Wrestling Observer Flashback–09.21.87

Dave Meltzer is PISSED OFF. He’s mad as hell, although chances are good that he’ll continue to take it.

– The object of his RAGE is a match from the TBS show this past week, where the spent the show hyping up a Windham v. AA match for the Western States title all show, and then it turns out that it’s a match taped earlier in the week at an arena, where they did commentary over top of it. (I HOPE SOMEONE GOT FIRED OVER THAT BLUNDER. Maybe Dave should switch to decaf for a bit.)

– The hype for Starrcade has begun, and Dave thinks that 10 weeks should be enough to get everyone sufficiently excited for it. People in Greensboro are pretty pissed about the Chicago thing, although Crockett is giving them live matches before the closed circuit showing there, so there’s that. Dave is still confident in Crockett’s ability to hype the show to level where it’ll be a tremendous success. The only match Dave knows for sure at this point is Nikita Koloff v. Terry Taylor to unify the UWF and NWA TV titles.

– The tentative plan for the main event of the WWF show still appears to be Hogan v. Andre II, which will intrigue people’s imaginations even though it promises to be “a coat-hanger job”, although their PPV history outside of Wrestlemania hasn’t been a success to date. Dave thinks that the audience is different enough between the two groups that both should be a success on the night. (I wonder if Dave was also putting money on Spinks in the Tyson fight, too?)

– Wrestlemania IV is coming up later, and Dave is already sick of it. Apparently they’re going to be doing a bunch of events around the show like a 10K run, and Dave wouldn’t bet on any many WWF wrestlers actually doing that run.

– King Kong Bundy is being featured in a new ad campaign for computers. (I remember that one!)

– The LJN doll market has dried up and the company is selling off all their inventory dirt cheap. (I was still buying lots of them at this point, perhaps they WERE so cheap.)

– Ken Patera and Mr. Saito both got further hammered, this time in the civil suit filed by the cops that they beat up. The police officers (one of whom had to retire due to injuries) were originally suing for $1.2 million, but it was reduced to about $25,000 after the trial was settled.

– After the death of King Kong Kirk, the New York state commission actually started following up on their licensing for wrestlers, and in fact both George Steele and Superstar Graham were unable to pass physicals and will be unable to work New York for a while. Graham for obvious reasons, Steele for reasons that Dave doesn’t know.

– Bruno won’t be wrestling for a few weeks while he recovers from his most recent tour. (Or, as it turned out, ever again.)

– The WWF is running Nashville on 9/26, with the first meeting of Hulk Hogan and Ted Dibiase as the main event. (Already?)

– They did a show in Omaha where Kamala no-showed, so the main event ended up being a handicap match with Randy Savage beating Mr Fuji and Kim Chee. (Wow, that sounds just awful.)

– Apparently the stuff between the Freebirds and Missy Hyatt last week was the Birds trying to get fired, and they succeeded and now Buddy Roberts and Terry Gordy are gone from the UWF, along with Chris Adams.

– Missy Hyatt is being moved to the main NWA roster on a regular basis.

– The Sheepherders debut in the UWF soon, with Johnny Ace as their flag-bearer despite an angle in Florida where they broke up. Since it’s technically different areas, they just decided to ignore it.

– With Steve Williams getting ready to come into the NWA full-time, he’s being booked against Dory Funk Jr. in UWF titles matches in the Texas area so that Funk can teach him how to work.

– They started doing “top 10” listings on the UWF shows again, and some wrestlers (Michael Hayes) were actually giving Crockett heat about not being included in these fake rankings, so he suddenly appeared in them again.

– The UWF ran Memphis on 9/11 and actually did quite well, as both Crockett and Vince are making inroads into Jarrett’s territory. Lawler tried to counter with a faces v. heels softball game with $1 admission, but apparently it didn’t hurt.

– Keichi Yamada debuted the craziest new finish that Dave has ever seen, something called a “shooting star press”.

– Masa Saito will return soon from the trial in the US, and he’s got some good heat going right now, so guess who his first program is going to be against? Go on, take a guess, you’ll never get it.

– Weirdness in All Japan, as Ted Dibiase in fact had to vacate his half of the tag titles with Stan Hansen due to WWF being WWF, and so Hansen picked Austin Idol to defend against Tenryu & Ashura Hara. Naturally, the Japanese team won the belts in what was a crappy match because Idol isn’t exactly Ric Flair in the ring, and he didn’t get over because the Japanese really hate Idol’s Memphis heel punchy-kicky style. And then Tenryu cut a promo after the match where he threw down the belt because the match sucked so bad and he was ashamed of being a champion as a result of it. So I guess don’t look for Idol to be doing any more tours of Japan for a while.

– More distinctly Memphis gimmick matches, as Lawler promoted a series of “Wheel of Torture” matches, where the stipulations on a wheel were all stuff like “Loser eats dog food”, “Loser gets tarred and feathered”, “Loser gets stuck with a cattle prod” and others. Oddly, the heels won every match on the card, although they’re doing a night of rematches to follow up, where no doubt all the babyfaces will win.

– The NWA is dark for the week as everyone is on vacation in San Martine. (I’m still scratching my head as to why Crockett lost so much money!)

– Dusty Rhodes is using the sleeper as his finisher on the current tour, which is perfect for him because it doesn’t require him to do anything.

– Dave is pretty sure that the Horsemen are going to win the tag titles from the RNR Express any day now.

– In Portland, they did an angle where CW Styles was wrestling the Nightmares, and it built where his glass eye got pulled out and rolled around on the mat.

– World Class created a fictitious tournament in “South Africa” so that Eric Embry could “travel” there and win the new Light Heavyweight title.

– And finally, Dave has the SCOOPS on the “Survivor’s Series”, as it’ll feature two teams captained by Hogan and Andre in series of team matches. Dave is pretty sure it’ll be a gauntlet matches like Japan does, and he’s predicting a low buyrate for the show already based on his assumption. But he admits he doesn’t actually know anything past it being some sort of team concept and he’s just guessing.

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK.