Kayfabe! – Timeline: The History of WCW: 1987 as told by Tully Blanchard

Timeline: The History of WCW – 1987 as told by Tully Blanchard

This winds up being something of a middle of the road edition of the WCW Timeline series. Tully is very well spoken, and he has a good rapport with Sean, but, he seems to be unwilling to pull back the curtain as much as he could. For instance, Sean asks him about blading, and Tully does give some insight, explaining that the muscles grow a certain direction, so you need to cut in that direction. But, when Sean asks him where he kept his blade, Tully won’t tell him. Sean responds (light-heartedly) that he’ll pull up a match on YouTube and find out anyway, and Tully retorts “Go ahead.” They’re both smiling and laughing, which goes back to their having a good rapport. When Sean asks about Nikita winning the TV Title, and how Tully felt about Nikita as the champion, given how limited and green he was, all Tully says is that history determines how good a champion Nikita was, and either history will prove it, or it won’t. Sean also talks about how Crockett was buying up th smaller promotions and asked if the boys were worried at all about losing their spots, he just says no, because they were still selling out arenas.

Another disappointment is that most of the hot topics that Sean asks him about are only answered by Tully saying that he doesn’t know. Tully’s main concern was in the ring, and he wasn’t part of the office, and he never really dealt with Dusty as a booker, aside from their program together. It’s a shame too, because Tully clearly does have some good insight about things. Sean asks him if the disappointing houses were a sign of the fans not buying Ronnie Garvin as NWA Champion, Tully talks about fans paying to see Garvin beat Flair, and now seeing Garvin defend versus Flair wasn’t nearly as appealing. Sean also asks about the choice of Garvin, and Tully talks about them running new markets like Pittsburgh and Detroit, so, it seemed like a good way to jump-start business. Sean asks if there was any heat between the Road Warriors and Sting, over Sting’s facepaint, but Tully just says “They were in another dressing room.”

The few times that Sean does bring up something that Tully can sink his teeth into, it usually winds up with Tully either telling good stories, or some more insight from him. Sean asks about Tully being worried about crowds and getting into fights (this stems from Stan Lane punching a fan who went after him and getting sued over it), and Tully relates a story of about sitting in disguise in the crowd one night in San Antonio to run in on the main event, and the fans were so angry that Tully and Gino Hernandez were taken right out the back door. They talk about Terry Taylor and the legacy of the Red Rooster (nearly thirty years later and it’s still a popular subject), and Tully says that Vince wanted he and Arn to have a logo of a broken brain, but they balked, which probably didn’t help them. It turns into a larger discussion of how some guys can make it work, like Dusty with the polka dots. Tully mistakenly thinks Dusty was with Dark Journey, and Sean corrects him and says Sapphire, and says she was like Dark Journey plus 200 lbs. It also occurred to me, that summer 1989 would have reunited Dusty and Tully in the WWF, less than a year after Tully jumped due his issues with Dusty’s booking, which must have made for an awkward locker room. When Sean asks how he and Arn came to become *THE* tag team in the Horsemen, Tully explains that they’d always teamed up in various combinations, but Arn and Tully just gelled the best, and says that while he and Gino were very much alike, he and Arn were very different. Sean asks if he thought it was a mistake to move Starracde to Chicago, and he says that he doesn’t think so, because the fans in Atlanta and Greensboro could buy the PPV (not according to history, and Vince forcing cable companies to drop it), and that the arena was sold out and the crowd was red-hot (Note from Mike: I’ve reviewed that show, and one of the things that jumped out, was that everyone was working their ass off!).

They wrap things up with Sean asking him to sum up the year, and Tully describing it as a tidal wave, full of hot crowds and sell outs, that sadly dissipated the following year, when he and Arn left in September. He attributes the success to them being the alternative to the gimmicky WWF, and that the sheer amount of raw talent in that company at the time was amazing, he compares it to Indianapolis in the 1960’s, or for a more modern comparison, the WWF in the late 1990’s when Austin, Rock, Foley, etc. were all hitting their strides.

7.5

The final score: review Good

The 411

Like I said earlier, this winds up being a middle of the road Timeline, his rapport with Sean and some of his insights make this quite good. But, his hesitancy to go all the way, holds this back.