Wrestling Observer Rewinder

December 12, 1988

Two big pieces of news hit the Universal Wrestling Corporation this past week: Dusty Rhodes resigned as booker on Wedesday and Jim Crockett’s time in charge will be up on January 1. Dusty’s resignation appears to be a forced resignation ordered by TBS execs, and Crockett is filling in for him as booker until he ceases to steer the ship in January. Coming in will be Jim Herd, a regional manager for Pizza Hut and number two guy in their marketing department, and he’ll be given the title of Executive Vice President under Jack Petrick. Herd does have some history in the wrestling business, as he was the director for Vince McMahon Sr.’s tv tapings in Washington D.C. in the 1960s and for Sam Muchnick’s tv out of St. Louis from 1969 into the early 70s before becoming general manager of the station Muchnick’s tv aired on and eventually working for the St. Louis Blues NHL team in their front office. Sounds like a solid resume for the job to me - that’s some solid tv and wrestling experience and the marketing experience isn’t bad either. What could go wrong?
As for the booking position, it appears that they’re going to run that by committee, and Ric Flair appears to be the guy who’ll be the brains of that operation, which Dave has mixed feelings on. When TBS bought the company, Dusty was in a decent position, as Petrick doesn’t know all that much about wrestling and all his info came from Jim Crockett, who believes strongly in Dusty’s booking abilities. But then that behind-the-scenes stuff with Flair came to a head after brewing since October, and then Flair signed a new deal with TBS that gave him creative control on his finishes and angles. Rhodes responded by booking Flair for only five dates in December to weaken Flair’s position and the two blew up over the finish for Starrcade, which led to Petrick changing the main event from Flair vs. Rick Steiner to Flair vs. Lex Luger over Dusty’s head and Dusty missing shows due to what he claimed to be the flu. Then Dusty could see the writing on the wall and did the Road Warriors spike to his eye angle early, when that was supposed to be part of the December 7 Clash of the Champions in a bid for sympathy by aligning him with Sting, the hottest face in the company, ahead of Starrcade. Well, turns out that was a bad move, because all the blood during the Midnight Express vs. Midnight Express angle a few weeks earlier got TBS to send a memo about not doing blood, and Dusty just defied that. So where’s that leave Rhodes?
While Dusty Rhodes is out as booker, he is being given the opportunity to stay on as a wrestler. Whether that will be much of a long-term thing is debatable. Spoilers: he’s gone pretty soon. Dave notes that Dusty’s contract is another question, as outside of Hulk Hogan there probably wasn’t any wrestler legit earning more than Dusty. Another factor to consider is that a new booker likely won’t center the show around Dusty, and Dusty would rather make less as the centerpiece of a small territory than make a lot as a bit player in a national company. But who knows how much influence he’ll be able to exert through Crockett as Crockett sticks around in various roles. “Remember, Crockett stuck with Rhodes all the way out of business, and still after that.”
In other news, Nikita Koloff quit the NWA/UWC/WCW (whatever we’re calling them at this stage). The primary issue for him seems to be the matter of travel, as Dave believes he lives in Charlotte, though he also had fallen out of Dusty and Crockett’s favor and apparently felt he was about to get buried. Koloff quit on Sunday, and Dusty hired Junkyard Dog to fill the gap. Dave felt that this was just another bad decision at first, but with more thought has found it to be a symptom of an endemic issue with the company. 1989 needs to be a year of building new stars in order to get out of running a stale upper card, and this was a great opportunity to bring a fresh new face in for Starrcade, but instead they brought JYD in and he’s well past his prime as an attraction. And while he was an attraction in his day, he’s never been a great worker, so now that he’s over the hill as an attraction, he doesn’t even have good work to fall back on. If you need to rebuild, you need to rebuild using young talent, not talent who are past their prime. During the 70s, Dusty was probably the biggest name in the industry after Bruno Sammartino and Andre the Giant, and well, here we are after two years of centering a company around him when he’s past his prime.
