Wrestling Observer Flashback–06.29.87

It’s car accident update issue! Fun times ahead, to be sure.

– First up, Terry Taylor’s injuries, which came from an accident traveling to Thibadoux, LA on 6/11. The original story was that they were sideswiped, but what actually happened is that another car pulled ahead of them so suddenly that Eddie Gilbert had to slam on the brakes and Taylor was literally cleaved in twain by his own seatbelt. (That just sounds horrifically unpleasant, like something out of a Final Destination movie.) Eddie and Missy were unharmed because of wearing shoulder straps, but the back seat didn’t have them. Had they not been wearing their seat belts, all three would have been dead. (Coming from a province with mandatory seat belt laws growing up, it’s always struck me as crazy that there are people who would rally AGAINST wearing them, which is what happened when I moved to Alberta in 1989. Seat belts weren’t mandatory at that point and I was like “Who the hell gets into a car without putting on their seat belt?” Even now it drives me crazy when I see TV shows where people are driving and clearly not wearing them. Like, people who make claims about how they’re more dangerous than not wearing them just come off like Obama truthers to me. Anyway, seat belts are good, hot take, I know.) The surgery is going to leave a gnarly permanent scar on his abdomen, and in fact he was right on the cusp of the injuries being career-ending, so he’s actually very lucky.

– Yet another car accident, as the New Breed were also in a serious accident, although details are sketchy. Both men were flung through the windshield and caught fire, with Royal getting treated for third degree burns among other injuries. Champion is projected to be out anywhere from a couple of months up to a year. (It ended up being about 5 months and he wore a “computerized healing device” on his cast on TV in a silly bit, but the team was never the same and Royal actually retired for unrelated reasons at the end of 1987.)

– Kerry Von Erich, who, Dave notes, had his career finished for all intents and purposes a year ago, has now had his foot and ankle fused in walking position, which means that basically any hope of a full time wrestling career has been put to rest. (I’d be really interested to find out who was feeding Dave this line of bullshit in order to cover up the real truth behind the foot.)

– OK, who’s ready for more New Japan wackiness? So Inoki beat Masa Saito to win the 87 IWGP tournament (because duh) and then Riki Choshu hit the ring to challenge Inoki with his new nWo-style subgroup consisting of Fujinami, Maeda, Strong Machine and Kengo Kimura. This flies in the face of all the angles they’ve been building up to date, in particular the Fujinami v. Choshu feud that fans have been going crazy to see. Plus the other storyline was the old UWF crew v. Inoki’s team v. Choshu’s army, and instead they went with the 1987 equivalent of WCW and ECW joining together on the first night of the Invasion. And because Choshu hasn’t appeared on TV yet due to fear of legal problems from Baba, his stuff isn’t moving ratings. Just very confusing for Dave.

– Dave went to the Western States Heritage title tournament in Houston on 6/20, and it was a good show but Black Bart in the finals of anything is a joke. Although technically an NWA title, it was a UWF show. Windham beat Black Bart in the finals to win the new title, and Flair beat Michael Hayes in a **** match in the main event to retain the World title. The results!

1. Steve Cox won a $10,000 battle royale. Rookie sensation Shane Douglas was involved, and Dave thinks that in two years he’ll be in the same position as Shawn Michaels (a big teenybopper babyface, not unemployed).

2. Shaska Whatley (sub for Terry Taylor) pinned Buddy Roberts in the first round of the tournament with the ropes at 5:23. *1/4

3. Black Bart pinned Sting in the first round by using the branding iron at 7:00. Sting wasn’t sure how to work babyface here, but the weird result was necessary for the rest of the tournament. *1/2

4. Rick Steiner and Terry Gordy were both DQ’d in 6:35. This was “threatening to be fantastic” but never got there. ** Steiner was making awesome progress, but his development has stalled a lot without Sting. (I think he’ll do OK.)

5. Barry Windham pinned Chris Adams to end the first round with the stupid shoulder-up-first suplex finish at 8:13. A few good parts, but not what it should have been. **1/4

6. The Lightning Express beat “The Enforcer” and “The Terminator” to retain the tag titles in 5:25 when they legdropped Enforcer and pinned him. This was Doug Gilbert and Animal’s brother, although Dave wasn’t sure at this point of the family relationship. Pretty much a TV squash. *3/4

7. The Rock & Roll Express retained the NWA tag titles over Angel of Death & Big Bubba Rogers when Morton pinned Angel via flying bodypress at 9:45. **3/4 Bubba is going to be an awesome babyface someday, Dave notes very astutely, and he also predicts that the RNR’s time as the top babyface team has come to an end and they just haven’t figured it out yet, and that’s also 100% true. The crowd was loud for the Express, but you can tell that the magic is gone.

