The Name on the Marquee: NWA World Championship Wrestling (10.29.1988)

Weird thing: This is only half an episode for some reason.

-Cold open: Road Warriors destroy the Stinger.

-Original airdate: October 29, 1988.

-On the surface, there’s nothing different about the show, but the historical significance here is a doozy. This is the last television show taping for Jim Crockett Promotions, as the sale to Turner Broadcasting was finalized 48 hours later. Crazy backstory along with it, as Ole Anderson & Jim Barnett actually reached out to Ted Turner and tried to sabotage the deal at the last minute, encouraging Turner to just let Crockett run himself into bankruptcy at the end of the year, and with all the talent out of a job, Ole and Barnett offered to relaunch Georgia Championship Wrestling, hire the talent they wanted, and then just slide into the Saturday 6:05 time slot, pointing out that doing so wouldn’t cost him an extra penny. I’m actually genuinely curious to know Ted Turner’s logic for NOT taking that deal.

-Your hosts are Tony Schiavone, Jim Ross, & David Crockett. Tony mentions that something called “Battlestars ’88” is coming up in late November.

MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (World Tag Team Champions, with Jim Cornette) vs. MIKE JUSTICE & DAVID ISLEY
-Justice and Eaton lock up. Eaton slaps him around, but runs into a slam by Justice. Stan Lane tags in and throws a series of kicks while the commentators ask Cornette how his cage match against JJ Dillon went and Cornette keeps changing the subject.

-Isley gets thrown to the floor, and back in Isley gets rammed into the turnbuckle. He just gets overwhelmed and tags Justice back in. Justice gets thrown to the floor and brought back in while Cornette goes on a long dissertation about the Road Warriors and says they shouldn’t have been helping anyone to begin with if they resented it so much. It’s the same reason the Midnights never come to anyone’s aid. Finisher that Cornette dubs he Bobby Eaton Flying Hemmorhoid Hop Guillotine Move (Stan lifts Isley in a bearhug, then bends over and puts him in position for a top rope legdrop from Bobby) gets the win.

-Cornette assures us that the Midnight Express is ready for a fight against the Road Warriors, so BRING IT! (Spoiler: They brought it.)

-Eddie Gilbert is here along with the becrutched Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin and Precious. Ignore the naysayers who say “Out of sight, out of mind!” Gorgeous Jimmy will be back. Eddie Gilbert says that he’s done some investigating about the Varsity Club and he suspects that Kevin Sullivan is skimming money from Rick Steiner’s payoffs, and he tells Steiner to look into that.

EDDIE GILBERT (with Precious & Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin) vs. TOMMY ANGEL
-Nice mat wrestling exhibition to start, and there’s a WEIRD bit of editing where for some reason, something Jim Ross says has been dubbed over with audio of Jim Ross saying “Jelly doughnuts” over and over again. Gilbert throws Angel to the floor and Jimmy chops him like a hero. Cute finish sees Eddie deliberately miss a move to sucker Angel into thinking he’s safe, then hot shotting him for the win.

-Sir Oliver Humperdink has words for Jim Cornette, “the only man in wrestling who makes George Bush look macho.” We watch a Bam-Bam squash from one of the syndicated shows, and the crowd’s lack of interest in him is jarring. He was the WWF’s next big thing until he injured his knee in March, and then he just cooled off at whiplash speed. This leads into another story about how this company was in a tailspin at the time of the sale. Ric nearly walked out of the company for Summerslam as it is, then began making noise about how sick he was of Dusty finish matches and working with Lex Luger night after night, and in fact, after an initial hot period of Bash rematches, crowds turned out in whatever the opposite of “droves” is for rematches of rematches when Luger vs. Flair did their second and third tours around the horn. So Dusty rebooked a bunch of house show matches to Luger/Nikita vs. Flair/Perez with Luger pinning Perez night after night, which really accomplished nothing but pissing off the crowds because they didn’t announce the changed main event in advance. Dusty and Flair had a talk and Flair was under the impression that things were worked out, but instead they went right back to doing Flair/Luger with Dusty finishes around the horn, at which point Flair just stopped showing up for matches altogether. And considering what we now know about Flair and how he was so obsessed with being the Nature Boy that he could barely function unless he was on the road doing something, imagine how pissed off he had to be to take days off. So Dusty’s attempt to placate Flair at this point was to book him in a main event run against Bam-Bam Bigelow, and Flair called bullshit on that because the fans knew that Bam-Bam was a midcarder who flamed out for a competing wrestling promotion and Flair didn’t want to go out there and do ref bumps and Dusty finishes for that guy because it would make him look like a joke.

