Wrestling Observer Flashback–11.07.88

Let’s take a break from the endless Shane and Roman talk today and journey back to a happier time, when Shane was a young referee and Roman Reigns may not have even been born yet.

– So the biggest story this week, and one of the biggest stories in the history of wrestling, is that the deal for the purchase of Jim Crockett Promotions is finally and officially done and announced. The official purchase date was indeed 11/1, and Jack Petrick will be overseeing the wrestling side of things and hiring a beancounter to act as the day-to-day boss. That turned out to be Jim Herd, who was probably a colossal mistake to put into that role. As it turned out, Turner went ahead with the sale without Crockett clearing up his outstanding debts, so Bill Watts basically ended up shit out of luck on the whole deal. In fact I don’t think he ever recovered the millions he was owed.

– Down in Dallas, Jerry Jarrett’s 30% that was purchased from Ken Mantell is now going to be a majority ownership stake thanks to buying out the remainder from the Von Erichs. The only sticking point is that Fritz wants a clause in the sale where ownership reverts to the Von Erich family after a certain amount of time if certain conditions aren’t met. As it turned out, that didn’t happen and the Jarrett/Lawler team took over full control soon after and retained it until the death of the promotion.

– The Vince McMahon boxing debacle continues to get more hilarious, as boxing analysts are now describing the fight as a “financial bloodbath” with less than a week to go leading up to it. After weeks of promising that the PPV production would not a circus-like atmosphere like wrestling, that’s exactly what Vince is turning it into, and the people he duped in the boxing community are REALLY pissed at him about it. Projected losses for the show stand at $6.5 millon, an amount which Dave notes “took Jim Crockett YEARS to lose that much”. Oh snarky Dave, I miss you. Vince is also demanding that PPV companies not reveal any buyrate information for the boxing show or Survivor Series because rival boxing promoters are swimming around like sharks in a feeding frenzy looking to destroy him. Vince was seriously WAAAAAAAY out of his league with the boxing world. He might be an apex predator in the wrestling world, but he’s barely a low-level scumbag compared to the people who run the boxing rackets.

– The Survivor Series lineup has been in a state of flux since the initial announcement (although I haven’t been listing each change because I figure who really cares?) and it changed again this week as Don Muraco and JYD were both fired for “insubordination” in Europe, whatever that means, resulting in another shift of the teams.

– The British Bulldogs also gave their notice on the European tour, and Giant Baba immediately called them and begged them to come back to All Japan for the tag team tournament. After that tour and going to Stampede, the Bulldogs actually grew to hate each other so much that the team broke up and they never teamed again.

– Roddy Piper’s “They Live” was moved back AGAIN, this time to 11/4, because Halloween IV did decent business and the distributor was terrified of competing with it.

– Dave reviews Saturday Night’s Main Event, which he calls better than usual for the show:

Jake Roberts d. Rick Rude by DQ (?) in 6:06, **1/2 This was the infamous “Andre has a heart attack from the snake” angle, which mostly drew laughter from the live audience.

Demolition retained the tag titles over the Hart Foundation in 5:56, **3/4

Hulk Hogan beat Haku in a “grueling 5:53” *1/2 Dave notes that Hogan didn’t wear the fist helmet here because WWF has apparently dropped plans for it when they couldn’t get it on the shelves for Christmas. That’s a shame.

Dino Bravo pinned Ken Patera with a sideslam in 3:03 1/2* Dave notes there’s no earthly reason for Bravo to be pushed. Except for the one obvious reason, which Dave wishes that it wasn’t, but it probably is. And he was right.

Big Bossman squashed Jim Powers in 2:34 to set him up for the Hogan series. 1/2*

– Lyle Alzado was doing the talk show rounds, and he was actually one of the few people DEFENDING steroid use in wrestling and sports in general, noting that he’s been using them for 10 years with no adverse affects. Yeah, until he died from them a few years after this. Jesse Ventura was also doing talk shows defending the WWF from steroid accusations, noting that they have strict testing and guidelines and it would never be a problem. Dear god.

– Down in Memphis, that kid Cactus Jack Foley turned babyface and is getting over pretty strong as a tag team with Gary Young.

– Jerry Lawler, who is now both World Class and AWA World champions, defends only the World Class title against Kerry Von Erich next week. Dave thinks he might know what will happen in that one.

– Tickets are “moving slowly” for AWA SuperClash III. You don’t say?

