Wrestling Observer Flashback–12.24.90

Previously in the Observer… http://blogofdoom.com/index.php/2016/11/18/wrestling-observer-flashback-12-17-90/

It’s the final issue of 1990 as we head into the Christmas break, and this is gonna be a weird transition for me as we move from my collection to the archives on f4wonline.com. No more scrawled handwitten newsflashes or mistakes fixed with correction tape!

I would be remiss if I didn’t encourage everyone to sign up for the monthly subscription, at $10.99, and you can follow along with me and get access to another 10 years of issues! I’ve been a subscriber since the day the premium version of the site launched and I’ve never regretted it. Since I’ve spent the past year or so piggybacking off Dave’s writing with these, the least I can do is hopefully send some business his way.

http://account.f4wonline.com/signup

OK, enough business talk. Let’s wrap up 1990!

– Dave starts with a poem from James E. Cornette, available at all the stores that carry the hot new Coliseum Video “Best of the Warlord’s five-star matches”

– The real top story is the official folding of the Universal Wrestling Federation, which was the hottest promotion in the world pretty much up until the moment they suddenly shut down. So as noted last week, the split between President Shinji Jin and Maeda led to Maeda gathering up all the talent and somehow convincing them to side with him in the company split. The current plan is restructure the company under a different name. Their first card is tentatively scheduled for April, which Dave jokes should be called “Starting Over…and Over.”

– Oh, hey, almost forgot: STARRCADE REVIEW!

1. Bobby Eaton pinned Tom Zenk with an inside cradle at 8:45. Started slow, got good. Zenk wasn’t acknowledged as TV champion because he hadn’t won it yet. ***

2. Rick & Scott Steiner beat Sgt. Kruger (Ray Apollo, aka Doink III) & Col. DeKlerk (Ted Petty, aka Rocco Rock). Complete massacre by the Steiners, as Rick cheerfully moved away from Petty’s flip dive and laughed him when he crashed and burned. Scott pinned him with a Frankensteiner at 2:12. *1/4

3. Konnan & Rey Mysterio beat Chris Adams & Norman Smiley in 5:29. Complete style clash, and Adams was working with broken ribs on top of that. Konnan pinned Smiley with a suplex in 5:29, and afterwards Mysterio tried a dive and Adams was off in England again and the poor guy splatted onto the ring steps. *1/2

4. Masa Saito & Great Muta beat Rip Morgan & Jack Victory. All-action, decent match, but the crowd had no idea how to react to it. Muta hit Victory with a german suplex off heel miscommunication at 5:41. *3/4

5. Salman Hashimikov & Victor Zangiev defeated Danny Johnson & Troy Montour (the “Canadian” team). Everyone was really bad, and Hasimikov pinned Johnson with a belly to belly at 3:54, which was 2:00 longer than it needed to be. -*1/4

6. Michael Wall Street pinned Terry Taylor with the Stock Market Crash in 6:52, which beat the computer’s prediction of 8:32. Match was OK. **1/4

7. Ricky Morton & Tommy Rich beat the Freebirds in 6:13. Good, fast-paced match that marked the farewell appearance of Rocky King in the Richard Marley role. After he accidentally caused Garvin to get pinned by Morton, the Birds turned on him for WCW’s sort-of-spoof of the Virgil angle. **1/2

8. Sid Vicious & Dan Spivey reunited to squash Motor City Madman & Big Cat when Sid powerbombed Mad Man at 1:00. Short and sweet. *

9. Steiners beat Konnan & Mysterio in the semi-finals when Rick countered a headscissors into a powerbomb of Mysterio at 2:51. Nothing to this one. *1/4

10. Muta & Saito beat the Russians in the semi-finals when pinned Zangiev with a suplex. Watchable. *

11. Lex Luger beat Stan Hansen in a bullrope match to regain the US title at 10:13. Luger won after a ref bump where he dragged Hansen to all four corners, only to have a second ref call Stan the winner before the first ref revived and gave Lex the belt. ***1/4

12. Doom retained the tag titles over the Horsemen in a “North St. Louis Street Fight” when they did the old double pin at 7:19. Big brawl, four blades, good stuff. Super stiff, ending with Anderson getting pinned by Simmons while Windham cradled Butch Reed. ****

13. The Steiners beat the Japanese to win the tournament in 10:53. Dick the Bruiser was supposed to be the ref originally, then they decided on Masao Hattori and moved Bruiser to the street fight, then seconds before the show started they changed their minds again and moved Bruiser to the main event. Fast paced action with lots of hot moves here, and Rick pinned Saito with a sunset flip off the top. ***1/4

14. Sting pinned “The Black Scorpion” to retain the NWA World title in 18:31 with a flying bodypress. Dave uses a baseball analogy of the home team being up by six runs in the ninth when the greatest closing pitcher in history stepped up to finish it off…and was told by the coach that he had to pitch with a mask on, and he wasn’t allowed to throw any pitches that might identify him as the star closer. On the bright side, Dave liked the flying saucer and thought it was good stuff. In a very WCW move, they actually went out and got the previous Scorpions (Angel of Death, Randy Culley and Bill Irwin) to play the masked Scorpion cronies here, even though only us nerds reading the newsletter would have ANY idea why that was clever or would even care. Flair did an amazing job of hiding his identity, and as a result had the worst Flair match in history, even worse than the JYD match. (Hey now, let’s not say things we can’t take back!) Flair managed to bleed UNDER the mask, but even with a 7-on-2 advantage against Sting, the heels accomplished nothing. 3/4*

Overall, Dave thought it was a good show, not great or anything. It was watchable and he understands WHY the last match was so bad, but it was BAAAAAAD.

