Wrestling Observer Flashback–08.28.89

Getting closer to Summerslam 89! I bet Dave hates it! But we won’t find out until next week either way.

Also, for those who haven’t been following these religiously, a reminder that we’ll wrap up 1989 and then we’re going to go all Marty McFly and go back to 1985 to start fresh from there.

– So, uh, WCW played the wrong tape this week on the TBS show, airing a show from three weeks prior that included a Ricky Steamboat interview, and NO ONE NOTICED while it was airing. And this is a TV company running things! The people who are supposed to be in charge of this stuff apparently put the wrong tape in the box and it ended up airing.

– And THEN, as if that wasn’t Kerry Von Erich enough for you, they did tapings for the show was supposed to air (8/19) and the show that was to air the week after (8/26) and not only will the 8/19 show likely never see the light of day, but they forgot to actually turn on the tape machine for the last 20 minutes of the 8/26 show, including a huge angle with Dick Slater teaming up with Terry Funk to brand Ric Flair. So when Tony was saying that the “tape machines are rolling” he was apparently a big fat liar. This was actually the first show under the Flair regime of booking, so, you know, great start!

– Dave updates us on the UWF money train in Japan, which is doing amazing business of millions of dollars per show and is seemingly set to get a major network deal and take over Japan’s wrestling business with its “worked shoot” mentality. I don’t think we’ll get there before we wrap up 89, but basically in 1990 the market completely died off almost literally overnight and they went out of business. It was a pretty shocking turn of events, actually.

– In the opposite of shocking, the WWF is publicly predicting 1,000,000 buys for Summerslam 89, or an 8% buyrate, which is of course completely ludicrous. A more realistic number would be between 4% – 5% (somewhere between 500 – 600K buys). Spoiler alert: The real number was 4.8%, or 576,000, and that’s a damn fine number.

– The WWF is still going ahead with the 12/27 No Holds Barred “live” PPV and movie spectacular, but obviously they aren’t announcing Hogan v. Zeus until after Summerslam. That being said, Starrcade is 12/15, and two weeks after just isn’t quite close enough to properly fuck with the NWA, so Titan is aggressively bidding for the Rolling Stones PPV from Trump Plaza, which would air on 12/16.

– The NWA announced that the Bash PPV did “the highest ratings of any PPV show it has done so far!”, which Dave notes is right out of the WWF playbook for reporting these sorts of things. The actual number, for those Poindexters hung up on things like “facts”, was 1.5%, or about 160,000 buys.

– Jake Roberts had his sentencing postponed for a month, and the WWF is confident that no time will come from it and is already advertising him against Ted Dibiase again for house shows in October.

– More legal trouble, as Andre the Giant was arrested for allegedly roughing up a cameraman who filmed his match with Warrior without permission. I wouldn’t want that committed to film, either. The cameraman was actually given permission to film crowd reactions, but not the match, and claimed that Andre saw this and attacked him when his back was turned to the ring. Andre was charged with assault and criminal mischief.

– On a totally random note, the Ding Dongs (played by jobbers Richard Sartain and Greg Evans) have been working house shows in the opener for weeks now, even though I always thought they did the Clash show and one TV taping and were gone forever.

– Dave attended a house show in Chicago and was amazed by Scott Steiner’s moves, particularly the “flying headscissors type move” that Raul Mata used to do when he came to the territory. Yeah, that flying headscissors type move was quite the finisher.

– Big Van Vader got the IWGP title back from Riki Choshu as Inoki continues to play hot potato with it for some reason.

– Politics of the week: Dan Spivey quit his All Japan gig because the NWA was getting sick of booking around his schedule and threatened to bring in JOHN NORD to be Sid’s new partner in the Skyscrapers. WHY DID THAT NOT HAPPEN?!? Oh my god, Sid Vicious and Nord the Barbarian could have been a team and we were robbed of it? Anyway, Baba replaced Spivey with Todd Champion as Terry Gordy’s new partner. “Quite a drop off”, notes Dave in the driest possible way.

– In World Class, TV announcer Mark Lowrance quit to become a preacher (that didn’t last, as he was back for the 1990 shows on the Network), so they replaced him with Toni Adams. And her very first show, Akbar and his thugs beat her up to set up a feud with Chris Adams.

