December 26, 1988
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- The Complete Observer Rewind Archive and 2002 by u/daprice82
- Superclash III is in the books, and it’s pretty clearly the death knell for the AWA. They tried really hard to pretend to be a major promotion, and while the show wasn’t the worst show of the year, they way overshot what they could achieve. Ever the classy group, some of the Observer readers who wrote in and called it the worst show of the year did so on the basis that the lingerie battle royal didn’t deliver what it promised. As far as the financials, this was an absolute disaster. Paid attendance was just under 1,700 for a gate of $26,000. Nearly 3,000 free tickets were given out, but very few of them even showed up. Initial reports on the ppv buyrate estimated a 0.8% buyrate, which would be the lowest of any wrestling ppv ever.
- Anyway, Dave does his usual deal of reviewing the matches. Cactus Jack did his backdrop bump on the concrete in the opener, Eric Embry retained the WCCW lightheavyweight title, Jimmy Valiant beat powerlifter Wayne Bloom in a 24 second unadvertised squash, King Parsons beat Brickhouse Brown to retain the WCCW Texas Title. Then the show started really falling apart. Wendi Richter and the Top Guns beat Badd Company and Madusa in a match where it was announced that both the women’s and tag team titles were on the line, but even the announcers seemed to be confused by that, and it got really bad when Wendi and Madusa tried to work together. Anyway, they announced the Top Guns as new tag champs, but later, during another match, they announced that the title change didn’t happen because Wendi pinned Madusa. Greg Gagne won the vacant AWA tv title by countout against Ron Garvin, and Dave spends a bit talking about how the wrestling business has passed Greg Gagne by. Then there was the lingerie battle royal, and well, here’s what Dave thinks about that kind of content: “First off, presenting this T&A crap as pro wrestling shows just what the promoters involved really think of their products. Second, while the largely male crowd did get into the match waiting for clothes to get torn off, it couldn’t have sold many tickets (well, nothing sold many tickets) and whenever you reach so far, you lose the center and it costs you tickets.” A few sentences later, Dave then comments about how Peggy Lee Leather looks like Roller Derby skater Jan Vallow, which I guess is a comment about not finding Peggy attractive and says that “for those who are going to get mad at sexist remarks here, remember the context of this match invites them and it was presented as soft-core perversion” and I just… How do you manage to fit both of these lines of thought into your head at the same time, Dave? Anyway, the next match is even worse, as Sgt. Slaughter and Col. DeBeers had a -1 star boot camp match, the best part of which was the commentary talking about how the crowd was chanting “USA” during a point where they’re totally silent except for one woman at ringside who shouts “Slaughter, you suck.” Then the Samoan Swat Team retained the WCCW tag titles and Wahoo McDaniel beat Manny Fernandez in a really bad strap match. Finally, Jerry Lawler won and unified the AWA and WCCW titles due to blood stoppage, copying the finish from Flair vs. Luger at the Great American Bash. At least Kerry was bleeding appropriately for it. Word is both men had been promised they’d win the match and Kerry nearly backed out of the show when he learned he was supposed to lose. Anyway, really good match, 3.75 stars, clear match of the show. After the match, Kerry and Stanley Blackburn did an interview and Kerry said that “I’ve never heard of a match stopped for blood before” which is hilariously dumb. Oh, and then they had Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson go to a double dq against Robert Fuller and Jimmy Golden because why not, and most of the audience had left by this point.
- Watch: Jerry Lawler vs. Kerry Von Erich at Superclash III
- Wrapping all that up, Dave liked the show better than the Bunkhouse Stampede, Wrestlemania, or Summerslam, in part because it was kind of a campy, disorganized trainwreck in progress. They did interviews between matches, which is a good idea, but the only one worth anything was Lawler. Kerry Von Erich pronounces “Leaning Tower of Pisa” as “Leaning Tower of Pizza,” so yeah, that’s a thing. Of the POWW women from the lingerie match, Dave is positive about Luna Vachon, whose voice has that “fingernails on the blackboard” quality that gives her a good gimmick to work with. While Jerry Lawler and Kerry Von Erich negotiated a finish, Bill Apter did a whole speech introducing Lawler to present him with an award, but Lawler didn’t come out so that was hilarious. Dallas apparently had issues somewhere in the pipeline, so that entire market didn’t get to have the show on ppv, too. Oh, and they’re making some kind of new belt, maybe, but Verne wants to keep the AWA title belt he currently has, so we’ll see how that goes (yeah, this partnership falls apart early in 1989).
- And that’s basically the major news of the week.
- Police arrested Ronald Allen Hembrecht, who wrestled as Vladimir Koloff on the independents, and charged him with the murder of Medardo “Jim” Leon (aka Ricky Lawless). Rumor within the Baltimore wrestling scene is that Hembrecht probably killed Leon for reasons related to an independent show Leon put on recently that was a financial bust.
- Larry Moquin, a major star in the Quebec scene from the 40s-60s, died of cancer on December 12. He was one of the main babyfaces in the area during a couple boom periods, alongside Edouardo Carpentier and Johnny and Jacques Rougeau Sr.
