Wrestling Observer Rewinder

November 28, 1988

Before we get to the real news of the week, Dave spends a long time talking about the recent WWF tv tapings in San Francisco and Sacramento. The Superstars taping in San Francisco on the 15th of November legitimately sold out, but for whatever reason, about 1,900 folks who bought tickets didn’t wind up showing up, so that’s weird. Dave compliments WWF’s promotion machine - they did a lot of publicity over tv and radio in the days leading up to the event, which brought the show from only 6,000 tickets sold the day before to a sellout (12,200 paid and 2,400 free tickets given away), which is very impressive for a Tuesday night show. He also talks about how he saw friends of his from high school there who aren’t wrestling fans and talks about how if you only come to the area once or twice a year, like WWF does, then Hogan works really well as a draw, especially combined with the kind of publicity WWF goes for. The show becomes an event to go to, and once again Hogan is fairly well proven to be about the only guy in the States who can draw non-fans.
As for the Superstars taping itself, Howard Finkel was the best thing. Crowd responses weren’t much, and the audience was too casual for anything subtle to work on them at all. Back to Finkel, though, Dave’s never paid too much attention to ring announcing before, but for this show he decided to focus away from the wrestling and says Finkel is “meticulously perfect” at his job and deserves to go into the hall of fame for ring announcers (looks like it took 30 years for Finkel to wind up voted into the Observer Hall of Fame). Anyway, notable events from the taping included Big Bossman wrestling Pete Ketchum in the opener for the first hour of Superstars tapings, and the audience didn’t realize how things worked, so they started chanting “refund” thinking they’d been swindled and weren’t going to see Hogan after all. Harley Race turned face with a promo and the crowd didn’t care, and then his match against Jim Gorman got no response and his style just isn’t right for today’s audiences. Fun trivia fact: when Barry Horowitz was first starting in the Carolinas, his ring name was Bret Hart. The Brother Love interview segment with Randy Savage and Liz was pretty over, and Brother Love is surprisingly over. In the second Brother Love show segment, Andre did some really good acting and Dave really enjoyed that. Mean Gene does crowd interviews between hours and these aren’t plants, as exemplified by one from this show, where the guy “looked like he was on furlough from a Masachussetts prison” and responded to Gene’s questions by screaming into the microphone “Mean Gene, you’re a ------!” (and he didn’t mean bundle of sticks). There was an unplanned intermission because some of the audience started fighting in the cheap seats and that actually got more heat than the actual matches. Ironically, what followed was the Rockers and the Brainbusters in what turned out to be a 1-2 minute brawl all the way back to the dressing room instead of a match (still the best action on the card). Demolition turned face but the crowd didn’t get it. Warrior had an absolutely awful jobber squash against Randy Tyler, who was somehow the one who really fucked everything up, leading to Warrior getting a different squash against Conquistador Estrada to get something presentable for tv. By the time the penultimate match (Haku vs. Frankie Valdez) came on, a lot of the audience had left and those left were throwing garbage at the ring because they wanted Hogan and hadn’t gotten a second of Hogan. Half the crowd was gone by the time Hogan came out for the match with Bossman, including Dave, who left after that Haku match.
The next day WWF taped Wrestling Challenge and the November 26 Saturday Night’s Main Event in Sacramento, drawing just shy of a sellout. Dave is utterly baffled by why the crowd reactions for Curt Hennig are the way they are. He gets zero reaction at all despite his push, and Dave’s heard two prevailing theories from those closer to the situation than him: one idea is that even though he’s not the same character as DiBiase, for whatever reason fans see him as something of a copy based on how he came into the company. The other idea is that while Hennig’s a great worker and had a strong personality for AWA, among WWF’s personalities he doesn’t stick out enough. Anyway, as far as the SNME taping goes, the only real highlight was the Brother Love segment with Hogan which led to Hogan slamming Brother Love and cuffing him to the ring ropes. Dave has been told “it would take an editing miracle to make this anything but the worst SNME in history.”
