Wrestling Observer Flashback–10.28.91

OK, I signed up for New Japan World again tonight because they’re doing regular English commentary shows now, plus they also take Paypal now, so FUCK IT. I HOPE YOU’RE ALL HAPPY. Siphoning away my hard-earned roof builder and car cleaner money for more pro wrestling. Fucking Kenny Omega and his six star matches.

Previously on the Flashback… http://blogofdoom.com/index.php/2017/01/17/wrestling-observer-flashback-10-21-91/

Gonna be tough to top last week’s issue, I’m not gonna lie.

– Dave’s top story is that the 1/4 show at the Tokyo Dome sold a shitload of tickets for WCW/New Japan Supershow II, to the tune of 11,000 seats sold and $1.3 million. It’s not a record, but DAMN. No lineup is announced yet, but it’s rumored to be Fujinami v. Choshu for the IWGP title and the Steiners v. Muto & Sting for the IWGP tag titles. Plus Inoki against a “wrestling legend”. (Ended up being Hiro Hase. This, by the way, was my impulse impetus for re-signing with New Japan World, because I was like “Maybe I should check out this show if it’s on New Japan World”, then I was like “I could also check out Omega/Okada while I’m there” and then it was like “Well, FUCK IT. Let’s do it.” There you go, my brain function in a nutshell).

– The WWF and SWS are doing their own Dome show on 12/12, with much less impressive ticket sales thus far, featuring a rumored main event of Hogan v. Tenryu for the WWF title and some other boring stuff. (The co-main ended up being Legion of Doom v. Natural Disasters in what I’m sure was a match that thrilled the audience, although the show did a supposed 40,000 tickets sold for a $1.5 million gate.)

– Nothing new on Sid, as we only know that he had some kind of tendon tear in his left bicep on 10/7 and he’s been out ever since. He’s already been announced as out of the Survivor Series, but Randy Savage still hasn’t been reinstated on TV yet, which is weird because he’s working house shows. Current idea from the doctors is that Sid will be out for four months. (He was back around, what, January? So it didn’t mess them up TOO much.)

– The other big news of the week is that Ricky Steamboat, unsurprisingly, was either quit or fired from WWF depending on who’s telling it. He gave notice on 12/16 because he wasn’t happy and his supposed big push hadn’t materialized.

(YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!)

– Anyway, Steamboat was only making $52,000 a year, which wasn’t particularly beneficial for his financial well-being either. So on the latest TV taping, the agents asked him to do a squash job for both Undertaker and IRS since he had given notice, but he was like “Why should I sacrifice my own brand for you fuckers when I’m already jobbing every night at the house shows?” and he walked on them. And Vince was so pissed that he didn’t even buy a plane ticket home for Ricky! Dave notes that, sure, it might make sense to do squash jobs to build up Undertaker, but IRS? REALLY?

– In fact, once Steamboat walked, Undertaker didn’t even do a squash match on the tapings, so basically the entire point of the exercise was to make Steamboat look like a punk on the way out without any reason for the matches to begin with, so good on him for telling them to shove it, sez Dave.

– The annual All Japan tag tournament starts soon, and I should note that last week Dave instructed us to HOLD OUR VOTES for Worst Tag Team this year, because Giant Baba and Andre the Giant are entered. Pretty strong field otherwise, with Gordy & Williams, the British Bruisers, Furnas & Lafon, Misawa & Kawada, Hansen & Spivey and Jumbo & Taue all entered. (DAMN! That’s some early 90s AJPW royalty in there at once!)

– Clash XVII was made official for 11/19 with a main event of The Enforcers v. Barry Windham & Ron Simmons and a bunch of other WCW ‘91 bullshit. (That card ended up going through some DRASTIC changes after Havoc, for the better, and was a HELL of a show as a result!)

– The Quest For Flair’s Belt continue, as a court date is scheduled for 11/7, although Flair’s attorneys are still offering to sell for $50,200. (They spent fucking $200,000 on MOTHERFUCKING OZ and his stupid entrance and they won’t even drop $50K to get the belt back and not look like a bunch of bush league hicks? Is this company just willfully stupid? You know what, never mind, I know the answer.)

– Nothing new and exciting in the Paul E. suspension. The official word from WCW was that a hearing is forthcoming, but no hearing is forthcoming, if you smell what the Rock is cookin’. And since it’s more and more apparent that 5 seconds of investigation into the “charges” would result in discovering that Heyman was a complete scapegoat because Lawler didn’t want to do the job to Luger, it’s unlikely that any serious investigation or hearing will ever happen. (They already do a good enough job of looking stupid on their own, I guess.)

– Interestingly, Herd’s new plan is to drop all the color commentators and just have Jim Ross, Tony Schiavone and Eric Bischoff do the various syndicated shows solo. So Dallas Page is going to become a wrestler now. “You read that right”, notes Dave. (And then eight years later he was WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION. Multiple times! What the fuck, wrestling?)

– The steroid piece that was supposed to air on Inside Edition this week was “mysteriously” pulled, even though interviews with the Sammartinos and others had been filmed and edited.

– Are you tired of the union disputes in Mexico yet? Well, talks dragged to a standstill yet again this week, like the railroad in the fourth season of Hell on Wheels, and there’s no movement coming any time soon.

