Wrestling Observer Flashback–03.13.89

This week:  A discussion of commissions in wrestling.  Sounds thrilling.

– So yeah, the lead story is that disgruntled former wrestler Jim Wilson has nearly managed to get a law passed in Georgia requiring wrestling to be overseen by an athletic commission, something that’s never been present there before.  Dave doesn’t object to the idea, but feels that they never actually help wrestling because they’re all just corrupt and useless anyway. In fact, wrestling is taxed at a higher rate than boxing, with the profits used to fund regulation of boxing matches because wrestling draws more money.  That being said, Vince also wants to eliminate doctors at ringside, which is not such a good thing, either.

– Dave goes over the lineups for Super Sunday II, and notes that the lineup for the Clash show is garbage as far as competition for Wrestlemania, outside of the Flair-Steamboat main event.  They did actually juggle it around a bit to do Road Warriors v. Williams & Rotunda for that title change, but yeah, overall it was a pretty weak drawing card.

– Buyrate info for Chi-Town Rumble is still a mixed bag, with the NWA claiming 220,000 buys and the WWF claiming the show did less than 100,000.  As usual, the actual answer fell right in the middle.

– The NWA announced WrestleWar for 5/7, which was supposed to be the AWA PPV date, so Verne’s backers pulled out completely and killed the project for good. 

– Brian Pillman is back in Stampede after failing to get a deal with the NWA, and is feuding with Larry Cameron.

– Don Muraco is now talking about returning to drop the title to Davey Boy Smith so they don’t have to do a tournament.

– The AWA cancelled a TV taping in Pittsburgh due to a poor advance and turned it into a house show, at which point they suddenly have a 3000 person walk-up and it turns into one of the most successful shows they’ve run in ages.  Verne can’t even go out of business properly without fucking it up!

– Dave clarifies that the Dusty Wrestling Federation isn’t called The Wrestling Federation, it’s PWF, or Pro Wrestling Federation.  Not that it’s any better.

– World Class is doing a weird thing where they have the World Class World tag titles, held by the Von Erichs, and then just the World Class tag titles as well.  I don’t get the distinction.

– Dave notes that Cactus Jack Manson is underrated, and especially crazy in the way he takes bumps.

– Kerry was doing a house show in Wisconsin and brought a local 140-pound amateur wrestling champion from the school into the ring with him for a quick exhibition, at which point the kid destroyed him and took him down several times.  The Von Erichs then claimed the whole thing was a work later on. 

– The Vicious Warrior finally debuted in New Japan, submitting to a half-crab from Tatsumi Fujinami in 7:28 to end his challenge for the IWGP title.  Inoki watched him wrestle and immediately lost interest in using him again, especially since the finish was a clean submission loss, which pretty much kills him with the audience.  Also, Fujinami wouldn’t sell for him anyway.  The Japanese have no idea what they missed out on.

– Inoki’s new plan to get himself over again is working the opening matches of his shows, to show that Riki Choshu is the #1 guy and thus he needs to work his way back to the top again to get another title shot.  Not the worst idea in the world, and that’s kind of what they should have done with Roman Reigns as a storyline last year, in fact.

– Rick Steamboat replaced Ric Flair on the current All Japan tour, but Baba is having none of it and won’t let any of his top guys do the job to Steamboat because it’s “not believable” that Steamboat could beat, say, Tenryu, but Flair could.  Dave thinks Baba is completely full of shit here, of course.

– Lance Russell no-showed his own farewell show in Memphis, bound for the NWA.  Dave Brown did a nice send-off for him, though.

– Officially, Stanley Blackburn has retired from his position as President of the AWA.  Dave thinks that he actually retired in January and it just took Verne two months to figure it out.

-Over in New Japan, the Russians looked impressive with their suplexes and sambo, but the shows aren’t drawing enough to justify the alleged “tens of millions of dollars” needed to bring them in.  They’ve already had to scale back the invasion to three guys in order to keep costs under control.

– Down in Puerto Rico, it turns out that Tony Atlas and the Youngbloods were actually listed as witnesses in the trial of Jose Gonzales, but by an amazing stroke of bad luck, the subpoenas and plane tickets didn’t arrive until AFTER the trial ended, because of unexplained reasons.  “You know, a clerical error or something,” Dave notes.  They should do a Making a Murderer type thing on Netflix about Bruiser Brody’s death given this kind of detail.

– Hogan’s movie “No Holds Barred” was screened for the first time in LA this week.  No word on the quality of it.  Yet.

– They’re sticking Tony Schiavone with Lord Al Hayes on Wrestling Challenge to start, as Dave notes that poor Tony went from working with David Crockett to working with British David Crockett.

– Funny bit from the WWF, as a newspaper is fact-checking and asks the PR department if Randy Savage and Elizabeth are married.  The WWF says, no, they’re not married, so the paper actually investigates this and discovers their marriage certificate in Kentucky and that they’ve been married since 1984.  So the paper goes back to the WWF with this info, and the PR department says, no, they weren’t lying, in fact the CHARACTERS of Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth are unmarried, and that’s what we meant all along.  That’s like when they boost attendance figures by 10000 and say it’s part of the entertainment portion of the show.

– Dave then gets a funny dig in, saying the “results of a fictional show” before running down a card.

– This year, the WWF has figured out that they should tape TV AFTER Wrestlemania so it’s not so easy to figure out results.  Duh.

– Dave just brutalizes the current NWA product, as the TV shows are a mess and bear no relation to what’s being pushed on the house shows.  Stuff like Michael Hayes & Ivan Koloff as a team for no reason and bad production as well. 

– Eddie Gilbert and Rick Steiner won the US tag titles from the Varsity Club on 2/28.  And they ended up being the last champions for about a year, in fact, as the titles were pretty much abandoned after WrestleWar.

– And finally, Dave thinks a big Japanese star will coming into the promotion soon, and he’ll have more info next week.  That was of course Muta.

Later.