Watch a chunk of Saturday Night's Main Event
Some new information about the Leonard/Lalonde fight - although 13,000 were in attendance, only 5,000 were there with paid tickets. This translates to a $2.3 million gate, but an overall $6.5 million loss for the local promoters who had the rights for ticket sales. WWF has also revised their initial claim of a 7.2 buyrate down to a 5.8 (which would be 630,000 buys and a gross of $19.5 million). Frankly, even if Dave hadn’t gotten word from folks in the cable industry, it’d be clear that the numbers are completely unrelated to reality at this point. Despite the gag order, Dave has been contacted by a few national cable systems and individual cable companies. One national system claimed a 1.3 buyrate, and another claimed 1.5. As for individual companies who sent numbers to Dave, they reported figures to Dave between 1 and 3.5, with an average of 2.2. Crunching the numbers and generously assuming the national systems are undershooting the real number and that the real buyrate was between a 2 and a 3, a 3 would be 282,000 buys for a gross of $9.87 million, which after the cable company’s take, taxes, etc. means WWF probably lost at least $2.5 million as a best case scenario. Anyway, WWF continues to call the fight a record setter, and to their credit, they probably did better business than anyone else would have. WWF still plans to be in the boxing business, with next year’s Leonard vs. Hagler fight in the offing, so for their sake they’d better have learned the right lessons.
As for upcoming big shows, there are a few notes about Clash of the Champions and Royal Rumble. The December 7 Clash has had to change plans with the Sheepherders departing for WWF, as they were meant to be in the U.S. tag title final against the Fantastics. As for Royal Rumble, Dave notes that the format of the match, which will include Hogan, Savage, DiBiase, Andre, Bossman, and Jake Roberts, is perfect for setting up Hogan and Savage for Wrestlemania if that is to be the plan. Also on the docket for the Rumble will be Rude vs. Warrior in a pose-off, Rockin’ Robin vs. Judy Martin, and Jim Duggan teaming with the Hart Foundation against the Rougeaus and Dino Bravo.
Now that all that has been said, the real big story of the week is that we’re 5 weeks from Starrcade and everything’s a mess. For one thing, as of the coming weekend, the only matches that will be announced are the battle of the Midnight Expresses and a flag vs. flag match between the Fantastics and Sheepherders. Obviously, the second one isn’t happening. Dusty came up with a plan for the top of the card - Flair vs. Rick Steiner for the NWA title, Road Warriors vs. Sting and Luger, and Dusty vs. Barry Windham for the U.S. title, but when Flair was told about his match and the finish he stormed out and skipped that night’s tv tapings. Apparently it was a real possibility he would have jumped to WWF, and he’s talked a lot lately about the matches he could have with Savage. Fortunately for TBS, Jack Petrick was able to talk Flair into staying th next day by changing the title match to Flair vs. Luger and cutting Dusty out of the decision-making. Dusty and Jim Crockett were now pissed off and tried to explain why Petrick’s idea wouldn’t work (and Dave doesn’t go into details to avoid giving away the possible finish), and Dusty tried to talk Petrick into making the main event Flair vs. Genichiro Tenryu, whom Dusty apparently referred to as “that Jap,” because it’s a match Flair has wanted to have to have a stiff, great match and get the NWA title over in Japan and bring Japan’s style to U.S. fans. Crockett has sent Jim Barnett to Flair to try and convince Flair to do things Dusty’s way, but Flair/Luger stands for now. And all that aside, lots of guys have been no-showing of late, and the night Dave’s writing this 12 guys no-showed, and Dusty Rhodes even missed all three major cards from the weekend for no clear reason, including a Friday night show wrestling Flair for the NWA title. And since Dusty gives all the finishes, they had nothing for the entire card when he failed to show up by the start of the show, which led to Kevin Sullivan and Gary Juster hastily putting a card and finishes together. Sunday night in Chicago Cornette’s Midnight Express, Dusty, Bam Bam, and the Fantastics were among the no-shows.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, since ordering all wrestlers to relocate to Atlanta, TBS has made all air reservations through the Atlanta airport. Which means that everyone who hadn’t relocated yet (or who simply chose not to) had to drive to Atlanta to catch their plane or else pay out of pocket for their own tickets. Steve Williams had a deal under Crockett ownership where the company would fly him from Shreveport to Dallas and then from Dallas to wherever they needed him, which is no longer in effect under TBS, so he’s been driving from Shreveport to Dallas for his flights. Dave just doesn’t understand how it makes any sense for TBS to do this within a month of buying the company when it can only cause morale to drop.
