Wrestling Observer Flashback: 07.11.88

Back on track after our detour back to March yesterday. 

– Lead story is the WWF planning a giant stadium show in Milwaukee, which ended up being called WrestleFest 88, to basically screw with Crockett’s plans to run a Bash show the night after.  Main event is Hulk Hogan v. Andre the Giant in a cage match, which is expected to be a dry run for a series of matches throughout the fall that will surely fill the coffers with money for years to come.  Unfortunately that didn’t happen in the slightest as Andre’s back was only up to having one match. 

– The Bash PPV comes up on 7/10, with feelings from some fans that a five match card isn’t enough and more are needed.  Of course it ended up with more than five matches on the show, that’s just what they advertised.  Meltzer has it pegged as the biggest money non-WWF show in history, so that’s pretty good.  However, promotion for the show has been god-awful, which is par for the course with Crockett. 

– So the other big question of the week:  What is Owen Hart going to do?  Probably jump to the WWF under a mask as a “C Team” performer.  Dave doesn’t think his chances for advancement are that great. 

– Although the WWF has been crowing for months about the WM3 buyrate, the Tyson v. Spinks fight completely destroyed their supposed PPV record, drawing a 15 buyrate to gross $30 million.  That’s INSANE for 1988’s PPV market. 

– People continue to waffle in the Turner-Crockett buyout negotiations.  David Crockett is still anti-sale, and now Ole Anderson is swooping in and trying to basically unionize a group of wrestlers for an opposition promotion if the sale goes through.  What a dick.

– On the Bash tour, Ivan Koloff and Russian Assassin are subbing for the Powers of Pain and taking the big bump off the scaffold against the Road Warriors.  Considering the chronic knee problems that Dave Sheldon had over the years, that’s not particularly smart, but I guess money talks.

– Jerry Lawler v. Kerry Von Erich in title v. title matches are headlining in Memphis, but not boosting business to any degree.  The finish is always a double countout. 

– After some initial backlash by the fans, Jeff Jarrett did an angle where his arm was broken by heels and he fought back against them valiantly, which has finally turned him babyface with the fans.  Skinny rookie Jeff Jarrett was DEATH for a while there, trust me.

– Over in Stampede, after the wacky finish to the Johnny Smith-Chris Benoit match last week, they basically redid the match and Smith cheated to regain the title this time.

– Apparently Steve Blackman won some sort of TV title tournament as well in Stampede.  I don’t remember that title at all. 

– Interestingly, the AWA and World Class are both booking Jerry Lawler for the same night coming up, with a Lawler-Von Erich match headlining one show for WCCW and a Lawler-Hennig match headlining one for the AWA.  Well that Hennig one would become a moot point soon anyway, but there was some real communication issues between the promotions going on there.

– The Billy Jack Haynes opposition promotion in Oregon is already dead, drawing 60 people to their last show.

– The hot rumor in Japan is that Inoki is also selling out to Ted Turner.  Yeah, no.

– In our final update on Adrian Adonis in Japan, he did a job for Vader and was said to be bigger than Vader, “which shows you how well his diet is going.”  Ouch.  It was a good match and apparently this Vader guy is almost as good as Big Bubba Rogers now!  Well, he should just keep plucking away, I guess.

– Back to the WWF (the sections for this issue are just all over the place, it’s crazy), and Dave calls the recent Savage v. Dibiase cage match in MSG the best match since Slaughter v. Sheik, a ****1/2 classic.  It was pretty damn good, that’s for sure.  He also notes that Hogan will be coming back soon, but no one is in a hurry to get the title back on him and he probably shouldn’t win it back until Wrestlemania V.  His feud to carry the summer will probably be with “Bubba Bossman”.  Dave thinks it’ll be a “semi-squash” feud, but in fact it ended up drawing like crazy for most of the summer.

– GLOW is in pretty bad shape and looking for new money to film a second season.  They actually did find another sucker, at least.

– Tiger Mask II was accidentally unmasked as Mitsuhara Misawa by the Japanese media because he was married in a high-profile wedding and people pretty much figured out who he was. 

– Apparently, the week before the Powers of Pain jumped to the WWF, the Road Warriors were giving interviews in Japan basically bragging about how much Vince was offering them and how they were keeping their options open.  Well, suddenly their options weren’t as open.

– And finally, after a lengthy letters section, Dave inserts a story just as he’s going to press about the death of Adrian Adonis and two other wrestlers in Newfoundland.  And that’s how the comeback trail of Adonis came to a tragic end.  Obviously more details in the next issue and probably an obit as well.