Wrestling Observer Flashback–02.02.87

Previously…  http://blogofdoom.com/index.php/2016/06/22/wrestling-observer-flashback-01-19-87/

Dave’s a week late for some reason.  Perhaps his MIND WAS BLOWN by the announcement that the WWF makes this week…

– First up, last week’s issue was supposed to be the yearbook (which explains why this one is out two weeks later) but the yearbook takes longer to print so it’ll actually get mailed out AFTER this week’s issue.  So to catch us up, Dave quickly recaps the big stories from last week:  Bruiser Brody is the new booker for World Class, Jim Neidhart got arrested for slugging a stewardess, and Kerry Von Erich will wrestle with a cast on 2/2.  Neidhart allegedly punched a stewardess “four or five times” on the arm when she demanded payment for the beers he drank.  He’s facing 20 years in prison if convicted.  (It’s a rough time to be a stewardess in these issues.)

– So the big news this week is that apparently Wrestlemania III will not come from multiple sites, but in fact will be held in the Pontiac Silverdome instead.  They might even get 85,000 fans into there!  The reason why they chose Detroit is that Toronto is currently the hottest market in North America for the WWF, and this way they can get thousands of people to drive over from Ontario, make American money on the gate, and not have to pay Canadian taxes like they did for the Big Event.  Dave notes that the Big Event show being in Canada meant that their $1.2 million gate was only $650,000 that actually went back to the US.  (And to think this was still before the GST came into effect and would have lopped another 7% off the top of that number). 

– To set up Wrestlemania, Hogan and Andre will be in a battle royale together on SNME, where Dave presumes that Andre will toss out Hogan to win. 

– Dave laughingly notes that Roddy Piper is once again threatening to retire after the match with Adrian Adonis at WM.  Dave’s take:  He’s still a few months early for his annual summer contract holdout, and his value has decreased significantly this year, so he’ll be back because he doesn’t have the leverage to stay away.  He’s been saying since he was 25 that he’d retire at 35, but everyone says that and no one does.  (And he never did.)

– Dave runs down what we know of the card thus far, with the only things he’s wrong about being Reed v. Santana and The Hart Foundation defending the tag titles against the Can-Am Connection.  If Neidhart’s trial doesn’t go smoothly, the Harts might not get the tag titles after all.

– Dave has an interesting breakdown of various syndicated shows and their ratings, ranging from World Championship Wrestling to GLOW, and even stuff like GLOW that was considered bottom of the barrel novelty trash back then was doing numbers that Vince would kill for today.  I mean, to be fair, all of TV’s ratings have gone down the crapper to some degree, but even so there was a dozen competitors for the attention of wrestling fans at this point and they were all doing pretty much the percentages that RAW is doing today. 

– Dave recaps some of the NATPE convention news, which is not much, but the gist is that a lot of the smaller promotions are losing their syndicated packages due to constriction of the TV marketplace right now, with many UHF stations going out of business at the same time.  (It really did change the business, as everything shifted from syndication to cable channels from this point until the early 90s.) 

– With Duggan out of the UWF, the tag titles held by him and Taylor are now vacant and a tournament will be held in Fort Worth, which Dave thinks will be won by Sam Houston & Terry Taylor since that’s the most unpredictable choice and Watts is all about unpredictability. (Oh! Oh! I know who won that tournament because it was all over PWI at the time!  And yeah, it was even more unpredictable than Dave predicted!) 

– To Crockett, and for the person who was getting all excited last time, yes, this is the week.  On Worldwide Wrestling, Ric Flair wrestled Barry Windham in a match that took up the entire show and it was so great that Dave tore up his autographed 8×10 of Jack Victory on the spot and now thinks Barry Windham is the greatest wrestler ever.  Dave and his friends were so excited after watching the match that they dug up a videotape of Flair v. Steamboat from 1982 and watched that too, to compare.  (OK, we’re all friends here, so I’m gonna be straight with ya.  When I was living with Zen and something really awesome would happen on RAW, there was times when we did that exact same thing, too.  It was like, there was some surprise debut or big angle that got us so amped for wrestling in general that we just had to watch some more awesome wrestling to maintain the high.) 

– They’ve already given up on Petrov more or less, and are now hyping a new Russian called “The Big Red Machine” to replace him, who Dave suspects will be John Nord.  (I have no idea who that would be.  Russian Assassin #1?)  Dave just hopes that Petrov and the Machine don’t form a tag team because even his imagination can’t handle Superpowers v. those two.

– Jim Crockett is now openly setting the goal of putting Florida out of business by the summer.

– Lex Luger starts full-time this week for Crockett, and Dave has found out the plans and it’s pretty much what everyone expected it to be, but he’s not gonna give it away here.  Luger is expected to be paired with Windham because that’s his only hope of getting a great match.

– To the WWF, which continues to have big business with Hogan v. Kamala on top.

– The movie “Bodyslam” with Roddy Piper comes out in March.

– The Hollywood Reporter is saying that there will be a movie made starring Hogan this year. 

– Mr. T will apparently be starring in a TV show about lawyers called “T & T”.  And yes, this is a thing that did happen.

– The hot rumor is that Dynamite Kid will fly down for the TV tapings (going on as Dave is typing this very newsletter up) and stand in the corner while Davey Boy wrestles the whole match and loses the tag titles to the Hart Foundation.  However, Neidhart’s legal status makes this a questionable scenario.  Dave notes that he hates printing rumors anyway.

– To Memphis, where Jerry Lawler gets posted by Tommy Rich and Austin Idol in a spectacular feud, and actually ruptures a testicle.  Either the injury was legit and happened by accident, or it was a pre-existing condition and they shot the angle to explain his absence, but either way Lawler is in the hospital and will be out for three months.

– As noted earlier, Kerry Von Erich will actually be wrestling Brian Adias on 2/2 and will have a cast on his leg because his ankle is too messed up to walk.  (I know the cheeseburger story is funnier, but I’m pretty sure this is what destroyed his foot once and for all.) 

– According to Advertising Age, Hulk Hogan is “out” for 1987, instead of “in”. 

– I’d like to think these recaps are still “hot”, though.

– Finally, for now the only mention of a very famous moment in wrestling comes when Dave notes that Lex Luger did a job for Bruiser Brody on the way out of Florida, but complained about doing so beforehand.  Hopefully he goes into more detail next week. 

And with that, I’m off to bed, so good night!  Or good morning, since these are posted in the morning.