At the time of writing, Superclash III is just days away, and Dave isn’t honestly clear on the line-up, but hopes to have one by the end of the issue. The show is cleared for up to 5.2 million households on ppv, which is far more than expected by anyone. That doesn’t mean the buyrate will be good, but even a 1% buyrate would be a huge success for the show. Spoilers: this show is not going to be a success by any measure. While the program says it’s a show put on by seven promotions (AWA, Northwest, CWF, CWA, Central States, POWW, and World Class), it’s really a Jarrett and Gagne venture with a little help from Dave McClane lending some of the POWW girls for the battle royal. Anyway, the program’s version of the lineup has Lawler vs. Kerry Von Erich to unify the World Class and AWA titles, Robert Fuller and Jimmy Golden vs. the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express for the AWA tag titles (except Ricky Morton never showed up to win the belts on November 26, so…), Wahoo McDaniel vs. Manny Fernandez in a strap match, Greg Gagne vs. Ron Garvin for the AWA tv title (Garvin’s started for WWF but has agreed to work the match, though Verne apparently doesn’t want him on the show at all now), a lingerie street fight battle royal (Mali, Paisley, Destiny, Pocahontas, Nina Ferrari, Brandi Mae, Luna Vachon, the Terrorist, Sasha the Russian, and Peggy Lee Leather are all listed), Sgt. Slaughter vs. Col. DeBeers in a boot camp match, the Top Guns and Wendi Richter vs. Diamond & Tanaka & Medusa (the Top Guns have agreed to work the show but the AWA has pulled them and subbed in D.J. Peterson and Derrick Dukes, and are looking for a replacement for Madusa despite her agreeing to work the show), Iceman King Parsons vs. Brickhouse Brown for the Texas title, Jeff Jarrett vs. Eric Embry for the World Class lightheavyweight title, and the Guerrero brothers (Chavo, Hector, and Mando) vs. Cactus Jack and the Rock and Roll RPMs.
Aside from JYD replacing Nikita at Starrcade, there are a few other changes to report. The opener is no longer the Fantastics vs. Ron Simmons and Eddie Gilbert for the U.S. tag titles, but whoever won those on Wednesday vs. Steve Williams and Kevin Sullivan. The Road Warriors vs. Dusty and Sting will likely be for the NWA tag titles. The managers are to wrestle in the bunkhouse stampede battle royal not only for Starrcade, but every show in the bunkhouse tour from December into January.
Independent wrestler Medardo “Jim” Leon was killed Wednesday night at his home. He worked NWF as Cuban Assassin and was more well known as Ricky Lawless. His killer knocked on the door, and after Leon closed it upon seeing who it was the killer then shot him through the door and shot again, hitting Leon’s hand. No known motive or suspects at this time. Leon was 27 years old. More info to come next week.
TBS viewers made approximately 350 angry calls to the station following the Road Warriors spiking Dusty angle. This is the most negative calls since Black Saturday in 1984 when Vince took over the TBS time slot, and worth noting is that the rating for the show with the spike angle was only a 2.5, significantly lower than the previous week and the show was bleeding viewers from the start. Apparently the reception was so bad that Ted Turner personally requested a copy of the tape for review and was behind the decision to blur reruns of the angle. Not realizing that the NWA blood runs too deep, Dave says “I suspect we’ve seen the last of graphically bloody angles from the NWA, at least in uncensored form.”