– A match between Big Van Vader and Tony Halme nearly turned into a shoot this week, as Vader was booked to lose via knockout and got a bit testy about it after already getting his ass handed to him by Scott Norton the previous week. It was almost a fistfight when he was asked to do the job to Halme AGAIN in a second match the next night, but then they realized that Vader was too valuable to ruin over this, and he went over instead after Fujinami calmed things down.

– In FMW, we have a rare DOUBLE UNDERSTATED OBSERVER DEBUT. I think. I can’t remember if they’ve been mentioned before, but anyway, Dave off-handedly notes in the results for a couple of shows that the team of Lance Storm & Chris Jericho was working the shows in the openers.

– A local Oregon columnist wrote a story in the paper about Art Barr’s struggle to get licensed by the commission to wrestle again, although Dave notes that it’s actually that columnist who is the one pressuring the commission not to license him in the first place! Apparently the commission will decide next week what they’re going to do. (Spoiler: Art had to learn Spanish in a hurry.)

– In GWF, the secret identity of The Boss was finally revealed to be promoter Max Andrews, who was fired by the international board of directors or whatever is supposed to be the fake governing body of the promotion. Dave notes that the eventual payoff will be Bill Eadie as the new commissioner.

– Last week Dave reported that Buddy Rogers would be doing some interview segments for Herb Abrams, but now he’s vehemently denying it and apparently he’ll be working for another shitty money mark promotion called the American Wrestling Federation, which will take over Herb’s spot on Sportschannel and use the usual old midcarders like Paul Orndroff, Junkyard Dog, Bob Backlund and Dan Spivey. (Did that ever happen? I know there was that stupid AWF in the mid-90s with rounds, but I don’t know about one in 91.)

– Speaking of Herb, he’s offering a real life prize of $100,000 for anyone who can beat Steve Williams. Dr. D is said to be interested in trying to collect, provided it was a shoot. (Dr. D v. Dr. Death would actually be a hell of a match to promote!)

– The WWF shot an angle with Randy Savage and Jake Roberts at the Ft. Wayne tapings where Jake goaded Randy into leaving his announcing job to defend Elizabeth’s honor, and Jake laid him out and tied him in the ropes so that a snake could bite his arm. This got over HUGE with the live crowd, although some of the kids in the audience were pretty upset by it. (Well, Savage would get his revenge, at least.)

– They tried to turn Slaughter again and failed like he was Roman Reigns, because he and Duggan read the pledge of allegiance as their big babyface spot and the crowd booed the shit out of the whole thing. (I still maintain it was way too soon. They should have sent him off to Memphis for six months and let everyone forget about him before trying it.)

– Chris Chavis had yet another tryout match and beat Skinner. (That poor dude did about 400 tryout matches before he ever made TV.)

– Barry Darsow debuted the new Repo Man gimmick and music and got no reaction.

– Harvey Wippleman has taken over the bulk of Slick’s managerial duties now that he’s gone.

– The Rockers did a couple of squashes and Shawn was teasing a heel turn on Marty sometime soon.

– Although the official reason for Kerry Von Erich (who is now just “The Tornado”) missing shows was “a funeral for a friend”, Dave has also been informed that he was in the hospital having him stomach pumped the week before as well.

– Both Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels have specifically asked to do singles matches with Ric Flair that will be taped for Coliseum Video. Dave notes that the last time someone begged for a match in this manner was Shane Douglas asking to be matched with Mr. Perfect, which never happened because Shane then quit before it was booked.

– Suburban Commando has already been dropped from theaters and labelled a major flop, and in fact Disney no longer has interest in being in the Hulk Hogan business as a result.

– The WWF is doing a gimmick where they’re raising prices for the Hogan-Flair shows by $1 because of the special nature of the main event. And then they’ll just conveniently forget to lower them again. (Meanwhile here in Saskatoon tickets are only $20 for the Smackdown house show in February, they’re only selling the lower bowl and floor, and there’s STILL the majority of seats available. No wonder they haven’t been here in seven years. And the Miz is advertised in the main event. COINCIDENCE?)

– Terry Funk went on a radio interview and said that Hulk Hogan has been off the roids for two weeks and looks like WC Fields’ sister.

– To WCW, where they made an offer to Twins’ first baseman Kent Hrbek in a typical bit of WCW silliness. It’s basically a publicity stunt after Hrbek got a bunch of press for essentially using a single-leg takedown on a guy while tagging him at first base. Hrbek is a legit big wrestling fan, at least.

– Brad Armstrong debuted as Arachnaman from Web City, “wearing a blue and yellow Spiderman outfit that won’t make DC Comics very happy”. (GOD DAMMIT DAVE)

– Should Rick Rude have been unable to fulfill his duties as the WCW Halloween Phantom and sign a contract in time for the PPV, the part was to be played by The Night Stalker. (That’s quite the downgrade.)

– The Chamber of Horrors cage is just going to be a recycled Thundercage from Havoc ‘89. Dave notes that fans should be wary, because they won’t have Muta or Tommy Young there to save them if it catches fire again, so they’ll liable to burn down half of Chattanooga.

– “Battle Brawl” at Starrcade will be actually be “Battle Bowl”, and has thankfully been cut from 20 tag matches to 10.

– And finally…eh, I got nothing funny to finish with this week. Dino Bravo sucks, how about that?