Wrestling Observer Flashback– ?????

So what’s it gonna be? Continue on with the 90s or go back to the dawn of Hulkamania?

Let’s find out…

Buckle in, because we’re going back to MARCH OF 1984! The newsletter was a bit of a different beast at this point, published as more of a monthly special running 30 pages instead of the more familiar 8-10 weekly pages it became. I actually could start in January, but there wasn’t anything for news and it was just a week-by-week list of title changes and various top ten lists. This is the first issue of the year that goes back to the news and articles format. And there’s a LOT of news, so get some popcorn or something because we’re gonna be here a while.

– The top story of the month is David Von Erich’s sudden death in Japan, which is currently being linked to enteritis. Dave actually relates the “official” story about the Von Erichs doing an All Japan tour and David eating some bad sushi before retiring to the hotel room and being found dead by referee Joe Higuchi. Later on, in stories about the Von Erichs and their various deaths, Dave picked apart literally every detail of the story and showed that the family was lying about everything. But for the moment, it totally wasn’t drugs and no one’s saying anything about drugs yet. INFLAMED INTESTINE. Or the flu. Or food poisoning. But definitely not drugs.

– NEWSFLASH (written in pen at the bottom of the Von Erich career highlight list): Tito Santana wins the Intercontinental title from Don Muraco on 2/11 in Boston.

– Dave notes in the regular news section that Tito should be champion before he finishes typing this very sentence.

– Dynamite Kid beat the Cobra in the finals of the WWF Jr. Heavyweight title tournament in Japan, with Davey Boy finishing third and Bret Hart fifth. The guy who finished in eighth was named Baby Face, which seems a bit “on the nose” for wrestling.

– The WWF taped a show from the Kiel Arena in St. Louis for the first time ever and drew 13000 for a Hogan-Masked Superstar main event and a battle royal win for John Studd. They’re trying this new idea where they tape TV from big arenas instead of rinky-dink buildings like the Allentown one.

– Apparently Bruiser & Crusher will be teaming up in Chicago, which draws an “UGH!” from Dave.

– Jimmy Snuka has been missing shows and may be on thin ice with the WWF. Killing your girlfriend is cool, but don’t miss shows, I guess.

– Dave Meltzer, SPORTS EDITOR, adds a column of his own here, called “Pulling No Punches”, and he’s in a feisty mood since Hulk Hogan won the WWF title in January. Apparently Vince has declared war on the rest of the wrestling world, and now everyone and their brother are rumored to be heading into the WWF. This includes Mike Rotundo (true), Terry Allen (Vince wishes), Nikolai Volkoff (true), Butch Reed (It would devastate Mid-South!), Jimmy Valiant (nope), Dick Slater (nope), Bob Orton (It would devastate the Carolinas!) and maybe even Bruiser Brody. Vince has already declared war in St. Louis against the “Chrome-Dome connection” of Verne Gagne & Bob Geigel, and now he wants to invade Japan as well. Apparently he’s going to open a third promotion in opposition to All Japan and New Japan, with Tiger Mask as the top drawing card. However, here in the USA, Vince has not proven he can run even one other promotion into the ground, despite all his big talk. Give him five years.

– Ole Anderson’s response to the Vince problem is to air old tapes of current WWF guys on Georgia TV, casting them in a bad light by showing things like Tito Santana or Paul Orndorff getting beat on by a jobber and then trying to claim that the job guy won the match. Clearly, Dave notes, this is nonsense because everyone knows that some worthless TV jobber would never win, and it only makes Ole look incompetent. Ole is also working with Verne Gagne to share talent, which sounds like quite possibly the worst idea I’ve ever heard.

– Dave goes over his list of Worsts for 1983. Tommy Rich is worst babyface because he can’t think of anyone else. He wanted to give Worst Feud to Tommy Rich v. Buzz Sawyer, but unfortunately it finished third in voting for Best Feud so he can’t really slag it. Worst team goes to any of the WWF tag team champions for the year (of course it does), and Worst Hold goes to Bob Backlund for the chickenwing, which looks terrible despite being a very credible move in real life. Florida gets Worst Circuit for all their stunts, and Worst Promotion is Ole’s Georgia. Worst Match is Ox Baker v. Angelo Mosca (that does sound horrendous) and David McLane of Bruiser’s Indiana promotion is clearly the Worst Announcer.

– Dave readily admits to hating Vince, and notes that word is that talent in the WWF dressing room is jealous of Hogan’s new contract, which could cause problems later on.

– At this point Dave talks about how there’s so much news that he’s considering moving to a bi-weekly or even WEEKLY format, and probably something shorter like 16 pages.