And while we’re back to this company, the idea of a booking committee might sound good in theory, but it’s never worked before. That’s not to say that it can’t work, but past history shows it’s a lot trickier to do right than it is to do catastrophically wrong. Dave likens the role of a booker to that of a coach. A coach may have assistant coaches giving input, but the coach has final say and responsibility falls on the coach for those decisions. Booking committees in wrestling, when those committees are democratic and don’t have someone simply making the calls, tend to lead to chaos and ridiculous arguments that bog things down and make it difficult to do constructive work. It probably can work, but it’s going to need some serious effort. Flair as booker is an unknown quantity. He’s made a good image and personality for himself, but can he help others the same way? TBS is looking to build a franchise around him, and he turns 39 in February. At the same time as they’re counting on him to become a cross-over media celebrity, they’re counting on him to turn out a 25+ minute 4 star match every night of the week. And add the job of booking 5 hours of tv, come up with angles to run, motivate wrestlers, book the house show cards in a way that makes sense, and take the heat from wrestlers who are being made to lose clean in order to regain fan support after killing so many towns when nobody in the promotion wants to lose clean. Putting Flair in this job might bring some much needed sense to the position, but it’s going to make his wrestling suffer and it’s honestly just way too much to put all of this on one person who is an active wrestler. The time just doesn’t exist. And it’s a waste of Flair’s talents, and the company has someone creative right there who nobody’s even considering for the committee.
But Dave’s not telling us who that is today, because he has a transcript from Pittsburgh Press reporter Mark Madden, who did an interview with Flair. Madden asked if Flair is the greatest of all time, who Flair considers to be in the same league as him, and a few other questions. In addition to offering no comment on Hulk Hogan’s wrestling ability, Flair responded to the first two of those questions as follows:
I don’t know if I’m the best ever. I’d like to think I am. It’s like in boxing, though--how can you compare Louis and Ali, or Ali and Tyson? But in my generation, I think I’m the best. I have the God-given gifts of wrestling ability, physical skills and the gift of gab. All three have made it possible for me to be very successful. Plus, I’ve had phenomenal health, which has been a key. [...] Not a lot of current wrestlers have my ability. I used to compete against a lot of great wrestlers--The Funks, Harley Race, Wahoo McDaniel, Ricky Steamboat. I still compete against Dusty Rhodes. Dick Murdoch, who only wrestles here part of the year because of Japan, is phenomenal. Of the current guys, Barry Windham is the best I’ve seen in a long time. One of the best matches I ever had was against him in Baltimore, at the Crockett Cup.
While Dave published the interview transcript, the interview was background from which to build this article
Dave wound up at the Vegas and San Francisco NWA shows Tuesday and Wednesday, and gives some reviews of those house shows. The Vegas show was the best live show Dave’s been to since night two of last year’s Crockett Cup, whereas San Francisco had a hard crowd and got a less than favorable impression. Highlights from Vegas include the first ever match between the Midnight Expresses, which went to a 20 minute draw and the crowd was so loud when Paul E. Dangerously came out that four seats down from Dave the noise was vibrating the arena enough that a drink fell over. Really excellent 3.75 stars, and while neither Dangerously nor Cornette are Bobby Heenan in terms of ability to get physical (and they did roll around a bit after the match), Dangerously got more consistent heat at ringside than Dave’s ever seen Heenan get. When they announced Dusty was in the hospital after the spike, everybody cheered. Flair and Windham had a 4.5 star tag match with Bam Bam Bigelow and Eddie Gilbert, in a first time meeting between Gilbert and Flair in the ring. And the Road Warriors beat Sting and Luger by disqualification in a 4 star match, and Luger had his working boots on and did really well. While San Francisco had the same matches in a different order, it just wasn’t as good. The Midnight Express match just wasn’t very good this night and Dave only gives it 1.5 stars, the Flair match was good, but not nearly as good as the previous night and Dave gives it only 3 stars. Ditto for the Road Warriors vs. Sting and Luger, which had the surprising incident of the fans booing Sting like crazy so much so that Sting even flipped off the fans while doing his big moves and got more heel heat that night than anyone but Dangerously. Also, Ron Simmons did double duty on both nights, beating both the Italian Stallion and wrestling Mike Rotunda for the tv title each night.
Don Owen and the Oregon State Athletic Commission reached a compromise, and Owen’s promotion is back in business. Owen agreed to use a bicycle rack style barricade and forgo blood. Matt Borne appears to have been suspended for his part in the whole incident.
