Wrestling Observer Flashback–04.08.91

Previously in the Flashback… http://blogofdoom.com/index.php/2016/12/08/wrestling-observer-flashback-04-03-91-part-one/

OK, Wrestlemania is behind us, so now the wrestling world can move on and everyone will remember 1991 as the best year ever, right?

– In the top story of the week, Sid Vicious gave notice to WCW, effective May 31.  It’s widely known that he’s starting with the WWF on 09/02, since his contract is set to expire on 09/01.  Currently Sid is paid $5000 a week, but he was negotiating for a huge raise from Jim Herd, complete with two months off in the summer.  He’s looking for $8000 per week, which would make him the third highest paid in the company and thus it’s not happening.  They’re still trying a last ditch negotiation to keep him, however.  WCW is also sending out legal threats to the WWF over alleged contract tampering, since Sid shouldn’t have been able to arrange a starting date without talking to them first.  Sid has been bitching about doing too many jobs (“more than Tim Horner” as he claims) and is generally unhappy with his treatment in WCW. Obviously a Sid v. Hogan match would be a main event for Wrestlemania. 

– Of course, if Sid leaves, that only leaves Ric Flair as the only possible choice for top heel.  (Well thank god HE’S not going anywhere.) 

– The WWF/SWS show at the Tokyo Dome had an announced attendance of 64,618, which would be the largest indoor gathering of people in Japan EVER.  But of course, it’s a lie, and real attendance is somewhere around 42,000.  Still very impressive, although real actual paid is probably closer to 25000 or so based on tickets sold by 3/21 and the rest is padded with freebies.  Still, that’s the biggest crowd of the year for the WWF, ironically in a country where there’s no TV to promote their product. 

1. Samson Fuyuki & Tatsumi Kitahara & Masao Orihara & Apollo Sugawara defeated Goro Tsurumi & Don Arakawa & Kenichi Ooya & Fumihiro Niikura in 5:37 when Fuyuki pined Oya with a bodypress.  Not great crowd reactions.  **1/2 

2.  Kendo Nagasaki pinned Jim Duggan in 2:49 with a thrust kick.  Duggan clowned for the whole match.  DUD

3.  Demolition beat Shinichi Nakano & Shunji Takano in 5:22 with Decapitation on Nakano.  Wasn’t bad.  *1/2 

4. The Hart Foundation beat the Rockers in 14:40 when Shawn hit Bret with a bodypress, and he rolled through for the pin.  Very good from all four.  ***1/2 

5. Big John Tenta pinned Koji Kitao with an elbowdrop in 6:10.  This got the most heat of the night from all the sumo fans, because they’re not hardcore wrestling fans and just knew Kitao as the “bad boy”, and thus booed the shit out of him and cheered everything Earthquake did.  Sluggish, but not awful.  **1/2  (The rematch soon after would be a tad more newsworthy.) 

6.  Ted Dibiase & Haku beat Takashi Ishikawa & Great Kabuki in 15:16 when Dibiase pinned Ishikawa with a suplex.  Awful, no heat, too long.  DUD

7.  Ultimate Warrior pinned Sgt. Slaughter in 7:14 with the usual finishing sequence.  Warrior got over better than last year, running through the crowd like Hansen & Brody, but he blew up FAST.  * 

8.  Masaharu Funaki beat Naoki Sano in 10:23 with a cross armlock.  This was treated like a sort of “mixed martial arts” match, but fans didn’t really know what they were watching because most of the crowd was freebies who got tickets from a glasses store.  Still the best match of the night from a technical standpoint.  **3/4

9.  Kerry Von Erich beat Mr. Perfect by DQ in 6:59.  This had a ref bump leading to the Perfectplex, and the ref revived and called for the DQ.  Kery looked really bad, and fans booed the match afterwards.  *

10.  Yoshiaki Yatsu & Ishin Riki beat the Barbarian & Jimmy Snuka in 10:00 when Yatsu pinned Barbarian with a suplex.  Riki, who wrestled on US indies as Sumo Riki, showed tons of potential and everyone was raving about him.  **1/4  (He kind of floated around for years afterwards and he’s still active, but never really became a notable star or anything.) 

11. Randy Savage pinned George Takano with the big elbow in 13:42.  Big disappointment and very little happened.  *3/4 

12.  The Legion of Doom beat Hogan & Tenryu by countout in 14:03.  This was better than it sounds on paper, with Hogan and Hawk working against each other and letting each other have tons of offense.  Hogan didn’t do his usual routine, and the fans were PISSED at the non-finish.  Dave heard that none of the four would agree to do the job, but too much of these finishes is going to kill off SWS really fast.  ***3/4 

– Back to the Sid situation, as the negotiations appear to have fallen through again and he’s going to be taken off TV until the 5/19 PPV show where he’ll job to Gigante on the way out.  The show looks like only hardcore nerds will order, since Flair v. Fujinami isn’t going to draw any money on top. 

– Oh hey, in a SHOCKING coincidence, the WWF has booked the Sundome in Tampa on 5/18, which just HAPPENS to be the day before the WCW PPV in St. Petersburg.  HOW DO THESE STAGGERING COINCIDENCES KEEP HAPPENING?!? 

– Speaking of shocking, it turns out that the WWF was lying about the numbers for Wrestlemania and in fact the 4% reported last week was “way high”.  In fact, the real number appears to be 2.8%, which would make this the lowest-grossing Wrestlemania EVER. 

