Wrestling Observer Flashback–04.22.86

Congrats to the San Jose Sharks on making their first Cup final.  In the absence of teams that I give a shit about this year, I’m rooting for someone new to win the Cup, or at least someone who hasn’t won it in a while, so probably Sharks v. Lightning would be ideal at this point. 

By the way, a reminder that the link to my rant archives is always available for the low price of $20 via Paypal, and it’s now Cultstatus approved!  Instead of updating a zip file, what I do now is give a special link to my OneDrive account, which gives you access to everything I write, updated and archived as I write it.  The only thing that’s not (currently) there is these Flashbacks, because I write them directly to the blog rather than making a Word document first.  There might even be a surprise in there, who knows?

Back to 86 we go…

– Dave’s subscription base must be growing fast again, because he once again gives the whole spiel welcoming new readers to the Observer experience.  This is getting to the point where he starts doing the newsletter on closer to a weekly basis with a set schedule, and the format is basically exactly what it would be for the next 25 years or so. 

– The big news of the week is of course WrestleMania 2.  Overall, factoring in both the shitty nature of the show and the terrible gates involved, it was a major flop.  And that’s not even Dave being all anti-WWF, it was a huge stinkeroo and business actually started to drop significantly for a good chunk of time that year.  Basically all the matches were bad, and the celebrity involvement and three-arena nonsense were completely not worth the cost and production efforts involved to make it happen.  The main thing that was apparent from the show is that whatever “fad” momentum that was gained by the first Wrestlemania is now gone again, since the mainstream completely ignored the show or went back to treating it like a joke again. 

(Unfortunately, page 2 is missing, so Dave’s review picks up with a scathing –***** review of the Piper-Mr. T boxing match, as T refused to train and Piper was obviously able to clean his clock in a shoot at any point in the match and thus it looked even faker than it should have. Apparently the original plan was to bring them back in a cage match for Wrestlemania III, but that got dropped immediately after this fiasco.) 

Part 2 from Chicago:

1.  Moolah beat Velvet McIntyre to keep the “women’s stable title” (which Dave will not dignify as a World title) in 1:25 when Velvet missed a splash.  DUD

2.  Corporal Kirschner beat Nikolai Volkoff in 2:05 when he used Blassie’s cane and got the pin.  The Corporal tries hard and he’s terrible, whereas Volkoff tries not at all and he’s also terrible.  DUD

3.  Andre the Giant won the battle royale when he tossed out Bret Hart around 12 minutes.  Dave called it “not the worst he’d ever seen”, despite all the football players.  He did comment that he had never seen so many guys blown up in one ring like that, though.  The only “highspot” was William Perry pulling John Studd out with a handshake.  Andre looked like he was going to have a heart attack at the end.  **

4.  The British Bulldogs won the WWF tag titles from Greg Valentine in a handicap match at 13:00, since Brutus was in for a total of 90 seconds.  A great match that saved the show.  Sadly, Dynamite had to take a suicidal bump off the top rope to the floor for the finish, which meant that Captain Lou and Ozzy Osbourne got to parade around with the belts in the ring in one of the more ridiculous displays in a long time.  ****

Part 3 from LA:

1.  Ricky Steamboat pinned Hercules with a flying bodypress, but Dave didn’t see it so he can’t rate it

2.  Adrian Adonis pinned Uncle Elmer after a missed elbowdrop.  Elmer has been removed from their future plans, which is fine by Dave.

3.  Dory & Terry Funk beat Tito Santana & JYD in 13:00 with a megaphone shot to the Dog.  Dave heard it was the second best match on the show, but that finish has been done to death.

4.  Hulk Hogan beat King Kong Bundy in the cage match to retain the title at 11:00.  Dave wonders if Hogan got overtime pay for going longer than 9:00?  Interesting note, as the big blue cage that quickly became synonymous with Titan was actually purchased and flown in from Stampede Wrestling, because the normal chain link cage was too hard for Hogan to climb. They even flew in Steve DiSalvo as part of the ring crew to set it up, which shows how out of control spending was for this monstrosity of a show.  Well, they certainly got their investment back on that cage in the long run!  *1/2

–  Piper was cheered and Mr. T was booed in almost all of the cities where it was shown. 

– The celebs all earned upwards of $12000 for their “work” in the show, while the wrestlers earned anywhere from $700 (for scrubs like George Welles) up to $1500 depending on their regular pay.  And obviously guys like Hogan made way more. 

– In at least two locations, the show didn’t air because the WWF sent the wrong descrambler box to the arena.

– The WWF is advertised heavily for a new announcer, “extensive travel required”.  No kidding.  Since we’re in 86 I think they would have ended up hiring Killer Ken Resnick for that job, but they went through a lot of announcers over the years.

– Onto the NWA, where Dave is still picking Morton & Gibson to win the Crockett Cup, but he’s pretty sure he’ll be wrong.  He’d complain about the bracketing, but why quibble when it’s the best roster of talent ever produced?

– Pistol Pez Whatley has been repackaged into Paul Jones’ jive-talking lackey Shaska Whatley.  Dave doesn’t see this one going anywhere.

