Wrestling Observer Flashback–09.17.90

The Black Scorpion = RATINGS GOLD?!? 

Apparently we really are in Bizarroworld.

– Clash of Champions XII was a thing that happened, and the big story is that it was the most widely-viewed show in the history of the promotion.  And it was also one of the worst.  Even with big competition, the show did a 5.0 rating, which actually beats the viewership of the first Clash due to TBS being in more homes now.  Further, the Sting/Scorpion and Flair/Luger matches did a 6.8 rating, making them the most watched matches in the history of cable TV.  Even Flair/Luger has been on PPV twice this year, most people don’t order WCW PPVs, so it was actually a huge treat for fans to see the match on free TV. 

– On the other hand, the show got the most negative feedback in the history of the series, with 75% thumbs down in the reader poll.  Flair-Luger was a great match, but not enough to save the show.  And the Scorpion angle was a mess.

To the review!

1.  The Southern Boys beat the Freebirds in 8:32.  Buddy Roberts and Bob Armstrong were supposed to be involved as part of a six-man tag, but Jim Herd wants youth and Ole doesn’t, so the match was changed at the last minute.  Match was decent but not one of their better ones.  Boys won with a double sunset flip.  **

2.  Mike Rotunda pinned Buddy Landel with a backslide in 5:38.  No heat.  They were given the directive to not do anything because the office doesn’t want prelim guys stealing the show, so they did nothing.  1/2* 

3.  The Master Blasters beat the Lightning Express in 4:50.  The taller guy was OK for his first match, but it was still dumb to debut someone on a big show.  Apparently their names are “Iron” and “Steele”.  (Dave actually got them backwards, as Nash was Steel and the other guy was Iron.)  DUD 

4.  The Nasty Boys beat Terry Taylor & Jackie Fulton in 7:11.  All action, and Taylor could be an awesome worker in the right situation.  But Dave doesn’t see what the right situation could possibly be.  Knobs pinned Fulton with the shitty elbow.  *3/4 

5.  Tommy Rich pinned Bill Irwin with a Thesz Press in 3:57.  They worked hard, nobody cared.  1/2*

6.  Susan Sexton pinned Bambi in 4:10 to keep the LPWA Title.  No heat, no one cared.  3/4*   

7.  Rick & Scott Steiner beat Maximum Overdrive in 6:24.  MO is the second Road Warrior ripoff of the show, comprised of Tim “Hunter” Hunt and Jeff “Silencer” Warner.  Wasn’t bad, but normal Steiner squashes against professional job guys are better because they know how to get them over.  *1/2 

8.  Stan Hansen destroyed Tom Zenk with a lariat in 3:18.  If Dave was running the company, he wouldn’t book a guy making $150K a year to get squashed.  * 

9.  Lex Luger beat Ric Flair by DQ in 14:28 to retain the US title.  After 8 shit matches, the crowd was ready to go crazy for a pair of real stars, and they did so.  Just a typical Flair-Luger match, although compared to the rest of the shit on this show it seemed like a MOTY.  They spent 15:00 trying to get Flair over as the greatest of all time on commentary, but then the finish was just Hansen running in and attacking Luger before spitting tobacco juice in his face and laying him out.  Made no sense, especially when Flair is just going into the tag division anyway.  ***3/4 

10.  Sting pinned the Fake Black Scorpion (Al Perez) in 8:10.  So many problems here.  The match was supposed to be a brawl, but Perez is a terrible brawler.  Perez was also told to disguise his ring style so people wouldn’t know it was him, but who the hell can tell Al Perez from his ring style anyway?  So he tried to work a “different” style and that was a mess.  Sting won with the Stinger splash, but was immediately confronted by Black Scorpion #2 (The Angel of Death).  This was apparently the “real” Black Scorpion, although no one could explain how Jim Ross on commentary would know he was the real Black Scorpion.  Sid Vicious beat up Sting afterwards in a token angle for the PPV, as the whole thing looks like desperation with no direction.  *  (Maybe Scorpion should threaten to put Sting on The List.) 

–  As noted last week, Paul Orndorff left the promotion rather than do a job for Hansen, because they never bothered to sign him to a contract and that’s the risk you run.  Turns out that Paul never actually refused the job, they just took him off the show and assumed he’d refuse after the fact. 

– Dave felt that there were too many matches, and they should have eliminated the meaningless squashes. 

– Also, the crowd was really poorly distributed, as the guys who do TV production don’t seem to know how to make arenas look full on TV, even though technically WCW is drawing about as well as the WWF does right now.

– Although Sting didn’t look like a champion in his championship match, Luger would have looked like just as much of a geek in the same situation, so a panic title change isn’t going to help matters right now.  (Plenty of time to panic later!) 

