December 19, 1988
- Always keep in mind that the card is subject to change. That’s the message of the opening line of the Observer this week. The biggest such story revolved around whether or not Kerry Von Erich will appear in the main event of Superclash III. The reason this was at issue? The Illinois State Athletic Commission was pressured by WWF to rule Kerry medically unfit to compete because of his foot. There’s precedent in the commission’s statutes for prohibiting boxers or wrestlers with artificial limbs from competing, and the Las Vegas incident last month has given WWF a good angle for trying to get the show shut down. The athletic commission receives a large portion of its revenue from taxes collected from WWF cards, so here’s your rationale behind how they’re able to push that pressure. Ultimately, the commission set up a hearing to review the matter. The statute dates back to the 1920s, but allowing or disallowing Von Erich without actually being sure of his situation (more on that in a bit) is a surefire way to catch heat from the public. The commission therefore scheduled the hearing for the day after Superclash, and WWF then sought an injunction to force the entire show to be cancelled, so the hearing was bumped up to Friday. Kerry was in Japan at the time, and the commission wound up using a loophole to allow him to wrestle at Superclash: Kerry and Lawler aren’t competing, but putting on an exhibition of wrestling holds, so the statute doesn’t apply. They also noted they have the power to grant waivers and have in the past for a boxer. So I guess the whole issue was much ado about nothing and also proves how arbitrary athletic commission rules really are.
- So about Kerry not having a foot - a bunch of wrestlers in the AWA and Jarrett promotions, as well as Kerry himself, are denying he’s missing a foot. Kerry’s press agent claims that the reason he showers with his boot on is that he wears an ankle brace inside the boot. Others are also claiming that the incident didn’t happen, that they’ve seen his foot, and so on. Apparently one person at World Class says Kerry definitely doesn’t have a foot, but that the denials will continue forever because everyone believes the whole world is marks. Anyway, Dave talked to a bunch of other folks who were at the AWA show in Vegas who were also at the NWA show he attended. Every one of them said they saw his foot come off, and one even showed Dave a photo of Kerry under the ring putting his boot back on, though Dave does say he hasn’t seen a photo of the foot without the boot. According to those who were at ringside, there’s no question. Dave ultimately says he may have to eat crow on this if it turns out to be false, but between friends and people in wrestling, Dave’s going to trust friends rather than wrestling folks because let’s face it, wrestlers lie. A lot. Just look at any time a wrestler signs with WWE or AEW and then denies it until the company officially announces their signing.
- To wrap up all of the above, Dave feels it’s really low of WWF to butt in on this matter. He compares it to if Road Warrior Animal were to bully Downtown Bruno. Superclash III hasn’t the faintest chance of being a success, and never has. WWF did not need to go to these lengths to sabotage the show. It’s a sign that Vince McMahon isn’t interested in healthy business competition, but monopolization of the industry. Looking back to last year and the positioning of the first Survivor Series and Royal Rumble shows, it’s clear that WWF saw Crockett as competition despite public denial of that. It would appear that literally all other wrestling is viewed as competition by WWF.
- Starrcade 1988 is a week away, and it’s still got some general admission seats available. The bunkhouse stampede match at the live show won’t be part of the ppv broadcast, so that’s 3 hours for seven matches. No changes to the card since last week, at least.