– Early PPV estimates are that it did around the same as Havoc, or about 1.3% buyrate. They should be happy with that.

– New Japan announced the lineup for their 12/26 TV special, which will include Lou Thesz becoming the first man to wrestle in seven different decades. Fred Blassie actually worked in six different ones. Thesz will wrestle Masa Chono, the guy who he gifted the STF to.

– The next Clash is booked for 1/30, and looks to be headlined by Doom v. Sting & Lex Luger, plus Flair v. Pillman, and an arm-wrestling match between Paul E. and Missy Hyatt. (That one turned out to be an all-time great gag.)

– Denial is not just a river in Egypt, as everyone in WCW insists that Dusty is not a candidate for the job and in fact no one has even TALKED to him. In fact, they haven’t even HEARD of him. Dusty Rhodes? They don’t know any “Dusty Rhodes”. But then of course they can’t say anything for legal reasons until January 20 anyway.

– Surprise, surprise: The Starrcade show was running long and the massive Horsemen/Scorpions beatdown on Sting ended up being a total mess and not at all what was scripted. It was supposed to be a recreation of the famous beatdown on Dusty, and just went off a cliff for various reasons.

– The tag title match was also all kinds of screwed up. Dave is pretty sure that Flair was going to be the Scorpion all along, and then sometime after Havoc it was changed to Windham as the Scorpion, which is why Flair was moved to the tag title picture and Windham was missing from TV. And then they changed their mind and wanted Windham to chase the tag titles on house shows after Starrcade, so Flair was the Scorpion again. But at the time when Flair was going to do the tag match, Doom was told they were winning in order to set up all the rematches with the babyfaces chasing them. But then they put Windham into the match and decided that the Horsemen needed to win the tag titles to give the show a big title change and make Doom into the babyfaces chasing the titles on the road again. But then Doom refused to do the job and they changed the finish again on the night of the show, but then realized that it was a street fight and they couldn’t just do a DQ or countout finish, and so came up with the double-pin where no one is happy.

– Exactly.

– Coming off the tournament win, the Steiners are the hottest act in the promotion, but as usual have no one to draw against.

– To Japan, where Choshu’s booking is drawing huge money right now, and Scott Norton in particular is getting over as a monster and will be pushed as the next big foreign monster next year. Of course, they have to literally plan out his matches move-for-move for him and limit him to three moves, but nobody’s perfect.

– Inoki’s Iraq tour was a smashing success, including freeing the hostages, and now he’s doing wrestling-style interviews with the press where portrays the government as heels and himself as the virtuous babyface who succeeded where they failed. (Maybe he should run for President?)

– Madusa has decided to quit wrestling and just live in Japan.

– OK, over to Dallas again, where the supposed GWF taping on 12/28 will instead be a USWA taping funded by Jerry Jarrett. The first GWF one will now be 1/22 in Louisville. Jarrett will once again run the Sportatorium every Friday, having successfully defeated Kevin Von Erich in the most one-sided “war” in promotional history.

– The reunion of the Fabulous Ones has doubled houses in Memphis as of late, although they’re running a subtle angle where Keirn has trouble accepting Jim Cornette as his manager.

– Joe Pedicino’s latest plan, once that Nigerian check clears of course, is to bring in Owen Hart as the GWF World champion, who has been travelling around the world and defending that prestigious title (in Joe’s imagination), before immediately dropping it to USWA champion Terry Funk.

– Speaking of prestigious titles that only exist in the imagination of a promoter, an era comes to an end, as Larry Zbyszko was officially stripped of the AWA World title. The kayfabe reason on TV is that he’s been asked to go to Japan and defend it, and he might not go, so Joe Blanchard has stripped him of the belt. In reality, he’s going to WCW. Dave wonders what exactly they’re stripping him of when they haven’t even run a house show in six months.

– To the WWF, where Andre is not going to make the Rumble after all due to injury. He apparently suffered a blood clot in his leg while riding in a Japanese taxi.

– Debuts at the most recent TV tapings on 12/11 in Tampa include the Nasty Boys (with zero change in their gimmick), someone called “The Mongol” and Jeff Warner as “JW Strong” in a tryout.

– Astute readers will think that 12/11 rings a bell from a legal standpoint, and you’d be right! During the taping, jobber Charles Austin suffered what appeared to be a broken neck in a squash loss to the Rockers, as he took a Rocker Dropper wrong and ended up in the hospital in critical condition, unable to move anything but his toes. (Of course, this one would return to haunt their legal department for years to come.)

– Sounds like Jacques Rougeau is returning as a singles wrestler, with some kind of Canadian mounted police gimmick. Dave notes that they’re sure desperate for gimmicks.

– More trepidation from potential bodybuilder stars of the WBF, since Vince has this CRAZY unfounded reputation for starting a project and then losing interest after two weeks if it doesn’t immediately draw money. Why, that’s just CRAZY talk. Anyway, as an example, Vince actually got involved in the development of a Roller Derby league around 1985 and even set up a deal with the USA Network to broadcast, but then suddenly lost interest and withdrew his money, leaving it to go nowhere and die.

– To WCW, where they’re doing an interesting four-way feud for the TV title with Zenk, Anderson, Taylor and Eaton all vying for the title and claiming to the #1 contender.

– And finally, Lawrence Taylor’s involvement in the Meadowlands card on 1/11 is getting them some mainstream pub in the area, but tickets still aren’t selling worth shit. As Dave notes, celebrity involvement can boost a strong card, but if you don’t have a main event that people want to see, expecting them to buy tickets for the sideshow is asking too much.

See you next time as Dave finally switches to a computer full-time!