They Live has reached $20 million gross. That’s enough of a success that there’s talk of a sequel, and tv ads have started focusing more on Piper. John Carpenter is a bigger name director in Europe than the U.S., so the upcoming openings in France and Italy will probably lead to European success for the movie, which might make Piper a bit of a crossover star in Europe. Anyway, a film critic for the Boston Herald by the name of Paul Sherman is an Observer subscriber and sent in a partial transcript of an interview he did with Piper about his wrestling career. Piper says he’s so loyal to Don Owen because when he got fired from Georgia and the Georgia promoters tried to blackball him, Owen was the only one to hire him and he made sure to repay that kindness by never going against Owen, even when WWF tried to pressure him to. He also met John Carpenter at Wrestlemania 3, and Carpenter bought Piper dinner so he could talk wrestling with him, which led to a long-term correspondence that eventually led to asking Piper to do a movie. There’s a lot more here, but those are a couple of the choice bits.
The big news in Stampede is that the British Bulldogs are returning full time on November 25. Coming a week later are Junkyard Dog and Don Muraco, and the four will all come back to big responses. It’s up to Stampede to keep up the momentum they’ll bring, though, and they’ll need heels to go against (Muraco could be very good here for business as a heel teaming with Steve DiSalvo). Dave takes his usual jab at JYD’s ability by questioning how long he might be able to stay over unless he improves his workrate, but at this point it’s just noise to me to see this.
Over in Jarrett-land, the eventual merger of the Memphis and World Class promotions looks likely, given the amount of time the Dallas tv show has spent trying to get the Memphis guys over. Also, Dave incorrectly reported the closing of the Dallas office last week - it’s still there, but only Eric Embry and Bronko Lubich are working from that office.
The Kerry Von Erich vs. Tatsumi Fujinami match aired on tv two weeks back and Dave saw it and it was bad. In his words: “the worst match [...] that pitted two guys of that calibre” against each other that he can recall.
I can’t find the match, but here’s Fujinami saying it was hard to adapt to Kerry’s style
Jerry Lawler missed the November 11 show in the Sportatorium so they could run an angle to turn Jeff Jarrett babyface, and Lawler did an interview saying he never no-shows. He explains that he was in Dallas, but the World Class people who picked him up were paid off by Fritz Von Erich and drove him all over the city so he’d miss the show and not hurt Kerry before the Superclash III ppv.
Over in Portland, Matt Borne’s new heel gimmick is King Matthew Borne. He’s wrestling a mystery opponent on November 26 and said he had a hint about who it was before shouting “They Live!” I don’t disagree with Dave on this being a cheap way to sell tickets by implying that Roddy Piper will be making his return.
Jerry Blackwell may not re-open Southern Championship wrestling when he returns from Japan. Before he left, he began negotiations with the promoter of Continental, David Woods, to sell the promotion.
We’re coming up on press time and the situation with Dusty Rhodes and TBS is still up in the air. Dave personally believes Dusty may have fucked himself over and knows it. All the evidence so far points to power struggles behind the scenes, specifically between Flair and Rhodes, and that seems to come down to Flair having realized he’s allowed himself and the NWA world title to be devalued (gee, I wonder who might have given Dave this particular line) and stood up for himself and refused to go along with more ref bump disqualification finishes. Another facet of this is that TBS has given Flair a very lucrative contract and are marketing him as the focal point of the promotion, with babyface plans for 1989 and merchandise including a book, videotapes, and so on for after the turn. Flair’s contract also has a clause that gives him “unprecedented power for a world champion” that Dave doesn’t elaborate upon, and this was a sore point for Dusty, who apparently felt Flair went behind his back to negotiate the contract and retaliated by booking Flair for only five shows in December. Altogether, Rhodes may still be booker in name, but Dave suspects Kevin Sullivan is the real booker now and this absolute clusterfuck has left the promotion in a precarious spot just as it’s trying to get off the ground properly. This also means that it’s going to be really hard to make anything worthwhile come out of Starrcade this year, given that all this has eaten up all the time to build toward the show.
