Wrestling Observer Flashback–01.16.89

Dave skipped the 1/9 issue to work on the Observer Yearbook, so we jump ahead in time two whole weeks, into the world of the future. In the past.

To the news!

– The big lead story is that Ricky Steamboat has finally agreed to terms and will come in for the Chi-Town Rumble show in February, although Dave isn’t clear on what his deal is quite yet. Along with Steamboat will be the debuts of Butch Reed, Bob Orton, Brian Pillman, Jimmy Garvin and Genichiro Tenyru. Tenryu will be replacing Dusty Rhodes as the third man in the six-man champions with the Road Warriors, although those titles would be dropped soon after anyway.

– The lineup for the show has all been announced, although Dave notes that the most important stipulation is “card subject to change”. It actually ended up pretty much as announced, except for a Windham v. Rhodes US title match that was changed to Lex Luger for obvious reasons.

– Initial buyrate reports are coming in for Starrcade, and it’s looking like 1.8%, which Dave notes is a number that he finally guessed correctly for once. Given the amount of homes it was available in, that puts it around 150,000 buys. Not as profitable as the Bash show, but given the chaos and lack of promotion, that’s not surprising.

– Wrestlemania V will be coming from Trump Plaza again, with a main event of Hogan v. Savage that will undoubtedly be the biggest buyrate in history.

– Dave runs down the upcoming Main Event card, and one of the matches is Jim Duggan v. Dino Bravo in a flag match. Dave makes sure to say “Note that I said FLAG match and not that other word.” Am I missing something here? Is there some unspoken thing with Dino Bravo that he’s referring to?

– There was another SNME the past week, and Dave has a quick review:

Brutus Beefcake beat Ron Bass in a hair match at 7:40. Usual WWF TV match. *1/2

Hulk Hogan beat Akeem by DQ in the match with the awesome angle where Savage is watching in the back while Hogan gets double-teamed and Macho’s going “I’m gonna let it play out and see where it goes”. That was GREAT.

Ultimate Warrior pinned Honkytonk Man to retain the IC title in 5:01. Dave calls it “excellent considering who was involved, but bad for anyone else.” *1/2

Tito Santana pinned Red Rooster in the match where Heenan was mic’d and doing commentary on the match. And then Rooster turned babyface and beat up Heenan. **3/4

Mr. Perfect squashed future Hall of Famer Koko B. Ware with the Perfectplex at 3:04. *

It was a pretty decent show with good angles, sez Dave.

– Inoki appears to have worked out his issues with the commie bastards and will be bringing in the Red menace to work Japan soon. The unintentional running gag of Dave being unable to spell or remember the name of the Russian who won the gold medal continues for something like the fourth or fifth week, as he just keeps calling him “David whatshisname”. I feel like a Yakov Smirnov joke would work well at this point, but I’ve got nothing.

– Bob Backlund actually did a comeback attempt in the UWF, but lost to a cross-face chickenwing to Takada and flipped out afterwards, apparently having been double-crossed. He vowed never to return to wrestling again, at least in Japan.

– The AWA had a TV taping scheduled for 1/7, but cancelled it AGAIN and now the next one won’t be until 1/20. To put this in perspective, they haven’t even taped a show since November at this point, and the ESPN shows are just cut together from old footage and matches from SuperClash.

– Verne will be making a new team called The Destruction Crew out of referee Mike Enos and powerlifter Wayne Bloom. They’re expected to get a push.

– Jerry Jarrett presented Jerry Lawler with the new unified World title on Memphis TV, but since Verne is throwing a hissy fit about keeping the title, Lawler announced that he’s sending the AWA belt back to Minnesota. That was pretty much the beginning of the end of his relationship with the AWA.

– At this point, Phil Hickerson does the most ridiculous heel turn ever, becoming Oriental assassin PY Chu Hi. Dave notes that this stupid name is actually a tribute to Tojo Yamamoto, who was known as PY Chung in the 50s.

– World Class did a funny angle with Cactus Jack winning the lightheavyweight title from Eric Embry, thanks to the weight limit being raised to 241.5 pounds. Even back then it was a ridiculous joke that Cactus could win that title.

– King Haku was found guilty of biting someone’s nose off in a street fight, but no jail time will come of it. I presume the judge was too scared of him to sentence him to anything but probation.

– At the Superstars tapings in Alabama, Steve Lombardi debuted as the Brooklyn Brawler. Dave had previously thought that the Rooster thing was about getting Taylor over, but it turns out that it was just to get Lombardi into a pushed role after years of trying to find a gimmick for him. I’d say that was pretty accurate.

– Dave had a chance to see hot young team the Bushwackers in MSG, and notes that they’re doing midget comedy spots in a full-sized tag team environment, which is interesting but will probably get old fast. Yeah, like two weeks.

– Tim Horner keeps having good dark matches, but I don’t think he ever made it to TV.

– Demolition is growing on Dave, mostly because he loves the theme song.

– Back to the AWA, as Jerry Lawler no-showed the 1/7 non-TV taping title defense against Don Muraco. So did Don Muraco, for that matter, but that didn’t stop Verne from advertising the match even knowing that. And then he complains that crowds are down and can’t figure out why.

– The replacement main event was Wahoo vs. Manny Fernandez in a cage match, and when Wahoo broke his nose during the match and had to be taken to the hospital, Verne tried to get the state commission to pick up the tab.

– Back to Lawler, as it now looks like he’s done as AWA champion and Verne will soon be making up a lame excuse for the no-shows and finding a new champion. Dave then prays openly that it’s not Greg Gagne.

– Once again, Dave teases us with the news that Sid Vicious will be debuting in Japan as the Vicious Warrior and challenging for the IWGP title. Inoki is apparently well aware of Sid’s limitations, but they want to get him signed before the WWF does. Dave points out that Sid is at least better than Ultimate Warrior anyway.

– Apparently Terry Gordy’s nephew debuted in some hick promotion as The Karate Kid and looked good. I wonder if he was anyone? Chris Champion wrestled as the Karate Kid around that time, but he was already on the national scene under his own name and wouldn’t have been billed as a relative of Gordy or anything.

– Dave gets all meta when running down an upcoming NWA TV taping, noting that they run an angle where the Varsity Club kidnaps Rick Steiner’s dog Dog. He then notes that the dog’s real name is Spike before lamenting that he’s sunk to revealing real names of animals now, before doubling down and revealing that Frankie the Parrot was actually named Frankie long before Koko ever brought him to the WWF, so it’s not a gimmicked parrot name. I just found that whole run really amusing for some reason.

– Rumors are flying on Dusty Rhodes, primarily that he’ll head back to Florida and feud with Mike Graham.

– Bigelow is expected to return after his Japan tour, but that didn’t actually happen.

– Michael Hayes & Junkyard Dog debuted as a team for the TV shows. I stand corrected, Hayes & Garvin are NOT the worst team possible after all.

– Dave suddenly goes off with “SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL LEX LUGER THERE IS NO SUCH WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS ALLOCADES. THE WORD IS ACCOLADES.” Pot calling the kettle black there, Dave.

– Dave is also annoyed at them for pushing a Flair-Luger rematch hard on TV when they said before Starrcade that it was the last title shot ever for Luger. Well considering that they had another million matches in the years to come, he probably got even more angry.

A very newsworthy issue! See you next time!