Wrestling Observer Rewinder

December 05, 1988

In probably the only time Portland Wrestling will ever be the lead story, the Oregon State Athletic Commission shut down Don Owen’s promotion for violating many regulations. The promotion and commission have been at odds for months, but events on Saturday led to an emergency hearing Tuesday where the commission suspended Owen’s promoter’s license. It all started back on November 5 when Matt Borne did a promo ahead of his match against Steve Doll a week later, in which he said “the commission had better be here because there will be blood all over the place,” which the commission was very much against. Borne did indeed bleed on the 12th and the referee stopped the match, per the rules. This led to a November 15 emergency meeting of the commission, where not only the blood but also the fact that Owen still wasn’t using the guard rails the commission was ordering him to use (the same kind you see WWF has) were at issue. Owen’s lawyer said the blood was an accident, and Owen himself testified that their use of cable barriers was in compliance and that he knew nothing of what Borne was planning and that since wrestlers were independent contractors, he had no control over what they did in the ring. A security guard had retrieved the blade and brought it for inspection as evidence, and the commission rescinded his license. He appealed on Friday, but the judge ruled in the commission’s favor and so the promotion has had to cancel its Thanksgiving weekend show. Also, that tease of Roddy Piper for the show? Turns out it the mystery guy was really supposed to be Rip Oliver returning as a face.
The Oregon story has managed to hit newspapers nationwide, but Dave expects there to be a compromise and resolution sometime this coming week. The commission and Owen’s promotion are in a bit of a double bind. Owen needs the commission to come to terms with him or he’s out of business, and the longer he waits the greater his odds of losing his talent and tv slot, while the commission needs the money that Owen’s promotion provides in order to support itself. Ultimately, it’s in the best interest of both parties for Owen to keep running, and thus you see the main issue with athletic commissions and wrestling in this era: commissions need wrestling to be regulated to prop them up, which creates perverse incentives. Anyway, it’s interesting to note that all of the above hit a head just a week before Mel Saraceno’s new promotion is set to open on December 3.
The “Dusty flu” is the latest addition to the wrestling vernacular after Dusty missed the entire weekend. Dusty claims to have been just ill, but it appears to be highly contagious, as several wrestlers no-showed all throughout the week. Dusty’s got so much heat over this with the Turner executives that Jim Crockett has been ordered to replace him as booker. Well that cleared up Dusty’s flu real quick, and Dusty’s back to book. I think. Dave’s writing here is a bit snide and difficult to parse to actually understand what the fuck he’s on about.
Starrcade has been finalized, and these are the matches we can expect. Flair vs. Luger for the NWA title, with the title able to be won by disqualification. Road Warriors vs. Sting and Dusty in what seems to be a non-title match. Barry Windham vs. Bam Bam for the U.S. title. Mike Rotunda vs. Rick Steiner for the TV title with Kevin Sullivan in a cage above the ring. The battle of the Midnight Expresses. The Koloffs vs. the Russian Assassins, where if the Assassins lose, they have to unmask and Paul Jones has to retire from wrestling. The Fantastics vs. Ron Simmons and Eddie Gilbert for the U.S. tag titles.
Turner is putting together another ppv for February 19, 1989, which they’ve tentatively named “Chi-Town Heat II: Freddy’s Final Revenge.” They’re hoping to get Flair/Steamboat at the top of the card, and Dave thinks it’s a bit of a miss to try putting that on in Chicago. Flair and Steamboat is a legendary feud, yes, but only really among fans in the Carolinas and Toronto, so they’re going to have to work hard to get it over before the show if they want it to sell. It should be excellent in the ring, though. No kidding - Dave’s going to give one of the matches between the two 6 stars. Suck it, Tokyo Dome.
Finally, Clash of Champions 4: Season’s Beatings is set for December 7. Dave thought the name was dumb until he heard the Cornette commercials for it, so yeah. Flair and Windham vs. Eaton and Lane is going to be the main event, and that alone might make this the second best of the Clash shows to date.