8. Flair retained the NWA title over Michael Hayes in 20:12. Usual Flair broomstick match, ending with a collision and Flair falling on top for the fluke pin. ***3/4

9. Windham pinned Whatley in the semi-finals with a lariat at 7:32. They didn’t have a hope of following the last match. **1/4

10. Steve Williams & Dusty Rhodes beat Eddie Gilbert & Dick Murdoch in a Bunkhouse tornado match in a crazy brawl when Williams pinned Gilbert at 11:00. **** Great spot here as Williams is doing the superman comeback with shoulder tackles before Gilbert shocks the crowd by just hitting him in the face with his cowboy boot to cut him off. Dave loves that kind of stuff.

11. Windham pinned Black Bart to win the title in 9:00 when Chris Adams stopped inference from Akbar and Windham got the rollup win. ***1/2

– Iron Sheik received a year probation for the drug charges stemming from his arrest, although charges will be dropped upon completion of the year.

– Jake Roberts is back wrestling again, albeit in tremendous pain.

– Chavo Guerrero is supposed to debut at the TV tapings on 6/23. Superstar Graham will also debut, plus Jack Hart from Memphis. Dave notes that Hart will likely need to change his name with Jimmy and Bret Hart already there. Dave says his real name is Barry Hart, but of course it was actually Barry Horowitz.

– Dingo Warrior took that “C-Team” deal after all and he’ll start up doing dates in Texas right away.

– Andre the Giant will be back with a big push by Christmas time, along with a heel video from Coliseum. A big push for Andre headed into 1988, you say?

– The Midnight Rockers set a new record for turnover, getting fired after one match and less than a week in the promotion. The story Dave hears is that they were making demands for tag title reigns and more money already, and Vince doesn’t want the headache. (I’m pretty sure we’ll get the hilarious snakeskin boot story pretty soon once the real reason comes out, but if not I’ll relate it again in a couple of issues.) The future Young Stallions are subbing for them now.

– The Hogan-Race match at MSG on 6/14 only drew 14,000, which is the smallest crowd there since Hogan won the title.

– Dibiase will start soon as a heel with a “rich playboy type gimmick”.

– To World Class, where Dingo Warrior had the balls to go to Fritz and ask for a guaranteed contract of $1500 a month, and when Fritz turned him down, he took the low-end WWF job instead. So Al Perez magically won the Texas title somewhere in “the Caribbean” to get it off Warrior. (So you can add “Turning down a long-term contract offer from Ultimate Warrior” to dumb things that Fritz has done as a promoter. World Class could have been pushing the Warrior as World champion during his hottest period and they voluntarily let him go to the WWF!)

– Although Lance Von Erich is back from elbow surgery, he’s not coming back to World Class and will end up going wherever David Manning ends up instead. (This triggered some spectacularly petty bullshit from Fritz, even by his own low standards.)

– Steve Simpson’s younger brother Shaun will be debuting shortly, once he’s old enough to work in the US. (And JBL is getting excited somewhere.)

– Brian Adias once again unleashed the dreaded ORIENTAL PUNCH, this time Al Madril, and Madril also sold it like he was having a drug overdose in the ring while babyfaces filled the ring trying to revive him.

– In New Japan again, there’s a bizarre masked team called The Pirates who have been attacking people for weeks, and Dave has no idea who they were. And now they’re actually winning matches, which is weird because they suck.

– The Lawler & Dundee v. Rich & Idol feud is already losing steam, with the crowd down to 6000 now for their scaffold match, where Paul Dangerously took a huge beating to pretty much blow it off.

– Dave has been DELUGED with letters since last week (seven of them!) pointing out that Johnny Ace is (spoiler here, readers) actually the brother of Road Warrior Animal, not related to Johnny Weaver at all.

– Tully Blanchard & Arn Anderson have started teaming on NWA house shows.

– And finally, David McLane split from GLOW this week, because the show’s financial backers wanted more T&A and McLane wants to do an actual wrestling show, and he somehow convinced 21 of the 26 women on the roster to come with him to POWW. So he’s actually hired a trainer to teach the girls to wrestle so they can tour, but here’s the wacky bit: GLOW’s second season was already taped a year ago and starts in September, at the same time that the new POWW show starts in syndication. So it’ll be virtually the same roster, but on one show they’ll be doing wacky skits for an hour, and the other will be closer to an actual wrestling show. Dave has seen demo tapes of POWW and it’s actually much better than GLOW. Not that it’s saying much.