– Shane Douglas has retired from wrestling and gone back to teaching school. Bet we’ll never hear from that guy again.

– Soldat Ustinov and Teijo Khan both quit the AWA this week as well, and in all seriousness we never did hear from either guy again as they both left the business completely.

– Over in Japan, Steve Williams randomly starts wearing his new Varsity Club gear without ever turning heel on TV. That wackiness would carry over to the US, where he would just show up doing an inset promo where he announces his new team. Obviously Dusty was a bit distracted at this point.

– Also in Japan, Inoki brings Kerry & Kevin Von Erich over for the tag team tournament, but Fritz had specifically signed a contract with New Japan prohibiting them from participating in any tournaments, so that they didn’t have to not win and thus do a job. I literally could not make this shit up if I tried.

– Continuing on with the ridiculous saga of Tatsumi Fujinami’s Pacific Northwest Title win over the Grappler, original plans were that they were going to strip Fujinami of the title that he didn’t actually win as such and do a tournament. However, this was apparently too much effort for Don Owen, and now they simply announced on TV that Grappler is off to Japan to challenge Fujinami for the title, after which he would triumphantly return having “won” the title again. Oh, wrestling.

– Over on the Superstars tapings for the month, the big angle was Bad News Brown beating up Randy Savage and demanding a title shot, because Elizabeth was “doing favors” for Jack Tunney to protect Savage. And then Brown beat up Tunney as well. I don’t remember ANY of that.

– Also, Curt Hennig’s new “Mr. Perfect” gimmick is just death and isn’t getting over one bit.

– Some dude is suing Haku for $1.1 million, claiming that his nose got bit off in a street fight with Haku. Dave wonders who is stupid enough to mess with HAKU in the first place?

– They did a Challenge taping in Vegas, but only got 3000 people into the 16,000 seat Thomas & Mack Center, and even then most of those were from walking around the casinos literally giving out free tickets to anyone who wanted them. Ouch.

– In general, Randy Savage’s drawing power is rapidly diminishing at this point, as the last Savage v. Dibiase match in Washington drew a record low 2800 people, and TV ratings are hitting record lows as well.

– Jim Crockett is basically on the chopping block already, and will be running things in the interim while they warm up the office for Jim Herd. It has been made clear to him that he’ll have to run things as cost-effective as humanly possible to save his job at this point. Yeah, that lasted literally like a week before he got shuffled out for good. Also, Dusty’s solid until the new year at least, but Dave thinks he’s getting turfed and just hopes that they have a replacement before they pull the trigger on him.

– OK, so Dave goes into the whole Flair situation here, as obviously people talked to him between the Horsemen exodus and now. Flair was REALLY close to leaving because he (like everyone else on the planet) was sick of Dusty Finishes in every match and wrestling Lex Luger night after night in the same match. He wants real opponents and clean finishes and he’s just generally tired of Dusty’s bullshit. So to solve this issue, Dusty changed all the matches around the horn to Flair & Al Perez v. Lex Luger & Nikita Koloff, without advertising it, so that Luger could beat Perez instead of Flair. They did this tag match three times and pissed off fans so badly they probably killed the town. Flair and Dusty worked out their issue and then Dusty immediately went back to booking Flair v. Luger in the same shitty ref bump Dusty Finish over and over. Finally Flair just started no-showing instead of doing the same bad finishes. So then they tried booking him against Bam Bam Bigelow (with stupid bullshit ref bump DQ finishes scheduled) and Flair also refused those matches because Bigelow was a midcarder for the competition who didn’t get over, and it just makes the NWA title look like a joke to be out there putting him over. I sense this is going to evolve into a major story by Starrcade. Just a feeling.

– The letters section is particularly entertaining this time, with one guy saying that people who think SuperClash is going to be a disaster are HATERS who want territorial wrestling to die and we should all support Verne Gagne and Jerry Jarrett’s efforts to keep the little guys going. Yeah, well, for me personally, I also believe in Darwinism in wrestling, and Verne Gagne’s vision for the sport died off sometime around Hogan’s departure for the WWF, if not years sooner. There’s a REASON that Vince McMahon and Jim Crockett were able to steamroll the entire territorial system in record time, and SuperClash ended up demonstrating that.

– Oh, and finally, in the last paragraph of the 10 page Observer newsletter, Dave notes off-handedly that the Road Warriors “finally won the NWA tag titles” in New Orleans on 10/29. Because that wasn’t a major title change worth discussing or anything.