Wrestling Observer Flashback–08.15.88

But first, a letter!

Hey Scott,
So the latest observer flashback you mentioned Ric Flair was a rumoured to debut in Summerslam. Let’s have some fun fantasy booking , he makes his debut, then what happens? I feel they already were set on Hogan/Savage at Mania,so would he just been slotted in the Bossman role in the autum n/Survivor Series,but then what? I really not sure how he fits in that time period besides joining the Heenan Family.

Good question. But given that Dusty was going to be a free agent by the end of the year, we could have ended up with a double main event of Hogan/Savage and Dusty/Flair for Wrestlemania! Like, holy shit!

– Biggest story of the week is that WWF did their WrestleFest show in Milwaukee, drawing somewhere between 27K-30K in the stadium, which Dave thinks probably should have been on PPV instead of the weaker Summerslam card. Hogan beat Andre in a cage match to give him his “second” loss of his career and Curt Hennig made a surprise debut against Terry Taylor in an unscheduled match that was said to be the best of the show. And once again, WHY ISN’T THIS SHOW ON THE NETWORK?!

– The NWA ran a Bash show the next night that still drew 4000, which isn’t bad all things considered, notes Dave.

– Hogan had actually just finished up shooting No Holds Barred the day before, and although the movie was budgeted at $15 million it went WAY over that and will need a miracle on home video to recoup the losses. Spoiler: It didn’t. Apparently Bill Eadie plays one of the villains in the finale, but redid his whole outfit so he wouldn’t be recognized.

– Summerslam is coming up at the end of the month, and speculation is rampant about who Brother Love will be interviewing. Curt Hennig, or maybe Owen Hart as “The Blue Angel”, seems to be the logical candidate since he’ll be in line for a big push. Not sure why they didn’t go with him, actually.

– Dave is pretty sure now that Brutus Beefcake isn’t getting the IC title from Honky Tonk Man. The TV tapings seem to indicate that Honky will still have the belt after the show and be feuding with Ultimate Warrior. Dave’s disgusted “Just when you think you’ve seen wrestling matches as bad as they can be, the WWF springs a feud on you like this one” is HILARIOUS.

– OK, finally final official numbers on the Bash PPV: 190,000 buys for a 2.2% buyrate, and a $3 million gross. Those are disappointing numbers for Crockett, but the lack of outside media advertising pretty much means there’s nothing more they could have done. Another PPV show coming up in December, which will NOT be Starrcade, But that could change.

– Billy Jack Haynes’ sad OWF promotion officially folded this week, as did Ron Fuller’s USA Championship Wrestling out of Tennessee, which was part of a complicated ownership dispute via Continental and Memphis. Karl Stern did a podcast with the history of Continental a few years back that explained the whole thing in detail and it made my eyes glaze over.

– Ken Mantell walked out on World Class as booker this week, leaving Kevin Von Erich in charge. That proved to be a very bad idea.

– All kinds of mainstream media coverage for Bruiser Brody’s death, including talk of a movie and several books. The movie of course never happened.

– Brickhouse Brown, as a member of the Stud Stable in Memphis, is now Bunkhouse Brown. Of course he is.

– The Rock N Roll Express leaving actually screwed up plans, as the Fantastics were scheduled to turn heel and feud with them in what would have been a hell of a midcard match. Robert Gibson is definitely gone, Morton who knows?

– The Sheik was a complete embarrassment at the Detroit show, but he made some money for them so they’ll use him again. That’s wrestling in a nutshell for you.

– Whoever was doing schedules for Crockett cost them a big gate, as they booked the Seattle Arena (seating 7500 for an instant sellout) when they actually meant to book the Seattle COLISEUM (seating 16000!) but they didn’t realize the error until it was too late to change it.

– Talk of bringing in Karl Moffat (Jason the Terrible) to play Russian Assassin #2 against the Koloffs, since Ivan turned babyface this week. That ended up as Jack Victory instead.

– Unhappy fans in Detroit, as they advertised a special “wrestler party” where you could meet everyone backstage for a premium ticket price. A few fans bought the fancy tickets, and were treated to a meet-and-greet with…Brad Armstrong and Jimmy Garvin. A fan wrote to Gary Juster to complain and was given ringside tickets for the next show.

– Interesting note on the way reactions to Meltzer have changed over the years. Dave talks about how he bought meet-and-greet tickets to an NWA show in Vegas recently, but decided to skip the extra stuff because he was hungry and went to dinner with friends instead. Apparently they had a TV backstage and it showed the Adrian Adonis story on “Entertainment Tonight” and Dave was featured in it. General feeling was that had he been there meeting and greeting, someone would have recognized him from the TV and probably made a move to beat the shit out of him. A very different business now indeed.

– To the WWF, with the build to Summer Scam 88, aka How Little Can You Give People and Still Sell a PPV? The secret plan appears to be advertising that Liz will wear a bikini.

– In a Superstars taping, they used a jobber who was given the name John Ziegler as a very inside rib. Ziegler was the guy who originally invented steroids for bodybuilders 30 years before.

– So during the taping, Brutus Beefcake gets “injured” by Ron Bass with spurs, and they tape a seemingly meaningless segment with Honky Tonk Man getting attacked by Warrior and then do interviews afterwards with Warrior wearing the “stolen” IC title. Dave has a CONSPIRACY THEORY: Maybe Honky will lose the title to Warrior during the period of time where the tapings air, which just happens to fall exactly before and after Summerslam. That’s just crazy talk.

– At the other set of TV tapings, Big Bossman wrestled a jobber who was dubbed “Big Bubba” as a rib.

– The Powers of Pain are fading fast as top babyfaces and already no one cares about them.

– Dave notes that the WWF is moving into comedy writing, with a Warrior picture in their programs and the slogan “Just say no to drugs”. Oh Dave.

– And finally, although it’s unlikely to happen, Hulk Hogan REALLY REALLY REALLY wants a match with Mike Tyson for Wrestlemania V. Does he know that Rocky III was just a movie?

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!