Survivor Series is in the books. Out of all the ppvs in 1988, it was easily the best so far, but the buyrate looks likely to be less than that of 1985’s The Wrestling Classic. Initial projections are currently putting it around a 4% buyrate, with overall interest way under that of Summerslam because there just wasn’t any hot angle for this show. Dave spends a while talking about how in the U.S. tournaments and high concept shows like this tend not to draw big interest like they do in Japan, because audiences here are all about big time singles feuds. Dave goes through the show and covers the matches, with copious notes. Some of those notes include how Blue Blazer looked real good, but him submitting to a figure four says everything about their plans for him. The ten team match was paced like a really good Japanese match until the last few minutes, and Dave gives it 3.5 stars, saying it would be 4 stars easily if the crowd had bitten on the angle at the end or the last 9 minutes of the match when things started to slow. That angle? Demolition came back out to run off the Powers of Pain and Mr. Fuji, but the crowd just didn’t get that they were supposed to be babyfaces and the Powers of Pain were now heels and it went over like a lead balloon. Why the double turn? Supposedly WWF feels that the Powers couldn’t handle promos on their own and needed Fuji to be their heater, while Demolition can do interviews fine. As for the main event, Dave says “we had to wait the 29:10 for the next match to end just to see if Randy Savage was going to give Hulk Hogan a dirty look after they both survived the match. He did, and we can make our plans for the Wrestlemania main event.” And that more or less says what we need to say about that. Dave goes on a tangent in covering the main event where he comes up with the idea of Howard Finkel as a heel ring announcer intentionally screwing things up (calling Mr. Perfect “Larry the Axe” or announcing the wrong winners to matches) as a better swerve than Monsoon saying that the handcuff keys had fallen out of Slick’s pocket. Overall, the main event was really well booked and had good action after Jim got eliminated, so Dave gives it 3 stars. Really good show all around.
The November 26 Saturday Night’s Main Event is also in the books, but it sucked. The audience noise was completely dubbed over, all the matches were bad, and the only thing remotely good was Hogan beating up Brother Love, but after seeing it happen four times in the span of a week, it just doesn’t do much for Dave. The Rougeaus reading off cue cards was worse than Warrior’s match, even.
They Live has surpassed $35 million box office.
Ratings for the Saturday TBS show for the NWA have been increasing lately. The Midnight Express feud, Road Warriors turning heel, and the Steiner angle are all probably partially responsible for the uptick. Meanwhile, WWF’s Prime Time Wrestling has been steadily dropping in ratings over the same period.
The actual gross for the Sugar Ray Leonard fight was $9.9 million, which puts the ppv buys in the 3-3.5% buyrate range. Dave underestimated the losses for WWF, though, because he was assuming that WWF had gotten the cable companies to give large guarantees to offset the losses for anything under a 5% buyrate. A few did, but most didn’t give guarantees above the 2.5%. All told, WWF’s losses appear to be at least $4.5 million, but WWF’s still claiming to have made money and that they’re planning to do another boxing ppv in March. Boxing promoter Bob Arum called out WWF for lying, but given his ppv fight with Thomas Hearns in the main event three days earlier did only a 1% buyrate, he might need to complain louder.
[NWA] On Saturday the Road Warriors and Dusty did the angle where Animal pulled a spike from his shoulder pad and stuck it in Dusty’s forehead and then his eye. It was bloody and worked well for getting the Warriors over as heels down south, though up in northern cities they’re still being treated as faces. This was originally supposed to happen on Starrcade, but Dusty moved it up so he’d be part of a major angle to preserve his position a little longer. Anyway, Dusty’s going to work with an eyepatch like Rooster Cogburn in True Grit now.
NWA’s Thanksgiving week shows didn’t do anywhere near the business they expected. It wasn’t a financial flop, but it was far and away the least financially successful Thanksgiving week the promotion has had in years. For the Richmond show, at least, they have the excuse of either the promotion or the local tv affiliate screwing up and running ads for the December 11 show instead of the November 27 show.
TBS has had talks with Gordon Solie about coming back to work the Sunday show. They’re planning to have J.J. Dillon as co-host in order to entice him to stay, since they’re planning to drop a bunch of managers next year and want him to feel secure in his spot even if his manager duties disappear.
The AWA’s return to the Twin Cities drew 1,500 fans, despite giving away thousands of free tickets. Pretty much only those who paid actually showed up, though maybe bad weather can explain the lack of the freebies attending. Anyway, it’s AWA, so you know a bunch of people no-showed, including the chief draw for the house, Kerry Von Erich, along with Ricky Morton, D.J. Peterson, and the Magnificent Mimi (who was supposed to beat Madusa for the women’s title). AWA claimed flight delays for all but Peterson, whom they didn’t mention at all. Mimi missed the show due to legit illness, at least, and gave them a heads up, so they were able to bring in Wendi Richter to fill in and take the title off Madusa. Morton supposedly missed his flight, and Kerry claimed he had to go to Japan despite his Japan tour not starting for another four days.
As far as Superclash III goes, its odds of success have dropped. AWA’s ESPN show has been dropped from its prime time slot to a 4 pm Monday slot, putting it during most people’s work hours. For whatever it was worth, they’ve dropped the superheavyweight battle royal.