-Special thanks to Scott Keith for recapping all this in his Observer Flashbacks on the Blog of Doom.

-Special thanks to whichever SNL writer coined “whatever the opposite of droves is” for a sketch a few years ago.

-Anyway, back to the studio, who warns Barry Windham that Bam-Bam is off in Japan tuning up for a match against Ric Flair. Wait, why are you warning Barry Windham?

BARRY WINDHAM (US Champion, with JJ Dillon) vs. BOB RIDDLE
-Hard chops by Windham, followed by a slam. JR and Tony are discussing the merits of a Flair/Windham tag team and think they should consider entering the US Tag Team Title tournament. I feel like Ric Flair might take another night off if he hears that suggestion. Suplex by Windham gets two. He throws Riddle to the concrete and Windham meets him out there with an axehandle. Riddle goes into the post. Flying lariat gets the three-count.

-JJ Dillon says that it’s bullshit that Barry Windham is being asked to defend the title against Dusty Rhodes again and he’s tried to throw up a stumbling block by demanding guaranteed sums of money for Barry at house shows, and JJ reluctantly reveals that the NWA is starting to put up the money. Barry shrugs it off because Dusty and Bam-Bam are both big fatasses who can’t keep going longer than ten minutes. Not in those words, but that’s the gist of it.

FANTASTICS vs. JERRY PRICE & MIKE JACKSON
-The Mid-South nostalgia tour starts tonight in New Orleans and JR unexpectedly namedrops a favorite bar and announces he’s getting shitfaced after the house show. By the way, I think it’s funny that JCP is selling out during the same week they’re launching a tour of a territory that they murdered the previous year. Bobby Fulton hiptosses Jackson and monkeyflips him. Price tags in and Tommy Rogers applies a drop toehold. He just releases the hold to slap high fives with the fan, and then somersaults on top of Price to finish.

-The Fantastics want the Sheepherders, and they pretty much drop it in our laps that this match will be the finals for the US Tag Title tournament.

-Sting, in a neckbrace, watches the video of the Road Warriors’ heel turn and lashes out at what his “brothers in paint” did to him.

-Lex Luger says he can relate because, hey, Barry Windham, remember? He promises that Sting can count on him, though.

VARSITY CLUB (with Kevin Sullivan) vs. BRAD & BRETT HOLIDAY
-Steiner starts, ramming Brett into the corner upside-down and stomping. He tags Rotunda, who seemingly doesn’t want to be in there and shoves him into Brett. Rotunda is so annoyed that he refuses to tag later when Steiner sticks his arm out, staying in the ring and suplexing both Holidays. He tags Steiner back in and Steiner clotheslines Brad, then leads the crowd in a dog bark and Rotunda scolds him for acting like an idiot. Rotunda tags back in and shoves Steiner aside, giving Brad a double underhook for the three-count. Steiner gets on top of Brad afterward and politely asks Teddy Long to count another pin just for him. No dice.

-And here’s what’s missing from the WWE Network tape, in case you’re curious:

LARRY ZBYSZKO & AL PEREZ (with Gary Hart) vs. EDDIE SWEAT & RICK ALLEN

IVAN KOLOFF vs. EXECUTIONER

ITALIAN STALLION vs. GARY ROYAL

RUSSIAN ASSASSINS (with Paul Jones) vs. BOB EMORY & KEITH STEINBORN

SHEEPHERDERS vs. HOLLIS & JONES

RON SIMMONS vs. GEORGE SOUTH

6.0

The final score: review Average

The 411

Not a remarkable episode for the company to go out on, but it had its moments.