the breakup of the Stud Stable. Cactus Jack Foley and Gary Young won the Southern tag titles on October 23, which earned them a shot at the Samoan Swat Team for the World Class tag titles. Because of this, on the October 29 tv show, the Stud Stable had a promo where Robert Fuller and Jimmy Golden asked Foley and Young to give them the title shot. They quit the group and got jumped and Foley bled a lot. Later on, Foley and Young got a bit of revenge, and Kent Ritchie (who comes out and awards the Covington Pike Toyota wrestler of the week award each week) said “People always want to know whether or not wrestling is fake and this proves it isn’t fake.”
Watch: The Stud Stable breaks up
You might be wondering why Lawler winning the World Class title wasn’t the biggest angle, and that’s a good question. They were really low-key about it and barely touched the finish, where big babyface Lawler won the title in a very heel way with assistance from fellow big babyface Jeff Jarrett. Anyway, Lawler and Von Erich have another match set for November 4, but it’s only for the World Class title, which prompts Dave into a brief rant about the waste of effort to promote unifying the titles and turning them into a single universally respected, legitimate title, so why are they allowing them to be defended separately? The answer, of course, is so they can have the real unification happen on the ppv, but this kills the unification gimmick in the key markets of Tennessee and Texas.
UWF’s November 10 show has a set card. The show sold out in 45 minutes on October 1 and will have Akira Maeda vs. Nobuhiko Takada, Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Malenko protege MacDuff Roesch, Yoji Anjo vs. Malenko protege Bart Vale, and Tatsuo Nakano vs. Shigeo Miyato. Their December 22 show, which will certainly sell out, is going to be in Osaka and will have Maeda vs. Bob Backlund headlining. January will be the real test as they emanate from Tokyo Budokan Hall, which even the Brody memorial show did not sell out.
Biff Wellington is doing really well for himself in his New Japan tour, as he’s getting compared to Dynamite Kid. He’s working a similar style to Dynamite, and it’s getting him a good bit of positive buzz.
Lucy Liccar, a Dutch boxer billed as world champion in women’s boxing, will have a match in All Japan Women against Yumiko Hotta on January 29. It’ll be a mixed sport match like Ali/Inoki, so that ought to be interesting.
The Japanese press reported that while in the U.S., Chigusa Nagayo won the World Class women’s title and the AWA North American Women’s title. A couple real championships there, no exaggeration at all, nope. She worked last weekend in Stampede and went to Mexico City on October 29 and had what was reportedly a really good match. People say she did a cross body off the top to the outside onto Martha Villalobos, with Villalobos three quarters of the way to the other end of the ring, and Dave thinks that might be an exaggeration (“I don’t think it is aerodynamically possible for a women to fly that far, except for maybe Jackie Joyner-Kersee but then we are dealing with a whole different subject”), but says he’s sure that even if it is exaggerated it was assuredly spectacular anyway.
British wrestler Pete Roberts is in talks with Giant Baba about opening a promotion in England. All the established promotions in England are pretty much on death’s door. Imagine if All Japan had beaten WWE to having UK promotion by 30 years.
Global Wrestling in Florida have officially folded.
Tickets for Superclash III went on sale this week and are moving slowly. The Top Guns have quit wrestling, so some wrestlers from Continental (Brad Armstrong and either Tim Horner or Tom Prichard) are tentatively scheduled to replace them as Wendi Richter’s partners against Madusa, Diamond, and Tanaka.
Wednesday will be the next hearing for the trial of Invader #1 (fuck Invader #1). Despite the “body attachment for Tony Atlas to appear, as of Monday he’s dropped off the face of the earth and apparently won’t be there. Once again, Invader #1 is getting air time on WWC’s tv show to proclaim his innocence.
The latest news on the British Bulldogs is they’re staying through Survivor Series. After that, like evolution, is a mystery.
Curt Hennig made his tv debut as Mr. Perfect at the October 25 Superstars taping. accounts from those who have seen it on the house show loop say the gimmick has not been picking up much heat outside of cities where he was already over from his time in the AWA.
Haku is being sued for $1.1 million by a guy in Baltimore who claims Haku bit his nose off during a fight. Dave asks the obvious: “Why would anyone mess with Haku in the first place?”
Here's the Rock talking about how Uncle Haku bit a guy's nose off
The Turner buyout means everyone is uncertain of their status over in Crockett country. Jim Crockett has a month to be in charge and run the company as cost-efficiently as possible if he wants to keep any kind of power, and if he doesn’t, his role will be severely limited. Dusty Rhodes’ position looks secure through the end of the year, at least. With less than two months to Starrcade, nothing official has been set, but it’s looking like we’ll probably see Flair vs. Luger for the world title, Rhodes & Bigelow vs. Road Warriors for the world tag titles, Windham vs. Sting for the US title, Midnight Express vs. Midnight Express, Russian Assassins vs. Koloffs, Sheepherders vs. Fanatics, and probably something involving Ron Simmons/Eddie Gilbert/Rick Steiner/Jimmy Garvin (maybe) vs. Kevin Sullivan’s Varsity Club.