- Also, Clash of the Champions IV: Season’s Beatings took place on December 7. It drew a 4.5 national rating, so about 2 million homes. Of those who wrote in to Dave, the slight majority didn’t care for the show, and Dave also thinks it was the weakest Clash to date. Dave gives an overview of the card, which was the first show crewed by TBS rather than Crockett employees, which has a lot of folks pointing fingers regarding production quality (the crowd was invisible due to bad lighting, lots of technical glitches, an overhead camera that just looked bad, and Luger hosting was a bust, to name a few issues. Anyway, the Fantastics won the U.S. Tag Titles, beating Ron Simmons and Eddie Gilbert in the tournament final, and the crowd wound up booing the Fantastics despite both teams being faces. Steve Williams and Italian Stallion had an awful (-1 star) match that went over 15 minutes. Ivan Koloff pinned Paul Jones with one arm tied behind his back, which is weird since Jones is the one who claimed he could beat Koloff with an arm tied behind his back (-3 stars). The Road Warriors and Paul Ellering won the NWA six man tag titles in under 3 minutes in a singles match between Animal and Dusty Rhodes, where Animal won by disqualification when Dusty wrapped Animal’s leg around the post, then hit the referee, then tried to win via figure four. Why hit the referee before trying to win? Very confusing. Finally, Ric Flair and Barry Windham beat the Cornette Midnight Express in a 4 star match that for some reason was interrupted by a Paul E. Dangerously interview. This was the first big show with Jim Crockett in charge of the book, and to his credit, 80% of the matches had clean finishes. That said, only the opener and closer were really worth anything.
- Watch Clash of the Champions 4
- Baron Michele Leone, a major star on the west coast back in the 1950s, died on November 30. He was hit by a car while crossing the street two weeks earlier, and head injuries ultimately caused his death. One of his biggest accomplishments as a wrestler was main eventing a show against Lou Thesz in Los Angeles, drawing the first $100,000 house in wrestling history.
- Watch: here's a clip of Baron Michele Leone
- Last week, Medardo “Jim” Leon (aka Ricky Lawless) was killed at his home by a gunman. Local newspapers reported he was 27, though Dave has sources saying he was actually 29. The current suspect is apparently another wrestler, an independent wrestler who worked the same shows as Leon under the name of Vladimir Koloff. Dave’s hoping to have more information before the end of the issue, but if this is indeed the case, this is the second known instance of a wrestler being killed by another wrestler in this manner, the first being the killing of Bruiser Brody.
- Speaking of, we’re two weeks away from the trial of Invader #1 (fuck Invader #1). From what Dave hears, Gonzales is expected to enter a plea of guilty and has a plea deal in place already to serve no prison time and instead receive a long probation. Um… about that.
- Jerry Jarrett’s promotions are working on getting everything streamlined, as Eric Embry, Jimmy Garvin, and Michael Hayes have all been positioned as faces in Memphis, making Jerry Lawler the only guy playing face in one promotion and heel in the other.
- How doomed is Superclash III? AWA hasn’t had an ESPN show in several weeks except for the afternoon timeslot that nobody watches because they’re all working. They also haven’t had a proper tv taping since September. They’re barely mentioning it on tv in Memphis, so there goes any good marketing there. And over in Dallas, they’ve booked Lawler vs. Von Erich for the main event on December 16 for a rematch, so fans in Dallas have no reason to expect Superclash III to settle anything.
- Chris Adams is putting on a card at a high school and Percy Pringle will be wrestling the school’s principal.
- Don Owen voluntarily gave up his deal for tv in Seattle, so that seems to point to him no longer running in Washington going forward. Anyway, he had a card in Hoaquin, Washington on the 6th where Scott Peterson and Matt Borne went to a draw and they did the same thing Kerry and DeBeers did in Vegas where Peterson wanted five more minutes but Borne wouldn’t do it unless the crowd paid for it. They got $250 (one guy chipped in $200 on his own) and did the match, and Peterson pinned Borne to “win the money” and Dave feels kind of squidgy about this as a gimmick because while it gets good heat, it feels really like a way of bilking the crowd.
- The Oregonian interviewed rival Oregon promoter Mel Saraceno, and he had some comments about the WWF. Specifically, he criticized the steroid freaks and said that his promotion was going to “go back to an era of pro wrestling we used to see before the big, steroid freaks came in. When you had guys who could actually wrestle, guys who were mobile, could move around the ring and knew what wrestling really was. Hulk Hogan is the biggest draw the WWF has, but he doesn’t know enough about wrestling to get himself through a high school match. We’re going back to real wrestling with guys who can flip, move and really generate some action and hope the fans will appreciate that.” And there you have it. Flippy shit is real wrestling.
