WWF trolling New England?

> A couple observations after reading The Wrestling Observer Flashback–09.25.89, where Dave Meltzer mentioned the upcoming King of the Ring tournament and the seemingly unrelated return or Nikolai Volkoff:
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> After looking up the 1989 King of the Ring results, it looks like the field may have gotten worse:
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>> – Barry Windham and Hillbilly Jim were substituted with Nikolai Volkoff and some jobber named Bill Wood.
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>> – To accommodate these substitutions, they shuffled three of the opening round match-ups around to create the following matches: Rick Martel vs. Bill Wood, The Warlord vs. Bushwhacker Butch, and Nikolai Volkoff vs. Bushwhacker Luke. That’s in addition to: Red Rooster vs. Haku, Jimmy Snuka vs. The Barbarian, Jim Neidhart vs. Hercules, Brutus Beefcake vs. Akeem and Tito Santana vs. Bad News Brown.
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> As if the 1989 King of the Ring tournament wasn’t bad enough, they returned to New England two weeks later with the following card in Springfield, MA, only about 80 miles away from Providence, RI. Apparently WWF wasn’t done tormenting it’s New England fanbase, as I noticed these two matches:
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>> – The Bushwhackers (Butch & Luke) defeat The Powers Of Pain (The Barbarian & The Warlord) by DQ (20:10)
>> – Nikolai Volkoff vs. Victor Rivera – Time Limit Draw (20:00)
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> I’m not sure if I’m more astonished by the WWF dropping such awful shows on the area in such a short span of time or that they somehow managed to book multiple matches in late 1989 where Nikolai Volkoff was the younger wrestler in the match. What did New England do to deserve what could only be described on paper as the tortures of the damned?

Well, Vince was actually in a tiff with both NESN and the Boston Garden at the time, so it’s not entirely unreasonable to think he would punish the entire Eastern seaboard as a result. It’s actually very much in character for him.