Legendary luchador Blue Demon, the third most famous wrestler in Mexican history after El Santo and Mil Mascaras, had his retirement match recently, on a Saturday night show in Mexico City. He teamed with his son, Blue Demon Jr., and Ringo Mendoza to beat Pirata Morgan, El Satanico, and Emilio Charles Jr. They had big name luchadors from years past in attendance, including Ray Mendoza and Black Shadow, and Mexican tv covered the match on all different tv news stations. Blue Demon is 56 and began wrestling at the age of 16. He won his first title in the 1960s and stayed a full-time main eventer until 1983.
WWF is claiming a 4.2 buyrate for Survivor Series. That doesn’t sound terribly exaggerated to Dave, but his cable industry contacts say it’s a bit high. Even so, WWF probably got a really profitable take unless the show did abysmally, and it’s becoming apparent that the ppv industry is starting to flatten out and it’s becoming clear that TBS should be very happy if Starrcade manages a 2%. Because of the flattening out, it looks like WWF’s 4 shows in 1989 will probably make less money than the company made with just 2 shows in 1987. They’re going to need to come up with some new ideas to avoid that.
New Japan’s deal with the Soviets is going to be expensive, the “equivalent to an NFL football player” per wrestler according to one source. With TV-Asahi de-prioritizing wrestling, they’re not funding the deal. So the big question is how Inoki plans to get this paid for and sign a deal on the 20th. There’s rumor that he may try to work with Giant Baba to make it a joint venture with All Japan.
The UWF tv special from October 26 drew a 12.7 rating, making it the highest rated wrestling show of the year behind Dump Matsumoto’s retirement. The show was mostly interviews and clips of their training, with a bit of wrestling. Can’t argue with the results, though, as Tokyo channel 6 is rumored to be picking up UWF for a monthly broadcast next year.
Hisashi Shinma, former president of New Japan, is teaming up with Naoki Otsuka, who helped Riki Choshu jump to All Japan back in the day before Choshu double-crossed him and jumped back, are creating a promotion called The Original UWF. Shinma was the promoter behind the old UWF in 1984 after he lured Maeda away from New Japan, but the original Tiger Mask made a power play and got him booted from the group and the old UWF started its shoot style focus. Shinma is building this off the of JWP promotion, and he said at a press conference that he’ll have his wrestlers and get top karate fighters in as well and they’ll fight Maeda or Takada for the UWF name. Basically, this is Shinma trying to fight the threat the UWF poses to New Japan by diluting the brand out of a personal vendetta. Word is that he and his karate guys will show up at the UWF’s December show to challenge Maeda after he beats Norman Smiley.
On November 25, Don Nakaya Neilsen shook Maeda’s hand at a kick boxing show and the two agreed to a rematch of their 1986 match. The 1986 match was what propelled Maeda to his national level of stardom. However, shortly after agreeing to the rematch, Nielsen signed an exclusive deal with a kick boxing promotion, so the match appears to not be in the cards for now.
All Japan Women aired a highlight special called “Women Wrestlers Tour the U.S.” The show featured matches from their shows in Hawai’i and the Madusa vs. Chigusa Nagayo match from Las Vegas. The matches were all pretty bad, especially one where the Crush Girls wrestled two Hawai’ian wrestlers who were so bad that Nagayo and Lioness Asuka stopped selling and the match just became an amateur wrestling tie-up exhibition.
While the British Bulldogs and Don Muraco have boosted attendance for Stampede, the cards since they’ve arrived have been some of the worst ever promoted in Canada. Also, Dynamite Kid is the booker now.
World Class lost their Dallas channel 39 tv slot after having it for 7 years. They’ll be moving to channel 21. As for the content of the show, in recent weeks it’s pretty much revolved around nothing but Eric Embry and Jeff Jarrett, with all the other faces on the show (even including Michael Hayes) pretty much spending their promo time talking about Embry and Jarrett.