– Dave reprints some articles from Twin Cities newspapers, including a story about Hulk Hogan after he won the WWF title from the Shiek where he claims that he told Verne on November 22 that he was signing with the WWF. But those promoters kept using his name and trying to draw houses by advertising him, brother! After the articles, Dave immediately calls the writer a hack with as much credibility as Bill Apter, so we should take his opinions with several grains of salt. Man, 25 year old Dave could really bring the snark.

– OK, 15 pages into this monster, and now we’re finally getting into the regular news sections. Settle in!

WWF: Current champions Hulk Hogan, Don Muraco and Atlas & Johnson.

– The Hogan-Sheik title change did an overflow sellout of 26000 and Dave concedes that “Hulk’A’Mania” is sweeping the East Coast in a big way. His next MSG match will be against Paul Orndorff on 2/20 and that one will probably sell out as well. We should just save time and assume that all his shows will sell out for the next four years.

– Dave was really disappointed in the WWF version of Wrestling at the Chase, as it was mainly squashes and crappy matches. Just wait until Black Saturday.

– He doesn’t think they’ll get the tag titles, but Adrian Adonis & Dick Murdoch are the best team in the country right now. In fact they would be the next tag champions.

– Dave relates a cautionary tale about dealing with Vince McMahon: George Cannon of Detroit decided to work with Vince to keep him from stealing his TV time out from under him, at which point Vince stole his TV time and then bought him out and fired him. That wacky Vince!

– The status of Bob Backlund is a mystery, as he has disappeared from the promotion and is being replaced by Hulk Hogan. In fact, he may be out of the business completely.

– New signees include Brian Blair and Greg Valentine.

– Sgt. Slaughter and Iron Sheik are set to feud in a “US v. Iran type of thing”, as Slaughter is turning babyface any day now. Dave thinks that Slaughter will be a very effective babyface, and even with only 75% of the crowd currently cheering him he’s still more successful than Bob Backlund. Zing!

– Dave thinks that it’s obvious in hindsight that Don Muraco should have been the transition to Hogan instead of Sheik, because that flag-waving stuff just doesn’t work anymore. Dave was also pretty disappointed in how quickly they gave the belt to Hogan, since it shows that he’s going to continue with his “rubber stamp” approach. I don’t even know what that means.

– Lots of talk that they’re going to headline a Shea Stadium show in the summer with Hogan v. Andre, after Andre gets jealous of Hogan’s popularity and turns heel.

– Over in Japan, Terry Funk is talking about coming out of retirement to wrestle for Baba. Yes, Funk was already “retired” in 1984.

– In the “unfortunate timing” department, Dave runs down future cards for All Japan, and notes that David Von Erich will be doing the tour to likely give him exposure in preparation for winning the NWA World title, an event that Dave fervently hopes doesn’t happen. Well, he got his wish.

– Dave goes into some discussion of the weird political situation in New Japan, with WWF figurehead president Hisashi Shinma ready to leave and form his own promotion with Satoru Sayama (Tiger Mask) and WWF talent. That promotion would be the original UWF, and Shinma would leave his “job” as WWF president and get replaced by Jack Tunney as a result.

– Baba and Inoki are likely going to promote a joint show in late August to combat the evil new UWF, since Baba hates Shinma more than NJPW booker Sakaguchi.

– This kid named Akira Maeda had a good showing in the annual tag team tournament and showed a lot of improvement.

– Back to the USA with the Southwest promotion (champion Scott Casey), where the Sheepherders do a bloodbath against Dick Murdoch & Manny Fernandez so violent that they have to be taken to the local hospital and doctors legit thought they were in a car accident.

– Gino Hernandez was fired once again for missing bookings. Just in case you thought his self-destruction a couple of years later was an isolated incident.

– Down in World Class, Ric Flair faces Mike Von Erich in a 10 minute challenge, and when Flair couldn’t finish him off before the time limit, it gave David Von Erich a title shot and his pick of referee and stipulations. Probably he gets to pick the winner, too, Dave notes. Boy, having just read about his death in the beginning of this same ISSUE, it’s really kind of uncomfortable hearing Dave rag on the guy.

– The scheduled Flair-Von Erich won’t happen until April because Flair is doing a tour of New Zealand and Singapore with Harley Race, and in fact they did some title switches during that tour that were never acknowledged by the NWA and only served to make people who had to keep track of Flair’s title reigns go that little bit more crazy.

– Dave gets another funny shot in, which is at least towards someone who is still alive, as he recaps an angle with the Freebirds beating on Kevin Von Erich in the dressing room until he was senseless. Dave was told the verbiage was “delirious” but thinks that’s impossible because that’s just Kevin’s normal state. ZING!

– Junkyard Dog returned to the territory on the same show where they drew 13,000 people, but Dave doesn’t want people to get the wrong idea and think one thing had anything to do with the other.