- Don Owen’s promotion is still doing the gimmick where the heel refuses to wrestle after the time limit unless the fans pony up, and the fans then do pay extra and it gets heat on the heel. Still sounds sketchy to Dave, but unfortunately not the worst thing to happen in wrestling in the past few months.
- Attendance is so bad in Memphis that they’re dropping ticket prices to $5 for the expensive seats and $1 for the cheap seats, with $3 for the mid-tier seats.
- Stan Hansen and Terry Gordy won the All Japan tag tournament on December 16. They beat Tenryu and Kawada in the final, with Hansen pinning Tenryu to win.
- Over in New Japan, Inoki, Choshu, and Hoshino beat Fujinami, Hashimoto, and Chono to win the trios tournament. As you might expect, Inoki had to look strong. Fuinami eliminated Hoshino with a sleeper, then he and Choshu got double counted out. Then Inoki beat both Chono and Hashimoto. Yeah.
- Remember above when Kerry talked about never hearing about a match ending by blood stoppage? He temporarily lost the World Class title by blood stoppage to Tatsumi Fujinami just a week earlier. Kerry and Fujinami had a title unification match on December 9 in Korakuen Hall which initially went to a double countout after about 12 minutes. The fans booed the finish, and they restarted the match. Fujinami hit Kerry with a chair outside the ring and posted him, and Kerry started bleeding buckets and Fujinami worked over the cut until the referee stopped the match and awarded the victory to Fujinami by blood stoppage. So for a brief moment, Fujinami was IWGP Champion, World Class Champion, and Pacific Northwest Champion. Fujinami handed the title back to Kerry, though, not wanting to win the title under such circumstances.
- UWF’s December 22 show is, unsurprisingly, sold out already. Maeda and Takada did good PR and hung out with the fans waiting in line overnight before tickets went on sale and talked to a bunch of them and brought them food and drinks. Their January show is in Budokan Hall, so that’ll be the real test - selling out 16,000 seats with high prices.
- Turns out Dave was wrong and Dean Malenko won’t be retiring after his tour in Japan.
- Terry Funk is reportedly interested in wrestling Akira Maeda at a future UWF show.
- If there’s a follow-up ppv to Superclash III, it’s been pushed back from February to a possible April date. So far, there’s no consensus on how profitable the show was, and if they managed to hit a 1% buyrate, then it’s at least break even. That said, only 25% of cable systems are reporting at this point. Losing the Dallas market definitely hurt them, though.
- Tony Atlas has moved from Maine to Dallas to work for Angelo Savoldi’s ICW.
- WWF is building toward Royal Rumble, but otherwise not a lot going on. Owen Hart is scheduled to return on December 26, so he’s definitely going to be working hurt because no way is he fully recovered yet.
- Jimmy Hart and Ultimate Warrior were on their way to Daytona Beach following a show and stopped at a convenience store, where an escaped convict pulled a gun on Hart. Warrior strolled up, not realizing the guy had a gun, and asked if there was any trouble, and the story (probably a bit exaggerated) goes that the guy pointed the gun at Warrior and told Hart he was going to shoot Warrior, but then saw Warrior had left the keys in the car so he stole the car instead. Either the convict flipped the car and died 16 miles down the road or police chased him, which led to him flipping the car, and then he died trying to escape the police - it’s unclear which is the case.
- Watch: Jimmy Hart shoots on the carjacking
- Clash of the Champions IV officially did a 4.5 rating an 6.8 share, totalling 2.17 million homes. The Steve Williams vs. Italian Stallion match led to a big drop off in viewers until the main event, which peaked at a 5.2 and 8 share.
- The smart vs. mark debate has been scientifically settled. Reader Ernie Santilli surveyed about 100 fans at an arena show, and the results of that survey are as follows: “Between matches at an NWA card, I stood in front of a section of about 100 fans and shouted, ‘How many of you consider yourself smart?’ Sixty-eight people responded positively. Then I asked, ‘How many of you are marks?’ Two guys named Mark stood up.” He then got a professor at Penn State to develop a device capable of detecting “the brainwaves generated only by the portion of the brain that functions in individuals who truly understand what they are seeing,” which he took to a WWF show. The smartometer read consistently between 40-50% until he accidentally pointed it at Lord Alfred Hayes and Ron Trongard, which caused it to go straight to zero and short out.
- ”Bill’s idea in this letter is to insult the opinions of those who disagree with him, then set himself up in a position as the person who dares to criticize Dave Meltzer. Everyone who agrees with Dave is then categorized as just one of an army of readers who don’t think for themselves, right?” Another week in the interminable letter wars between people who really get riled up for some reason by the part of Dave’s job where he reports on the news and rumors in the industry and not on the things that make sense to criticize him for (see the excusing sexism because the content invites it bit above).
- Going forward, all tv tapings for Turner’s NWA will be aired from a 700 seat building in the CNN Center in Atlanta.