– Down in Memphis, cult favorite Freddy has been teaming up with someone under the Jason mask (not Karl Moffat, the “real” one) and feuding with the Zombie and the Undertaker, and the feud apparently worked so well that manager Ronnie Gossett is now bringing in the team of Frankenstein and the Wolfman to challenge the heroic babyfaces. That’s Freddy and Jason for those keeping track. Dave never wants Jerry Lawler to ever call the WWF product a circus again after booking this nonsense. And then Dave recaps the rest of the Memphis show, with Ronnie Gossett in charge, and it’s just Vince Russo-style madness that I can’t even recap to do it justice. Stuff like Master of Pain and a midget called “Little Road Warrior” wrestling against jobbers and Dirty White Boy wrestling Jeff Jarrett in a hair v. hair match where White Boy has to shave his armpit hair because he’s already bald…just total batshit insanity.

– Stampede Wrestling is negotiating with ESPN for possible US coverage. Didn’t happen.

– The AWA tag titles are vacant after the team of Ken Patera and the Baron defended against the Destruction Crew and it ended in some kind of schmoz. The Destruction Crew will end up with the titles, which leads one to wonder why they didn’t just…no, trying to figure out Verne Gagne in 1989 is like trying to figure Vince McMahon in 2016. Down that way lies madness.

– Owen Hart was “injured” by Larry Cameron to send him on his way to Japan for a while, so they’ll feud over the North American title when Owen gets back as Stampede’s one last gasp at a main event draw. Also, Kerry Brown did indeed show up again long enough to drop the tag titles to the Samurai Warriors (Sumu Hara and Kensuke Sasaki). So we’re only one tag champ away from the end of the promotion now.

– Apparently the Detroit News is running a weekly wrestling column by M.L. Curly. As I recall, that one stuck around for a LONG time, like into the Monday Night Wars era, and it was a favorite of rumor-mongers online in the early internet days.

– For those wondering what Al Snow was doing in 1989, he was working for the WWA promotion in Toledo in a pretty boy tag team called the Sensationals. I guess that’s like Fantastics, but even better?

– Former wrestler Bob Sabre died recently, and he apparently had the most awesomely bad gimmick of the 60s: George Ringo, the Wrestling Beatle. As far as dated gimmicks go, that’s in the Hall of Fame with Beetlejuice Art Barr.

– Botswana Beast did a tryout for the NWA under his real name of Benjamin Franklin Peacock. THAT’S his real name? Why the fuck would you change it to “Botswana Beast” when you could be an awesome pimp daddy right out of the gate? They tried him as a “jive talking babyface” but he got booed out of the building. His name is BENJAMIN PEACOCK. You think he might be better as a heel, possibly? Jesus Murphy this company.

– Also coming in for tryouts were Oregon’s Top Gun as the Cuban Assassin (Future Barrio Brother David Sierra, not the more well-known Stampede version), plus Kevin Kelly (who bombed and disappeared right after), Tom Zenk and the awesome duo of the Highway State Patrol. Maybe if the State Patrol beat up Peacock they’d have something.

– Paul Heyman has basically been fired from his managerial contract and they’ll try him on commentary with Jim Ross to play out his rather lengthy and iron-clad contract with the company. Heyman’s whole explanation of this time period on his DVD documentary is CLASSIC, as he’s openly talking about what a pain in the ass he is, but they can’t get rid of him because of course his dad is a lawyer and would bring the litigation thunder down on the company as soon as they tried to shaft him.

– Sadly, the Ding Dongs were unmasked in Cleveland and NOW the gimmick is dead.

– Butch Reed is returning from his mysterious suspension and will form a team with Kevin Sullivan, while Ron Simmons will be teaming with Iron Sheik & Cuban Assassin as a “high level jobber trio”. Or, and this is a crazy idea, they could do something else with Reed and Simmons…

– Speaking of which, Rick Steiner’s admirer Robin Greene will apparently morph back into Fallen Angel on the weekend TV show. Almost.

– Gary Hart is going to end up managing Dick Slater, Terry Funk and Great Muta as the “J-Tex Corporation”.

– Sadly, the Bobby Heenan Show was axed by USA, so the new format of Primetime sees Gorilla & Piper doing one segment, and then Bobby Heenan & Rick Rude doing another segment, which is to set up the Rude v. Piper feud with Piper likely screwing Rude out of the title at Summerslam.

– WWF jobbers are now being referred to internally as “extras” because Vince is a movie mogul now.

– Steve Blackman is coming in soon! Well, we know what happened there now.

– And finally, No Holds Barred was officially pulled from theaters this week for good, finishing with a final tally of $16.1 million. Vince is openly trying for a sequel, but we’re still waiting on that one 27 years later.