– Tentative plan for Havoc ‘90 is Sting v. Sid, Doom v. Horsemen, Luger v. Hansen, Flair v. Scott Steiner (??) and Midnight Express v. Zenk & Pillman, who are apparently going to be a team again because reasons. 

– The group lost TV in St. Petersburg, which was supposed to be hosting Starrcade, so it’s been moved to the Kiel in St. Louis. 

– And now, let’s follow up on some insanity from last week, with a new feature I’d like to call:

– So it turns out that booking an angle where you get stabbed by a famous murdered MAY backfire on you.  In this case, Sumo Hall did indeed ban FMW from using the building, as feared, although it was mostly from the promotion’s wild style in general and not specifically because of the Gonzales angle.  The show has been moved to a gym in Tokyo, with Onita v. Gonzales still the planned main event, but at this point Onita’s advisors think that perhaps he should just fucking let it go already.  The feeling in Japan is that “only the stupidest of marks is into the angle.”  And Onita’s greatest popularity is among the super-hardcore fans in Tokyo, who would never buy into nonsense like this.  That being said, there’s lots of morbid curiosity from the Japanese tabloids over this freakshow, so it’s getting some press if nothing else. 

– Dave hasn’t seen the Gilbert car angle yet, but heard it came off great on TV and Lawler’s hip was legit black and blue afterwards.  The police actually came to Gilbert’s house to talk to him after the fact, and warned him never to try anything like that again.  That being said, the angle was a flop at the box office, with the show down to less than 1000 people, and the only reason is that people didn’t want to pay to see the payoff.  Basically the reaction from Memphis fans was that it just made wrestling look fake because no one actually bought that Gilbert would try to kill Lawler. 

– Muto isn’t actually going to be Great Muta full-time in Japan now, as he’s changed his mind and will just be working three shows as a special treat for fans. 

– Bruno Sammartino went to Japan for something unrelated to wrestling last week, and did a bunch of interviews where he was slagging Vince McMahon and talking about how bad the WWF is.  (Not much would change for the next 25 years after that.) 

– To the WWF, where Paul Diamond was fired.  (That sure didn’t last long.) 

– Turns out that someone broke into Sapphire’s car the night of Summerslam and stole all the jewels and mink coat that Dibiase gave her in storyline! 

– While Randy Savage is on vacation awaiting the Warrior program to start, he’s going to try to start a family with Elizabeth.  (I think that’s confirmation enough for me that he’s the guy in the steroid issue!) 

– Wrestlemania payoffs came in and everyone on the show made $5000, except for Hogan and Warrior, of course.  That’s good, Dave notes, but what’s the percentage from a $19 million show?  0.03%?  Even funnier is claims that Warrior and Hogan got $1 million each for the show, although no one really knows for sure what they got.  By comparison, everyone on last year’s show got $8500. 

– Everything is the USWA is on hold until next week, when Kevin’s court date against Jerry Jarrett comes up.  No one has any idea what’s going to happen, but the long-running channel 11 show was officially cancelled as of this week.  (Except us in the future.) 

– In Memphis, the Gilberts did a brawl with Jerry Lawler & Brickhouse Brown that was said to be an incredible ****3/4 match, with Eddie taking a bump from one section down to another. 

– Eddie Gilbert is claiming that he didn’t try to kill Lawler with the car, but Lawler did kill Andy Kauffman with the piledriver.  (Hey, that move IS deadly in Memphis!) 

– Chris Champion spent the night in jail last week after allegedly trying to molest an 11-year old girl while wearing his Ninja Turtle gimmick.  He was released on a $7000 bond.  (WTF, Chris?) 

– Angel of Death was back on the Dallas show for the USWA the night after working the Clash as the Black Scorpion.

– Betting line on the USWA right now is that Jarrett will win the fight because he’s won several other fights for territories and Kevin Von Erich has never even been in one before.  But with payoffs topping out at $100 for big drawing shows, most of the talent is hoping that Kevin does win this one.  (Well really, no one “won” the fight in the conventional sense of the word.  I guess Jarrett “won” by default more than anything.) 

– The Sportatorium show on 9/14 is going to be the first one in months not to feature an Adams v. Austin match, as the women are fighting instead. 

– The new and improved UWF does the first TV taping on 9/13 with a host of talent who may or may not appear. 

– As an inside joke, Stan Hansen destroyed a jobber named Jose Gonzales for a TV taping.

– WCW is losing syndicated TV left and right with the new fall season destroying their ratings in a lot of markets. 

– Owen Hart update:  He’s now agreed to start with the NWA in January. 

– And finally, the official NWA magazine posted a statement about the departure of the Road Warriors, claiming they left Sting and the NWA to pursue their career where the focus is on entertainment rather than wrestling. 

This, apparently, is wrestling: