Wrestling Observer Flashback–02.08.88

Happy Christmas! War is over!

– That’s right, Dave leads off by declaring that the great wrestling war of the 80s is over, and Vince has won!

– Surely Crockett will never catch up now.

– The big story of the week has actually flown under the radar, with WWF announcing their PPV slate for the year as Wrestlemania, something on August 29, Survivor Series and Royal Rumble. Now, with the ridiculous 60 day exclusivity deal they have, that means Crockett is super-duper-screwed because they had been wanting to run the Crockett Cup in mid-April and Starrcade at the end of November, and now they can’t. Dave doesn’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that Wrestlemania will gross more than everyone else for the year, COMBINED, because of mammoth PPV revenues. Crockett’s only real play here is their plan to move a bunch of shows to free TV on TBS, sort of a TV version of PPV in opposition. Maybe even Starrcade?

– The Royal Rumble was the highest rated show in the history of the USA Network, drawing an 8.2 rating and even the repeat viewing drew a 4.8 rating. Since Primetime normally does a 2.9 rating on Monday nights, that means that even the repeat viewing was the #2 show on all of cable for the week!

– The Bunkhouse Stampede MAY have been profitable, but no one’s quite sure yet. (It ended up doing a 3.5% buyrate, which was OK.)

– Wrestlemania IV is probably sold out by the time Dave is typing this, and oddly will make more money for them than WM3 did because ticket prices are WAY higher this year, plus Trump is lining Vince’s pockets. Plus hey, if the buyrate is anywhere near last year’s, they’re gonna be making over $15 million on that alone. (Spoiler: It wasn’t and they didn’t.)

– OK, so what was the story with the Rock N Roll Express quitting last week? Well, at a house show the night before, The RNR were asked to do a job for Warlord and Ivan Koloff in 12 minutes, which Morton thought was ridiculous because they were big stars and Koloff is a job guy at this point. So instead they did the deal where Morton just went out and laid down for Ivan in 12 seconds. When they arrived at Nassau for the Bunkhouse show, Dusty heard about the stunt and fired them.

– Also fired: Michael Hayes, for an “incident” in the past week. He’ll probably end up back in World Class, but he wants to go to the WWF and has sent in a resume.

– Inoki is planning some kind of freakshow “Martial Arts Olympics” in July at the Tokyo Dome, and might end up topping Wrestlemania III if he fights Koji Kitao in the main event as rumored.

– Dave went to a WWF house show at the Cow Place on 1/30, and saw a George Steele v. Ted Dibase that was clearly the worst of Dibiase’s career. In fact, he has a word for it, but was chastised last week for using it and promised not to do so anymore. (Hint: It rhymes with “shmabortion”)

– Billy Jack Haynes actually missed the show, and he’s been missing a lot of them due to heart problems and other various medical ailments, to the point where there’s talk of his career being over. (I think he just had a rare disease known as “Black Blood”)

– That show actually got them into trouble with the California athletic commission, as the number of no-shows caused them to file a complaint against Titan and force them to offer refunds to anyone who wanted them. Ironically, just a few days beforehand the state had actually voted to reclassify wrestling as “entertainment” rather than “sport”, which would have taken away the commission’s jurisdiction had the actual law been passed in time for the show.

– Dave goes over the lineup for the last AWA show at the Minneapolis Auditorium before it gets torn down, featuring Curt Hennig v. Greg Gagne in a cage match for the AWA title. Anyway, he goes on a patented Dave run-on sentence about the Tom Zenk v. Billy Robinson match, complete with multiple parentheses, and the gist is that:

1. Billy Robinson will probably be asked to job because it’s a one-shot deal and Zenk is the new babyface.

2. He’s shocked they even made the match for that reason, because Robinson runs opposition to the AWA with his own group and has a rep as a shooter.

– The Nasty Boys are indeed into the AWA full-time now, having left Memphis.

– Adrian Adonis actually tripped on a hole in the ring and broke his ankle, causing him to miss his Japan tour with Bob Orton. (Man, hope things don’t go any worse for him this year!)

– Kevin Kelly actually got into a fight with Sheik Adnan during interview tapings, outside of the actual TV footage, and ended up beating him to a pulp. (The more I read about Kelly, the more I’m shocked Vince made it out of that infamous meeting in 1992 alive!)

– The AWA and Memphis are actually scheduled to have an increased amount of talent swapping this year, which will lead to a lot of Jerry Lawler and Jeff Jarrett on AWA TV.

– So George Steele was supposed to work the battle royale main event of the San Fran show, but instead just walked around ringside for a few minutes before heading back to the dressing room with Junkyard Dog because he didn’t want to take the bump at his age. This reminds Dave of a story of another “Neanderthal character” in the WWF who spent the entirety of a match stalling at ringside until fans started yelling at him to stop being a bum and get in the ring. The wrestler, who wasn’t supposed to able to speak English, turned to the fan and yelled back “What do you think this is, the NWA?”

– The Royal Rumble actually only drew 16,000 to the 18,000 seat arena in Hamilton, and most of the people there live reported that it was a boring show because of Dino Bravo’s bench press in particular.

– Vince is being super-secretive about the Main Event angles, and actually delayed commentary on the most recent round of TV tapings so they could into the studio after the show airs and then record the commentary.

– Apparently the result of the World title match is going to be decided by Hogan’s movie shooting schedule, because if he’s available to work weekends then they’ll just leave the title on him all summer.

– Big Van Vader is getting beyond a monster push in New Japan now, winning handicap matches in seconds and not even letting the other guys tag in.

– Back to the NWA, as conspiracy theories are going around that all the recent firings are due to money problems, not whatever reasons they were given.

– The Rock N Roll Express would really really like to go to the WWF now that they’re free agents, but Vince has little interest in them. Dave suggests that he sign them and have Morton do a new version of “Boogie Woogie Dance Hall” for the Wrestling Album III.

– As expected, the bench press angle between the Warriors and Powers of Pain drew well, and Animal got a barbell dropped on his face and was taken to the hospital. Dave thought the angle came off well and the feud should be hot.

– The company is asking all of the Dallas-based wrestlers to move to Charlotte, but Dusty and JJ and Crockett themselves will be moving from Charlotte to Dallas.

– Mike Rotunda won the TV title from Nikita Koloff on 1/26, and immediately gave the Florida title to his Varsity Club partner Rick Steiner. Dave doesn’t know about Rotunda as a titleholder yet, but the Club angle is fun. However, Dusty went on a big tirade on TV afterwards, talking about how “You don’t buy belts in the NWA!” (in reference to the Dibiase-Hogan angle). Dave’s take: Steiner actually got the Florida title for free, which is about as fair a price for that title as you can get.

– The infamous Baby Doll blackmail angle to set up Dusty v. Zbyszko started this week. (It was abruptly dropped and forgotten soon after.)

– Hey, Terry Taylor is already gone from Memphis.

– And finally, poor Buddy Roberts did the job in a “Thunderdome” match in World Class, which featured a finish of him getting handcuffed to the cage by the babyfaces and having his trunks pulled down so that he was standing there naked for 5 minutes before anyone from his team came to help him. On the bright side, the show only drew 80 people to Houston to watch it, so no one actually saw it anyway.

ADIOS.