When Dave was in Las Vegas, he says the only thing anyone was talking about was what happened with Kerry Von Erich at the last AWA show. Not a lot of detail other than that at least four wrestlers in World Class already knew Kerry’s foot was amputated, but it shocked the vast majority. The amputation apparently didn’t happen until sometime between Kerry’s early comeback attempt against Brian Adias and his full-time return in November. That’s not to suggest coming back too early was necessarily the reason for the amputation - the most likely reason is that the muscle graft didn’t take and amputation simply became necessary. Dave has a friend who had a similar surgery, and apparently that kind of graft in the foot is only successful 25% of the time, and the friend also had to have his foot amputated, so the odds were always against Kerry keeping his foot. That he’s able to perform as well as he does is absolutely incredible, so big ups to Kerry.
WWF wrestler Ron Garvin won the WWC Universal Title tournament on Thanksgiving in Puerto Rico. He beat Carlos Colón in the final after a total babyface match up until Garvin faked a knee injury after a leapfrog and sucker punched Carlos to win. Since he’s already with WWF, Garvin has agreed to return so he can drop the title. Suddenly I’m thinking Ron Garvin might be one of the smartest about signing with WWF ever. Seriously, he was able to clear his remaining date then get given an extra one he’d be obligated to take because the company needed a title. That’s double the payday off a “fulfilling pre-existing obligations” date. Smart guy.
Watch: Ron Garvin wins the WWC Universal Title
”An independent on 12/2 in Boulder, CO promoted by Leon White (Big Van Vader) drew 600. Leon ripped 15 phone books in 29 seconds and he also had a masked ring announcer.” Scott McGhee, who had two strokes last year, did the honors for Col. DeBeers at this show, and it’s clear he’s pretty well done with wrestling. He’s currently in nursing school. In the main event Kokina (the future Yokozuna) subbed in for Tama and got pinned by Vader in under 5 minutes.
Chris Adams hasn’t lost his ring yet. He’s managed to run shows two weeks running now.
John Studd should return to feud with Andre the Giant at the December 7 Saturday Night’s Main Event taping.
Owen Hart ruptured something in his groin at Survivor Series when he leapfrogged Greg Valentine and Valentine forgot to duck.
Dave now has the story on what happened Thanksgiving night between the Rougeaus and Dynamite Kid. Vince warned them if things got out of hand during the match, they wouldn’t get paid, and according to one report he also told Dynamite specifically that the finish would have the Rougeaus rather than the Conquistadors at the end against the Powers of Pain to keep Dynamite from trying anything because he’d know they needed to be in the match most of the way. Obviously, in reality Ray Rougeau was eliminated five minutes in, and the Rougeaus got their gear and got out of dodge while the match was still underway. Smart move by Vince, honestly.
Expect Jim Herd to bring the following changes:
Wrestlers will get weekly paychecks based on their contract rather than get paid by the gate.
Hotels for the wrestlers will be paid.
TBS will handle travel and all wrestlers will fly out from their hometowns.
All tv tapings will be taped in Atlanta at a mid-sized arena.
The syndicated commentary teams will stay mostly the same, but David Crockett is coming off the TBS evening show to have his own solo time on the morning show. Mostly seems like a bone thrown to the Crocketts.
Crockett, Rhodes, and J.J. Dillon are being moved to smaller offices in Dallas.
Efforts toward gaining syndication in new markets like New York and Los Angeles.
Postproduction will be a thing for the tv shows, to improve overall production quality.
Jim Cornette, Bobby Eaton, and Stan Lane all got fired after the Alburquerque show on December 1. They worked things out later in the week, though, and were quickly hired back.
Let this bit from a letter marinate for a minute. “On the steroid subject, Andre the Giant was on 60 Minutes a while back for their report on Human Growth Hormone. Of all the wrestlers they could have chosen to interview on the subject, they chose Andre, who obviously is not involved with either steroids or growth hormone.””
Another writer provides an answer to a question about why WWF doesn’t have Hulk Hogan’s name trademarked from a few weeks ago. There’s a good reason for that. Marvel Comics has the copyright to the Incredible Hulk. And Marvel ever so kindly let the WWF know of this so that if they did want to call Hulk Hogan “Hulk” Hogan, they’d be happy to allow the use for a price.
Only two more rewinds until the end of 1988.