– Speaking of low grossing PPVs, Herb Abrams announced a UWF PPV for 6/9 from Palmetto, FL.  Bob Backlund has been advertised for it, but Bob doesn’t know anything about it.  Rick Rude v. Paul Orndorff is also being talked about, but Rude is still under contract at the moment so that’s a tricky one.  Given their TV show gets almost no viewers and they can’t entice people to actually pay money to come to their shows, a PPV sounds like a bad idea.  Oh, and more wrestlers are coming forward with bad cheques from Herb, as well.

– Hey, the CRTC approved PPV in Canada!  So that’ll be coming soon.  (I believe Survivor Series was the first one in parts of Canada.) 

– Satoru Sayama is trying to start his own sport called “Shooting”, which combines punching, kicking, judo throws and submission holds.  The matches can end with knockouts or submissions.  (What a stupid concept for a sport. No one would ever buy THAT company for $4 billion.) 

– And now, a new feature I’d like to call:

– OK, better grab some coffee or something here.  The basic gist is that New Japan recognizes Fujinami as the NWA World champion, whereas WCW recognizes Flair as the WCW World champion.  This wouldn’t be controversial, except that for the past two months the NWA and WCW titles have been separate entities that have both happened to be held by Ric Flair at the same time and represented by the same belt. When the Japanese TV show aired by the match, they just ignored all the controversy and played it like Fujinami is the new champion, end of story.  However, Flair left with the title and everyone in the papers freaked out about it.  The WCW version is that Fujinami threw Flair over the top rope and the WCW ref didn’t want to make the call right then for fear of a riot, and that the Japan referee had no business making the count for Fujinami.  But that contradicts the earlier Sting-Muta match in the show, which saw one guy throw the other over the top rope without a DQ, so now Jim Herd is clarifying that the Flair match was under AMERICAN rules and thus over the top is a DQ.  However, fans are so pissed about the screwjob finish that New Japan is actually going to pursue a (worked) court case against WCW to “get the belt back” because otherwise they’ll look super-weak in the eyes of the fans.  In reality, everything that happened was supposed to happen, although New Japan felt bullied by WCW into the ridiculous finish because they didn’t want to jeopardize their relationship.

– To Oregon, where Billy Jack Haynes really knows how to exit a promotion with style.  On his way out after burning his bridges yet again, he went on TV and went into a bizarre rant against Roddy Piper’s automotive shop, comparing the girls who work there to girls who work as hookers in the bad part of Portland, and then brought out food stamps and told the girls to stick the stamps where they “stick the other stuff.”  The TV announcer looked really uncomfortable with all this, so Haynes grabbed him in a hug and told him to take a few bumps in the ring before he makes any comments.  Needless to say, Billy is gone. 

– The final show at the Mid-South Coliseum of course featured Jerry Lawler regaining the USWA title from Terry Funk when special ref Jackie Fargo fast-counted for Lawler. 

– Dave has sketchy updates on the 4/1 SWS show in Kobe, with some WEIRD stuff apparently going down.  First up, Minoru Suzuki allegedly got into a shoot match with Apollo Sugawara, throwing real kicks at him until Sugawara just walked out of the ring.  Also, John Tenta had a rematch with Koji Kitao, and Koji was grumpy about having to put Quake over again and decided not to cooperate.  So Tenta just suplexes his ass anyway because FUCK HIM.  Kitao eventually did the job, but grabbed the mic afterwards and called “fake wrestling” a “circus”, and then gave the referee a legit hard kick.  Dave notes that if Kitao burns this bridge, that’s probably the end of his wrestling career because no one else will take him. 

– To WCW, where the main show is going to be renamed “WCW Saturday Night” as of the 4/13 show. 

– Shockingly, Dusty Rhodes has given himself a new interview segment on a weekly basis.

– The build, besides Flair v. Fujinami, has been the announcers teasing a Flair v. Horsemen feud, as they egg him on with questions about what would happen if he faced Barry or Arn down the road.

– Owen Hart is already gone for not cancelling his Japan tour.

– The “third Freebird” will be Fantasia, and Dave has no idea who it is.  (Maybe it’s Kevin Nash!  Also, how did the not think they could call someone that name without Disney threatening to sue?  Disney would probably threaten to sue me just for using it here.) 

–  Curtis Hughes has been repackaged in Mr. Hughes, and will take Buddy Landel’s place in the booking sheets while doing a Big Bubba character.  (Dusty Rhodes LOVES his big guys in suits!) 

– To the WWF, where Brutus Beefcake returned doing a Barber Shop segment, so the masked man gimmick has already been dropped. 

– Ricky Steamboat will simply be called The Dragon.

– Despite the fact that gates are actually up lately, the WWF ran several hotshot angles on the TV tapings, including Earthquake “killing” Jake’s snake to set up that program, and Undertaker locking Warrior in a coffin, plus Slaughter throwing a fireball at Hogan to keep that program going.

– The Viking is now The Berzerker.  Dave thinks that changing the manager would help even more.

– Roddy Piper’s crippling hip injury had already disappeared by the time of the taping, as he wrestled without even selling it. 

– They tape an SNME on 4/27 in Omaha, featuring a battle royale as the main event.  (The last SNME on NBC for many years, in fact.) 

– Rumor killer:  Jim Neidhart is not fired and the Hart Foundation is still a team.  Tugboat is not fired either.

– Mike Rotunda’s gimmick will be “Irwin R Schyster”, which is the WWF’s take on Michael Wall Street but as an IRS agent.

– And finally, they’ve got a role for Kevin Nash now that Billy Jack Haynes has been confirmed as Black Blood.  Apparently, he’ll be called… “Oz”.