Apparently Dusty Rhodes was also planning to bring his 18-year old son Dustin in, and well, something to be said for timing.
Jim Garvin also quit the NWA this week.
As for Starrcade, they announced a live “Straight Talk with the Boss” interview segment with Magnum T.A. for the show. The promotion of this segment and reason to have it at all are both confusing. They re-aired the video of Magnum running on the beach with his mom from years ago (used to build a 60 minute draw between Flair and Magnum in Norfolk), which is just odd. Why not do an updated video of some kind. Why do this at all? Last year’s show struggled to fit the 7 matches it had into the time frame they had, and this year’s show looks like it will have even more matches and only half an hour more time. So what’s the point, especially since this doesn’t help sell tickets?
UWF in Japan got its first tv exposure with a one hour show airing some of their matches in prime time on Tokyo channel 6 (an independent station) and throughout the country. The show drew a national 12 rating, making it the third highest rated wrestling show all year after the Main Event (Andre vs. Hogan) in February and Dump Matsumoto’s retirement show. As part of the promotion for the show, Akira Maeda had several appearances in the media where he straight up called New Japan and All Japan fake and said UWF’s fights are real.
Maeda’s comments apparently infuriated Hisashi Shinma, co-founder of the original UWF, who has declared that he’s starting a new promotion. The new promotion will be mixed gender and include the women of JWP and a number of other Japanese wrestlers like Ryuma Go, and will feature El Gran Hamada vs. Atsushi Onita. Oh, and all this is set to begin December 3. Also, Shinma has gotten leading karate gyms to get top class martial artists and challenged Maeda to a “real” match against any of them. Obviously not going to happen - there’s nothing in it for Maeda.
Also related to JWP, Shinobu Kandori has been sent to Thailand to learn kickboxing. Meanwhile, Devil Masami, Yu Yamazaki, and Xochitlil Hamada are going to Mexico, and this will all lead to Masami and Kandori returning to Japan to meet in a big main event.
Hiroshi Hase had a nasty staph infection in his knee that required surgery. He’s going to be out of action for months, and quite possibly permanently.
All Japan fired Ashura Hara just before the annual tag tournament was to begin. This means Tenryu has no partner and also punches a big hole in the main event, on a similar level to when Arn and Tully left the NWA, maybe even worse because the only really viable replacement partner would be Toshiaki Kawada, who’s a junior heavyweight and part of the Foot Loose. The reason for firing Hara is said to be that he got himself into huge debt and Baba bailed him out several times, but he kept on doing it and Baba said enough is enough.
Weekly Gong Magazine in Japan will be publishing a ten-part interview with Barbara Goodish, widow of Bruiser Brody, beginning in a few weeks.
Dusty Rhodes is claiming he missed the weekend shows because he was ill.
Remember those balloon payments the NWA wrestlers were supposed to receive in the spring from Crockett? Well they got them. Or, well, they got 40% of what they were owed and that’s all they’re going to get. One major NWA star (let’s guess the source) is apparently out around $120,000.
Big Van Vader Leon White is running an independent show he’s calling Superclash ‘88 in Boulder Colorado on December 2.
Lia Maivia and Larry Heiniemi were released on a bail of $20,000 in the extortion case mentioned last week. They and Ati So’o were required to surrender their passports and have been ordered to not leave Hawai’i, not be in contact with any witnesses or John Wakayama or his family. On Wednesday, the three were indicted on two counts of extortion each.
Manny Fernandez was arrested earlier this month on charges of assaulting a fan.
Over in the WWF, Vince is keeping the Rougeaus and the Bulldogs separated until Survivor Series.
On November 11, WWF drew 12,149 to the Nassau Coliseum to see Hulk Hogan and Brother Love in the main event. No, Hogan didn’t wrestle Brother Love. It was a Brother Love show interview segment that drew the house, which throws everything you thought you knew about promoting wrestling out the window. Hogan did bodyslam both Slick and Brother Love before pulling Brother Love’s pants off to reveal red polka dot underwear.
John Studd returns to WWF at one of the next two tv tapings.