– Ric Flair dropped a non-title match to Ricky Morton on TBS, and Dave thinks that Flair is just selling too much for someone as small as Morton and the match itself was kind of disappointing.  NO WAY, dude.  I just did that show recently on the Network and it was an easy ****. 

– To the AWA, where Giant Baba v. Bulldog Bob Brown and Tiger Mask v. Buck Zumhofe have been added to the WrestleRock show.  Although they’ve sold $250,000 in tickets thus far, it’s far less impressive because break-even point is way more than that due to the incredibly expensive rent of the Metrodome and all the guys being flown in.  Not to mention Waylon Jennings, who costs a bundle and isn’t selling many tickets. 

– A show in Chicago was highlighted by a “death match” between Nick Bockwinkel and Larry Zbyszko, which went 8 falls and featured most of them ending by DQ.  Finish saw a double counted down, so the first man up would win, but the ref’s back was turned when Bockwinkel got up and then collapsed, so Larry was declared the winner.  But luckily TROUBLESHOOTING REF Scott LaDoux was able to run out and reverse the decision.  And then they wondered why they couldn’t draw in Chicago.

– Stan Hansen has been defending mostly against this Leon White kid because Leon is a nice young guy who doesn’t complain about doing jobs.  They ran the match on TV, with Hansen getting a clean pin, and then brought it back for the arena tour with White still advertised as undefeated.  Oh, Verne.  Maybe this White kid just needs the right gimmick?

– In another attempt to kill off a market, the AWA ran the Bay Area with Sgt. Slaughter v. Nord the Barbarian on top in 20:00 matches that most people called “the worst match ever held in the Bay Area”, featuring Sarge putting on such a lazy performance that fans actually pelted him with drinks and garbage after the match. 

– Barry Windham was advertised for the show, but “no-showed” due to a cancelled flight out of Denver.  Dave finds that interesting since he was wrestling in Las Vegas at the time when he was supposedly in Denver. 

– No return date was announced and none is necessary.

– Stan Hansen defended both the PWF and AWA titles against Riki Choshu in All Japan, and the finish saw him hit the ref with a lariat and get DQ’d.  Since titles change hands by DQ in Japan, Choshu wins the PWF title, but not the AWA one. 

– On the same show, Tenryu debuted his wacky new finisher, called a “powerbomb”, which Dave calls “similar to a reverse piledriver”. 

– Roddy Piper is off for six weeks filming a movie with Hal Needham, which ended up being the “classic” Body Slam.  Jesse Ventura is also off making a Conan movie with Arnie, making $10,000 a week in the process.  “Pretty good for a guy too sick to wrestle”, notes Dave.  That movie would actually be Predator, I’m pretty sure, unless Dave is referring to the aborted Conan the Conqueror movie that eventually became Kull.  I don’t think they ever actually started production on Conan, though.

– Jesse is also suing Verne Gagne over something he wants to keep quiet, but Verne is being stubborn and won’t settle out of court to avoid embarrassing the sport. 

– Dave is once again aghast at the phoniness of the WWF product, as Hogan was training his injured back on TV by doing stiff-legged deadlifts, and EVERYONE knows that any doctor will tell you that the worst thing for a bad back is stiff-legged deadlifts. 

– In World Class, Fritz Von Erich learns the folly of fan voting the hard way, as he was pushing for a Rick Rude v. Iceman Parsons main event for the Texas Stadium show in May on TV, and Parsons got no votes and instead Bruiser Brody ended up winning the vote.  Why they wouldn’t just lie about it, I don’t know, but the main event of the show is now Rude v. Brody and they’re going to rejig the card to make it work.

– Also, Fritz wants the Von Erichs to wrestle and beat the Road Warriors, but he doesn’t want to pay and deal with the Road Warriors, so he’s going to create his own Road Warriors.  Sounds like a reasonable strategy.  Road Warrior #1 will be Jeff Gaylord with a mohawk and face paint, and Warrior #2 is some guy who is 340 pounds and ripped like a bodybuilder, although Dave doesn’t know his actual identity.  Gaylord didn’t even end up in World Class so I have no idea what the team was supposed to be, but it sounds AMAZING.

– In the UWF, Steve Borden (you know, half of those steroid monsters, the Blade Runners) got beat up by Dick Slater in the dressing room for being so terrible in the ring.  Perhaps that’s what motivated him to get better?

– In Florida, Lex Luger and Bob Roop were doing an angle where they beat up Barry Windham, until Jesse Barr came out of the audience in drag and made the save with a loaded purse.  Roop dropped like a rock, but Luger sold nothing and ignored it. 

– And finally, Dave was shocked that the Apter mags actually listed the true cause of Gino Hernandez’s death and called for an investigation into the drug problems facing wrestling.  Dave gives them props for calling attention to it, and he predicts that sometime soon, a major drug scandal is going to hit the WWF, and when it does, it’s good bye cartoons and good bye SNME specials and dark times will be ahead for the promotion.  So, you know, he was a few years too early, but pretty much correct with that one.  Unfortunately, the drug problem would not be finished taking lives yet, by a longshot. 

Next time:  The Crockett Cup!