Wrestling Observer Flashback–12.26.88

I’m chilling out at home with a sick kid today, so we might even get two of these things before all is said and done. 

However, first up, it’s Dave’s Christmas present to us all:  AWA SUPERCLASH III!

– He begins “The AWA and SuperClash III are history, probably in more ways than one”, so you know this is gonna be epic.

– Dave feels like it was a noble attempt to prove they were still something of a major league, but Verne was just way above his pay grade on this one.  Bad announcing, bad production, bad matches, heatless crowd, empty building, you name it.  The main event saved it from being the worst show of the year, at least.

– The building had less than 1700 paid, with 3000 freebies given out and almost none of them actually showing up.  OUCH.  To be fair, I absolutely would have gone to that show. Initial estimates are 0.8%, the lowest PPV buyrate of all time (to that point) by a wide margin.  It would end up at 0.5% in fact, which is like TNA-level today.  

To the review! 

The Guerrero Brothers beat Cactus Jack & The Rock N Roll RPMs in 6:35.  The work was awesome from the Guerreros, but the camera missed all the highspots, including the finish, and the match was just average overall.  **1/2

Eric Embry won the World Class lightheavyweight title from Jeff Jarrett in 4:15 in a good short match.  **1/2  Jarrett was “too pretty” for this crowd, Dave feels.

Jimmy Valient pinned Wayne Bloom in 24 seconds.  This wasn’t advertised and there was no point in having it on the show.  DUD  Bloom wasn’t even a wrestler at that point, he was just a powerlifter that Verne was using off and on. 

Iceman Parsons beat Brickhouse Brown with a foreign object to retain the Texas title in 5:41.  Mostly stalling from Parsons.  *1/2

The New Top Guns (Derrick Dukes & Ricky Rice) & Wendi Richter beat Badd Company & Madusa in 5:43 when Wendi pinned Madusa.  Dukes took over from John Paul here, although Dave notes that Verne probably thinks no one can tell the difference anyway.  For those who need the joke explained, John Paul is white and Dukes is black.  This was announced as being for all the titles, but what they MEANT was that whichever champion got pinned lost their title, and yet the announcers and ring announcer all explained it as the entire winning team getting the titles.  The match itself was a total disaster, with everyone tripping over each other and Rice completely embarrassing himself.  1/2* for Tanaka bumping.  Wendi Richter ends up as the Women’s champion out of this mess.

Greg Gagne beat Ron Garvin via countout to win the “held up” TV title at 5:52.  Dave gives credit to Garvin for showing up, but he notes that Greg’s time in the business is done.  Yup.  * for the stiff chops, although the crowd was cheering Garvin and snoozing at everything else. 

The Terrorist won the “Lingerie Battle Royale” in 8:36 in a match where you could either throw people over the top or strip them down to lingerie to eliminate them.  So of course every elimination was over the top rope.  Dave just goes off on David McLane here, saying he sounded like “The Jim Bakker of wrestling” on commentary and thinks that GLOW and POWW are embarrassments to the sport.  I agree!  Just wait until the Attitude Era, though.  DUD

Sgt. Slaughter beat Col DeBeers in a boot camp match that was somehow even worse.  Slaughter was up to 320 pounds at this point and a complete shell of his former self.  And yet he would still go on to be WWF champion two years later!  All the foreign heels ran into the ring to beat on Slaughter as Dave waited for Kurt Von Hess and Hans Schmidt to come out of retirement so that Verne could jump the railing and run them off, but the Guerreros made the save instead.  Totally heatless garbage. –*

The SST retained the World Class tag titles over Michael Hayes & Steve Cox in 7:53 of a good match.  They’ve worked together a million times so they have a lot of practice, notes Dave.  Second best match of the show.  **3/4

Wahoo McDaniel beat Manny Fernandez in a strap match that was a throwback to 1984 and should have stayed there.  1/2* 

Jerry Lawler finally unified the World Class and AWA titles once and for all, beating Kerry Von Erich by blood stoppage in 18:53.  Both guys were promised the title before the show and then Verne double-crossed Kerry the day of the show.  And of course Kerry was fooling around with the blade in the locker room beforehand and managed to slice open his bicep, because he’s an idiot.  Great match, though.  ***3/4

Finally, the Rock N Roll Express went to a double DQ with Jimmy Golden & Robert Fuller at 7:03 in a match where it was going to be for the AWA tag titles but they never got around to putting the titles on the Express.  There was no reason for the finish other than they were running out of time and the crowd was leaving, so they just went home to end it. 

– Jerry Jarrett is having a new undisputed title belt made, but Verne Gagne has already declared that he wants to keep his own AWA champion, so in fact the “unification” only lasted for about a week before Verne split them up again. 

– Overall, Dave enjoyed the show on a trainwreck level and found it more entertaining than the Bunkhouse Stampede or Wrestlemania.  I’ll give it that.

– Amazingly, Tatsumi Fujinami actually came back to Portland to do a job for the Grappler and put the Northwest title back on him.  I guess since he was already in the US to sit in the front row for SuperClash anyway?

– Jimmy Garvin has decided to retire and become a roofer. 

– Over in Stampede, The British Bulldogs are trying to convince the Funk Brothers to come in for some shows, because fans don’t buy any of the local talent as threats to them.  And yet they ended up dropping the tag titles to friggin’ Bob and Kerry Brown!

– Dean Malenko has decided not to retire after the Japan tour after all.

– Terry Funk has been talking about wanting to go to UWF in Japan to face Akira Maeda.  Please tell me that match actually happened!

– Dave relates a weird story about Warrior and Jimmy Hart getting held up by an escaped felon in Florida, as the guy pulled a gun on Hart after robbing a convenience store and then jacked their rental car.  Was it Nailz?

– Apparently the NWA taped a 2/3 falls match between the Fantastics and Original Midnight Express that goes the entire length of an episode of Worldwide, ending with the Fantastics retaining the US tag titles with Cornette’s help.  That sounds, well, fantastic.

– Dusty Rhodes is up in the air at this point as far as his future, but those within the WWF swear on a stack of bibles that he’ll never go there.  Famous last words.

Now I wish SuperClash was on the Network so I could watch it again.  See you later!