– Rick Rood, a rookie from Memphis, was sent to the 1/6 show in Dallas for the sole purpose of studying Jimmy Garvin and learning to copy everything he does.

– Over to Mid-South, where Bill Watts is increasingly paranoid about a Vince invasion, so he’s been partnering with Jerry Jarrett and using Memphis talent on his shows. The big angle saw Magnum TA & Mr. Wrestling II win the tag titles from Butch Reed & Jim Neidhart on Christmas day (a GREAT match, by the way!), with a split impending because TA has been using the kneelift as a finish and II seems to be teasing some annoyance with that.

– Dave thinks that Russian sympathizer Barry Darsow has come a long way and probably deserved some consideration for rookie of the year.

– Dave notes that many people bash the USFL, but any football league that can keep Dr. Death away from pro wrestling is OK in his books. Oh, Dave.

– Over to the AWA now as we break 2000 words with 10 pages still to go. Harley Race is into the promotion as Nick Bockwinkel’s policeman, and he’s been looking good. Although, Dave notes, anybody would look good compared to the current group of AWA talent.

– Verne is still drawing good crowds in the post-Hogan era, but the crowds are starting to perceive the talent exodus, and even chanted “We Want Mean Gene” at the 1/15 show in St. Paul, throwing things at poor Ken Resnick. Well, Killer Ken would get scooped up by Vince soon after, too.

– Adding to the frustration of the crowds is a shit finish devised by Verne where Buck Zumhofe apparently loses the light heavyweight title to Steve Regal (the AWA one, not Lord Steven) but the decision is immediately overturned because the commission discovers that Regal weighed in at 217 pounds and the limit is 215.

– In St. Louis (the original one that alternates weeks with Vince’s new TV tapings) a battle royal was won by Barry Windham, giving him a shot at Ric Flair’s title on 2/17. Dave thinks the match should be excellent. And that was Barry Windham two years before he became an elite worker, even.

– Harley Race as champion is allowing the St. Louis promotion to hold its own for the moment, drawing 10,000 people thanks to retaining their TV slot, plus the NWA and AWA are sending talent over to fight off the evil Titan Horde. Plus Jimmy Garvin & Precious are coming in, and every time they hit a new territory Chris Adams & Sunshine tend to follow and jack up houses for a few months with that feud.

– Now to Memphis, with attendance hitting lows of 2500 recently. Can you imagine today if indies had LOWS of 2500 people? Promoters would be rolling around in giant piles of money with that kind of attendance today. Anyway, Jimmy Hart screwed over his own man, Sabu the Wildman, to allow Jerry Lawler to beat him. Jimmy now is trying to blackmail Lawler into working with him again because Lawler “owes him” for that one. See, JJ Dillon is the hot new heel manager in the territory and I guess Jimmy’s feeling is that he’d rather deal with the devil he knows.

– Nick Bockwinkel did his annual series with Lawler in January for the AWA title, with Stanley Blackburn watching at ringside in a match where punches are outlawed and they’d be fined $500 for every punch. And of course Lawler “won” the title in wacky fashion and Blackburn immediately overturned the decision.

– The Road Warriors debuted in Louisville against the Fabs and drew the biggest gate in the history of the city with 6000 people. Dave thinks these Road Warrior kids can draw pretty well if they’re used right.

– Koko Ware, for various reasons, is now wrestling as Stagger Lee again, mostly so he can use the song as entrance music.

– Up to Stampede now, as Bad News Allen lives up to his name. He was brawling with Davey Boy in the crowd in Calgary and managed to punch a fan in the midst of things, then knocked over a pregnant woman who had to be taken to hospital.

– Also, Bad News broke the collarbone of Jeff Gouldie in the violent angle that set up the greatest promo of all time, and the attack was so bad that Ed Whalen quit over the brutality and the boxing and wrestling commission actually banned wrestling from the city for a time.

– In World Championship Wrestling (Georgia) , rumors are swirling that Ole Anderson is running out of money and WWF sympathizer Jim Barnett might be called in to save the day. Yeah, that story got a hell of a lot bigger later on.

– Dave runs another whole page of various news and notes and it’s just exhausting to comb through it all. Nothing earth-shattering but holy cow did you get your $2 out of these.

And finally, Ric Flair did a tour of Puerto Rico and defended against Gorilla Monsoon’s favorite youngster, Carlos Colon, in a cage match to determine an undisputed champion. Colon escaped the cage to win, but the NWA doesn’t recognize that as a valid way to win a cage match, so Colon starts calling himself the Universal champion and Flair is still NWA champion.

And finally finally, I didn’t realize Dave was living in Texas at this point, because he’s so associated with San Jose now. So there you go.