Wrestling Observer Flashback–11.27.89

Terry Funk has retired. I know, I know, I’ll give you a minute to let it sink in.

– Clash IX featured one of the all-time greatest individual performances that Dave has ever seen, in the form of the I Quit match where Terry Funk has retired from wrestling, surely once and for all. The show is sitting at 100% thumbs up thus far. To the review!

– First up, the crowd was dead for the first couple of matches, but the Midnights match woke them up and turned them into a crazy hot crowd.

1. The Freebirds beat the Road Warriors by DQ at 5:18. Although the Freebirds loss to the Steiners hadn’t aired yet, they didn’t pretend that the Birds were still champions or anything, instead choosing to just not bring the subject up. Bad match with a cold crowd, and a godawful finish where Hawk just tossed down the ref during a brawl. DUD

2. Doom beat Eddie Gilbert & Tommy Rich at 5:15. If this had been Memphis in 1987 that would have been a hell of a main event, actually. Dead crowd made it seem like a bad match, but everyone was trying. *1/4

The Steiners did an interview with Jim Cornette, and this finally gives us the name of Scott’s finisher: The FRANKENSTEINER. One of the all-time great move names for one of the all time great moves!

3. The Midnight Express beat the Dynamic Dudes in 9:22 when Jim Cornette turned on the Dudes and made millions of people watching at home lose their shit with happiness. The finish was one of the best in a long time, with Eaton pulling a chain to use on Douglas, but dropping it after a backdrop. Cornette grabs the chain and gives Eaton a disgusted look, then waits until Douglas turns his back and then waffles him with the racket. ***1/2 The crowd of course goes CRAZY for the supposed heel turn, and the Express were suddenly rejuvenated and the hottest team in wrestling again.

4. Steve Williams squashed the Super Destroyer with the powerslam in 1:41. As with any masked character in WCW, the part was played by Jack Victory. There’s actually a funny story behind the match, as the original matches were going to be Williams v. Cuban Assassin and Zenk v. Super Destroyer (who was going to be Bill “The Goon” Irwin). However, Irwin had previously committed to Japan for the date and then Zenk was late for the show, so they just dropped both matches. However, the office forgot to tell Williams any of this, and he showed up in New York with his gear and so they stuck Victory under the Destroyer match and did this for whatever reason. *1/2

5. The Steiners beat The Skyscrapers by DQ in 6:08 when Doom interfered. This was another weird “twist of fate” match, where later on we found out that Sid Vicious suffered a punctured lung from Scott’s fallaway slam, and the NWA needed someone to fill the Skyscraper role for a while. So they hired Mean Mark Callous and the rest is history. Also, this match marked the debut of Woman’s bodyguard Nitron, who Dave clarifies is not the Giant Gonzales. In fact, he would actually go on to play Sabretooth in the X-Men movies. This was a shockingly great match for what it was. ***1/2

6. Lex Luger pinned Brian Pillman in 12:38 in an even better match than their Havoc one. Had some execution problems and Pillman was working on bad knees, but it was still awesome. Luger nailed him with a chair behind the ref’s back for the pin. ***3/4

7. Ric Flair made Terry Funk say “I quit” at 18:38. This was a one-of-a-kind crazy brawl that had the crowd on its feet for the whole match. Flair won with the figure-four and Funk turned babyface after the match when the J-Tex crew turned on him. *****

– Dave feels like the show has finally established the Steiners as the top dogs in the promotion as they’ve passed the Road Warriors.

– The WWF tried to counter with a Survivor Series countdown show on USA, which ended up being the lowest rated primetime special in forever.

– So the Tully Blanchard situation continues to get more interesting, as Tully is now out of the NWA and Arn will be coming in alone. The official reason for his firing from the WWF is that he failed a drug test (“He failed for being found without any steroids in his system” notes Dave) and the NWA doesn’t want to be seen as the promotion who hired a noted drug user. TNA of course has never had that issue. Dave thinks it was a pretty masterful move on Vince’s part, as he completely destroyed their value on the way out and then sabotaged Tully’s career as one final middle finger to them just in case anyone else was contemplating the same move. So now instead of stealing the WWF tag team champions, the NWA is signing WWF castoffs ala Butch Reed or Iron Sheik.

– Over in Japan, Inoki is humiliated by the UWF selling out the Tokyo Dome and breaking the gate record, so that’s why he wants Hulk Hogan so badly. The idea for the New Japan show in February is “all four World champions” on one show (Vader, Hogan, Flair and Zbyszko) with Hogan the only hold-up so far. Dave feels like Hogan on the same show as Flair is just not a thing that’s ever going to happen. It should be noted that Flair being open to working the New Japan show was a direct result of the NWA botching the All Japan relationship to the point where Baba dropped them as partners. Specifically, Baba felt humiliated by the angle where Tenryu got locked in the closet at the Clash.

– The big story developing in the NWA is the growing rift between Flair and TBS over falling house shows and buyrates. Jim Herd is quite open about wanting to build the company around Lex Luger and Sting and people are beginning to line up and take sides. Flair is getting pressured to not only step down as booker, but also as top star, due to his advancing age. Dave thinks that Luger has more than earned a shot in the top spot, and they can always go back to Flair if it doesn’t work out. However, the feeling internally seems to be that just having Flair put Luger over as World champion will magically solve all their problems, which is ignoring everything else like the promotion appearing second-rate next to the WWF.

– The Rougeaus are telling Montreal newspapers that they’re taking a one year sabbatical from wrestling before returning late in 1990.

– Al Perez is doing house shows with the WWF now, although they have him doing jobs to Boris Zhukov to “break his spirit” in advance and make him a loyal employee. Well that worked pretty much the opposite of how it was supposed to. After that run he started going over Barry Horowitz in openers instead, but really the damage was already done.

– Lots of talk about adding Jim Ross, Jim Barnett and Terry Funk to the booking committee currently headed up by Flair.

– The NWA isn’t making any promises to Jorge Gonzales, basically ready to cut him loose if he’s terrible. However, the WWF is OF COURSE actively recruiting him, so they might have to put him in the ring to keep him from going to the opposition.

– Speaking of which, the Road Warriors agreed to the option year on their contract, which will keep them signed until December 1990, so that should end any speculation of them ending up elsewhere.

– At the TV tapings, Flair got beat up by Muta and the Dragon Master, and has promised a BIG SURPRISE for next week to get revenge.

– Sid Vicious no-showed all the house shows on the weekend, although no one knows why yet.

– Nikita Koloff is working AWA shows at the moment, doing a DQ finish with Larry Z.

– Apparently Chris Benoit & Biff Wellington were supposed to get the tag team titles back from the Blackhearts in a phantom title change in Stampede, but that never happened. Did the Blackhearts manage to no-show a fake title match?

– And finally, Paul E. Dangerously was brought into ICW to book for them, but managed to get fired before the TV taping was even finished. That might be a new record for him.