Early in the week, Ric Flair no-showed a couple cities due to issues between him, Dusty, and Jim Crockett. The issues have apparently been resolved, but Flair was as close to quitting as he’s ever been and apparently said he was tired of how he was being used as world champion - he wants real finishes and quality opponents, and it seems the issue was that he refused to do the finish they’ve been doing in all the Flair/Luger singles matches on the loop. So now that he’s back, those matches became Flair and Al Perez vs. Luger and Nikita Koloff tag matches with Perez doing the job until October 29, when Flair and Luger did a singles match and were back to the same old ref bump and disqualification finish. Flair also refused to work against Bam Bam Bigelow in title matches, so all those for the month have become tag matches with Flair and Windham teaming against Dusty and Bigelow. Supposedly, Flair didn’t think putting Bigelow over was good for him or the company, since Bigelow didn’t get over in the WWF and hadn’t “earned” the spot and was too low on the card to put over. Also, there was concern that if Bigelow left during or after the program that it would make Flair look bad if he did put Bigelow over and the fans shat on the finish (and they certainly would).
There’s a very anti-Owen Hart letter this week that’s about smart fans and concludes with this, and it’s just an amazingly out there take:
I love watching matches with a lot of bumps and moves, but I’m not 100 percent smart either. Since learning about psychology, I appreciate those who don’t take many bumps but work the crowd a lot. Honkytonk [NB: changed the spelling so his name doesn’t get us filtered] Man may be a poor wrestler by readers’ standards, but he knows how to get heat. When Vince turns him again, he will be the No. 1 babyface in professional wrestling.
Please don’t hurt the business. I have never tried to smarten anyone up. I don’t talk smart. Shouting smart things at wrestlers hurts the business. Cheering the heels hurts the business.
I hope the readers get smartened up and realize that moves and bumps mean nothing, that heat is more important than bumps and that people like Owen Hart are not the best wrestlers. He hurts the business a lot.
Dave has some thoughts on this, because wow. He says he doesn’t think it’s anyone’s place to tell other fans how to behave at shows (within reason, obviously don’t try to abuse the wrestlers physically or offend the rest of the crowd or be in any worse taste than anything happening on the show). He notes that when matches are good, you don’t really have the issue of fans shouting smartass stuff because they’re too invested in the match to think to do that. As for smartening people up, Dave says he hates the term “mark” because some people use it for everyone they don’t agree with and others in and out of the business use it because they feel superior to the “marks,” but if there are “marks,” it’s not that they don’t know the business is worked. They do. Everyone does. They just need to suspend disbelief and pretend it is in order to enjoy wrestling. Vince McMahon has already smartened the public up, and being a little smart can enhance enjoyment. And nobody is 100% smart to the business, not even Vince McMahon or Ric Flair. If they were, they’d make no mistakes. And heck, being smart can get you set in your ways and the business can pass you by, too.Dave loves listening to wrestlers talk about ring psychology because every wrestler and promoter has a slightly different take and that’s how promotions develop distinct styles. Dave goes on a long tangent about ring psychology, the gist of which is that he’s seen guys have the same exact match in front of different crowds and once they got lots of heat and once they got none. It doesn’t mean they suddenly learned or forgot how to do ring psychology between those matches. The heat usually comes from the crowd being compelled by the issue between the wrestlers, and what makes someone a great ring psychologist is that they can wrestle an opponent with no pre-existing issue (and heck, maybe no clearly defined character, even) and create heat for the match during the match. He also steps in a bit to Owen Hart’s defense and says that nobody’s called him a great ring psychologist. What Dave has said, though, is once he gets that down, he’ll probably be the best wrestler alive because he can do so much more than anyone else and is willing to vary his routine enough that he’ll be able to have a great match with anyone. Not likely to happen in WWF, since they don’t want a lower card guy to overshadow the top of the card, but as with anything in entertainment, if he breaks through it’ll be because he’s broken the mold, not because he’s doing what everyone before him did.
Back to awards and Dave’s thoughts. For Best on Interviews, Jim Cornette and Paul E. Dangerously are the obvious top picks, and Dave gives Jerry Lawler the nod for third place due to the strength of his heel promos in World Class. For Best Wrestling Move, Keiichi Yamada’s shooting star press is the most spectacular thing Dave’s seen this year, hands down. Atlantis has some amazing topes and comes closest to the top after Yamada, but Yamada’s in a class of his own for this one. Finally, for Best Booker, Dave doesn’t really come down on a hard pick. He thinks Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson should be in the running simply for being successful year round. Not really a lot to write home about elsewhere, with the exception of Eddie Gilbert booking Continental and managing to create interest in a territory that was all but dead. So probably one of them.