- New Japan’s six-man elimination tag team tournament ended with, shocker, Antonio Inoki, Riki Choshu, and Kantaro Hoshino winning the whole thing. Dave calls this probably the most boring tag tournament in Japanese history and says Inoki’s definitely in danger of the tv getting pulled by April. Better hope the Russians give them some momentum. Also better hope the money is there to do it, that there’s actually the interest to see wrestler vs. martial artist matches more on the regular than as one-off attractions, and that somehow the matches actually turn out good (they almost certainly won’t). Also, Inoki’s counting on a lot if he expects them to job to him.
- In the first men’s match on a women’s card in a long time in Japan, El Gran Hamada pinned Atsushi Onita in Korakuen Hall at a JWP show. Curiously, Hisashi Shinma, who had announced he was starting a new promotion based on JWP to compete with Onita, wasn’t there and there’s rumor he’s not going to be working with JWP anymore. For what it’s worth, the women of JWP were against having men wrestle on their show in the first place.
- The AWA had reached out to Larry Zbyszko to fill in for Kerry Von Erich in the event the commission had ruled Kerry ineligible to wrestle. The company is also claiming to have sold $66,000 in tickets in advance, but that’s a lie. They have basically no advance sales at all.
- That said, five Superclash III ads did run during WWF’s weekend shows in Chicago.
- Survivor Series is probably the least profitable WWF ppv since the Wrestling Classic. Last week, WWF was claiming a 4.2 buyrate, but every figure Dave has been able to get has it somewhere between a 1 and a 3. Some of his inside sources at WWF say it did slightly better than the Sugar Ray Leonard fight, but the cable companies are saying the Leonard fight did better by enough that their estimate for Survivor Series is a 2.5-3 or so. It was still almost certainly profitable, so there’s that, and Dave’s starting to think it might be best financially if the WWF and TBS only did one or two major ppv shows a year so as not to dilute their earnings.
- Owen Hart’s hurt worse than Dave thought. At Survivor Series Greg Valentine failed to duck for a leapfrog, and what was thought to be Owen tearing his groin has instead turned out to be a hernia or something of the sort. He ought to be back in a month or so, at which point he’s scheduled to wrestle Akeem.
- [WWF] John Studd returned at the tv tapings as a babyface. Expect him to feud with Akeem and eventually Big Boss Man and Andre the Giant.
- Meanwhile, the tension between Hogan and Savage has begun ramping up with the latest tv taping in a great post-match angle. Dave expects the breakup to happen either at the Royal Rumble or the NBC special in february.
- Randy Savage and a fan named David Peschel settled out of court in the case alleging Savage attacked Peschel when Peschel asked Savage for an autograph. Savage had claimed to be driving and Peschel flashed him with his high beams and repeatedly swerved toward his car and approached Savage when he pulled over and asked for an autograph. According to Savage, he did get physical, but he pushed Peschel at most. Peschel’s passengers claimed, however, that Peschel pulled over behind Savage, turned on the lights in the car and waved a program with Savage’s picture on the cover, and Savage gestured for Peschel to approach before grabbing him by the head and throwing him to the ground.
- Fans in Greensboro who want to watch Starrcade on ppv can’t do it at home and the closest location they can get the show is in Durham, North Carolina. Add that to the other ppv issues and you can expect this show to underperform significantly. For one thing, most cable companies will be closed from the 24th through the 26th, so any last minute orders (which make up 90% of ppv orders generally) will be unlikely to be fulfilled. Rogers Cablevision, a company with affiliates all around the country, won’t be carrying the show either, because they believe that fans will order the show and then default on the payment.
- The next big ppv for the former NWA is set for February 19, and TBS executives believe that with Dusty out of the booking seat, Ricky Steamboat will agree to return. To Dave’s knowledge, Steamboat has not agreed to return.
- Only one more rewind before the end of 1988.