November 25 at the Sportatorium was the largest gate at the venue in a while, coming in at $11,200. Kerry Von Erich beat Jerry Lawler clean in the main event cage match, making Lawler the favorite going into their Superclash match, since this one aired on television. Kevin no-showed for his match against Super Black Ninja, though, and they had a new heel referee who gave the heels a number of wins early in the show. Dave thinks heel referees must be Lawler’s new favorite gimmick.
Kevin and Kerry Von Erich are both in Japan as of the writing of this portion of the newsletter, and it’s doubtful how much longer Kevin will have a career. He had a CAT scan recently, and it showed severe scarring on his brain from his multiple concussions throughout his career, and one doctor even recommended brain surgery. Even so, Kevin is going to be highly susceptible to concussions, so he’d better be careful.
Jack Petrick of TBS was interviewed for Weekly Fight magazine this past Monday and had a few things to say about how things are going to be run. He basically said Jim Crockett and an unnamed other party will run the company day to day, and that if Crockett wants Dusty to stay as booker, Dusty will stay as booker. The bulk of the interview focused on his desire for more talent trading between the States and Japan, and it looks like Flair may be going to Japan in February. Speaking of Flair, a source Dave has found reliable in the past says that the odds of Flair vs. Steamboat happening is unlikely. Never say never, though.
Speaking of wrestling magazines, one of them said of Dustin Rhodes that “if he’s half the man his father is, he still needs to lose weight.
Apparently Madusa won’t be allowed to work Superclash III, so she’s basically out of the AWA entirely now. Also, despite already signing with WWF, Ron Garvin will be working the show because he had already signed a contract and nobody’s interested in causing a legal snafu.
Watch: Wendi Richter vs. Madusa
Irv Muchnick interviewed Antonio Inoki for Penthouse, and Inoki says the contracts for the Soviet Olympic wrestlers will be signed on the 20th of December. Because Inoki is Inoki, he said he’d love to put a world class American wrestler together with one of the Soviets as a tag team in Japan, and even talked about retiring after wrestling one of the Soviets by saying that if he won, he’d be going out “in a blaze of glory.” Surprising was Inoki’s honesty, as he talked about the match with Ali being the scariest he ever had because it really was a shoot (though he didn’t elaborate beyond that) and spoke highly of Lou Thesz and Satoru Sayama, saying that Sayama was a one-of-a-kind performer who transcended the limitations of his size. He also spoke respectfully of Fujinami and compared Fujinami favorably to himself. Interestingly, Muchnick asked him about the Crush Girls, and Fujinami feigned ignorance of their existence and was a bit condescending about joshi wrestlers as a topic. He also said Hogan was much better than Flair and Savage, spoke warmly about Giant Baba, and had both good and bad things to say about Akira Maeda. I wish I could link the article, but it never wound up running.
[All Japan] With Ashura Hara fired, Tenryu is now teaming with Toshiaka Kawada, which has broken up the Foot Loose tag team.
Dave issues a correction - All Japan will not be running tag tournament shows in Hawai’i. Giant Baba is interested in running there in the future, though.
On November 23, Lia Maivia, Ati So’o, and Larry Heiniemi entered pleas of not guilty on charges of extortion.
**Wade Keller writes in this week to talk about why all this “controversy about smart fans, what they are, what they think, what their responsibilities are” is in a word, stupid. He’s responding to the letter from a couple weeks back that said Owen Hart is hurting the business, and basically rips it apart. He also argues that the business needs to proceed from a stance of assuming that the fans are pretending to believe but that it’s common knowledge that nobody really believes. Dave responds to point out that the percentage of fans who aren’t smart to the fact that wrestling is a work is vanishingly small. If every smart fan stopped watching, tv ratings would tank to maybe 10% of their current numbers and wrestling would go out of business on tv. The challenge for promoters is that they either have to be able to figure out what fans want and give it to them or be so good at promoting that they can convince the fans that they want what the promoter wants to give them. Currently, only Vince McMahon is capable of the second while also being able to turn a profit.
Deep South Wrestling lost their tv time slot and it appears they’re done.
On January 3, the trial of Invader #1 (fuck Invader #1) is scheduled to begin. The charge is voluntary homicide, though Dave hears the charges may be re-elevated back to first degree murder.
Dean Malenko has an upcoming Japan tour and is apparently thinking of retiring after it’s done.
While Chigusa Nagayo was in Canada, Stampede did a tournament to crown the IWA World Women’s Champion. Nagayo was billed as the Asian champion, Rhonda Singh as North American champion, Lola Gonzales as Mexican champion, and Evita Alonzo as European champion. They actually ran two tournaments, one in Calgary and one in Edmonton, with Nagayo winning both tournaments. Stampede, at least, pushed her hard in their programming, saying that many considered her the greatest female wrestler ever.
Watch: Chigusa Nagayo World Revolution, which has clips from throughout her North American tour