Among the victors that night was Gagne himself over Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie, as well as the Road Warriors, Giant Baba, Mike Rotundo and Barry Windham, and Nick Bockwinkel, who beat AWA world champion Stan Hansen by DQ. An estimated 22,000 spectators were on hand, and the gate was a little over $250,000, enough for the AWA to break even. All told, though, WrestleRock was “somewhat of a fizzle,” according to Minneapolis CityBusiness. A few months later, Gagne told that paper, “Waylon wasn’t right for our crowd. Only about 2,000 stayed around for his show. And I made a mistake in not having lower prices at the Metrodome for the kids.”308
Gagne’s was facing innumerable challenges, and his own front office was crumbling before his eyes. His partner and cohort for more than 25 years, Wally Karbo, severed ties to the company early in 1986, as did Blackjack Lanza, and in one fell swoop, Gagne lost two valuable assistants. He also lost his TV and arena rights in Winnipeg to the WWF, and it was believed that Lanza had a significant role in the transfer. As it reportedly happened, Lanza convinced CKND-TV station manager Don Brinton to drop the AWA telecast and replace it with the WWF’s Maple Leaf Wrestling.309 And since Brinton was also the AWA’s local promoter, he simply shifted from Gagne’s product to McMahon’s at the Winnipeg Arena. Thus, the AWA was aced out, and the WWF moved in on March 17, 1986. The WWF snagged the AWA’s TV time in Rockford as well, on WREX-13, and it cut Gagne off from another vital monthly stop.310 The AWA was further weakened when Dennis Hilgart, an affiliate promoter in Wisconsin and Illinois since the 1960s, jumped to the WWF and helped McMahon gain a better foothold in Milwaukee. In Chicago, after drawing only 1,800 for his April 27 program at the Rosemont Horizon, Gagne downgraded to the smaller UIC Pavilion. Two months later, he lost his flagship station in Chicago (WCIU-26) and was forced way up the dial into a much less visible spot on WGBO-66.311
Gagne had some good young workers in 1986. Shawn Michaels, a standout from Texas, was teaming with Marty Jannetty as the Midnight Rockers, second-generation Curt Hennig was one-half of the tag champions with Scott Hall, and rotund Leon White was in his sophomore year as a pro grappler. White would later gain fame as Big Van Vader. In contrast, WWF castoffs Sgt. Slaughter and Jimmy Snuka were going through the motions, but carried name value and a certain amount of popularity. Nick Bockwinkel, at 51, was everlastingly consistent, and was still capable of going to the mat with anyone. More important to Gagne, Bockwinkel was trustworthy, and when it came time to move the AWA world title off Stan Hansen, he got the call. On June 29, 1986, in Denver, the plan was set in motion.312 But Hansen refused to drop the belt, left the venue in a huff, and ended up taking the belt with him to Japan. With no other option, Gagne declared Bockwinkel champ by forfeit, and the latter began his fourth reign as AWA king.
The disparity between the AWA’s success in having a national cable television program on ESPN and its stunningly bad box office attendance was unreal. Gagne’s shows drew from the low hundreds on one end to a 2,000 maximum, with the exception of a few special programs. Despite the evident signs of collapse, Gagne was resilient, and kept trying to rebound. He went back into the Bay Area by landing a facility in Oakland, began working with Angelo Savoldi’s Northeast-based International Championship Wrestling (ICW), and kickstarted a merchandising campaign geared toward kids. Similar to the LJN series of WWF action figures, Remco produced a line of AWA characters, plus a wrestling ring to go along with it, so children everywhere could play out their favorite matches in their living rooms.
Jim Crockett Promotions was also trying to get in on the act by releasing several branded action figures. Crockett told a reporter, “The licensing deals that are signed are in the five-to-six figure range, but I [won’t give] you exact figures because I don’t want to cause problems between my wrestlers. Ric Flair and Rock ’n’ Roll Express dolls will be out by Christmas.”313 Merchandising was a logical step for JCP, now the second-strongest promotion in America. Added revenue streams were increasingly important, and Crockett was following the McMahon blueprint. He brought in top talent from other regions, expanded his TV network, and used cable to boost his promotion. But it is arguable that Crockett was ahead of McMahon in some ways too. His first Starrcade event, in 1983, was an innovative supershow, predating WrestleMania by 15 months. JCP was known for cultivating superior talent and carried the support of traditionalists over McMahon’s product by far.
Upping its number of live programs and outdrawing the WWF in places like Philadelphia, JCP was on a roll. On February 7, 1986, Crockett staged a primetime special on WTBS, Superstars on the Superstation, and featured four big matches as decided by a fan vote. In the main event, Flair went over Ron Garvin, and the Jim Cornette–managed Midnight Express topped the Rock and Roll Express to capture the NWA world tag belts. Crockett got in on the celebrity craze by bringing in country music legend Willie Nelson, and his efforts to “go mainstream” were well timed. But expansion was the name of the game, and seeing that Crockett already had a presence in St. Louis, a complete takeover of that hallowed wrestling city was relatively easy. Things there were about as low as a promotion could get. Shareholder Harley Race was so discontented with the decline of business in St. Louis and the Central States that he bowed out completely, taking a personal loss of more than $500,000.314 Verne Gagne didn’t have the manpower to spare for St. Louis, and Bob Geigel was using a depleted crew in Kansas City. Neither could help the St. Louis cause, and the final co-sponsored SLWC–JCP show took place on February 8, 1986. Starting on March 2, it was all Crockett. Geigel retained a key role on WTBS telecasts because of his status as NWA president, and he continued to run the fragile Kansas City office.315 House sizes in the Central States were stagnant, yet improved when Flair and other JCP wrestlers appeared. The Flair–Bruiser Brody feud was a short-term success, and Kansas City’s Memorial Hall scored a rare sellout (2,800) on March 20, 1986, as Brody and Race teamed to beat Flair and Bob Brown in one of the promotion’s last hurrahs. Across the border in Missouri, at the larger Municipal Auditorium, the WWF drew 6,000 that same night.
Crockett was committed to helping Geigel in his war against the WWF in Kansas City, and Geigel needed the assistance, but casual appearances by JCP stars weren’t enough. On August 7, 1986, Geigel pulled in resources from Crockett and All Japan, but a headline bout between Flair and Dusty Rhodes drew only 1,000 people. It was an anguished result, and taking into consideration the UWF’s recent debut in Kansas City, Geigel was ready to pull the plug. He came to an arrangement with Crockett, handing over active promotional rights to the territory, and as part of the deal, he kept a visible presence on TV and received a percentage of local gates.316 As for Crockett, his idea for the once-thriving Central States territory was to keep the regional feel by organizing a secondary circuit made up of lower to mid-card JCP wrestlers and newcomers on the rise. And like he did with Geigel, he’d occasionally send his top stars to spike the box office. Booked by Bill Dundee, the territory would highlight Sam Houston, Denny Brown, the Italian Stallion, Mark Fleming, and Buddy Landel, among others, beginning on September 26.
The Central States were completely absorbed by JCP, and another old-time territory had succumbed to a national entity. In other parts of the country, Crockett invaded San Antonio, Albuquerque, Washington, D.C. (against the WWF), and Jacksonville, Florida (a neglected CWF town). Washington and Jacksonville were part of the exhaustive Great American Bash tour, which ran from July 1 to August 2, 1986, and included stops in Philadelphia, Memphis, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Johnson City, and Atlanta. Attendance ranged from 1,900 in Memphis to 23,000 in Charlotte. High ticket prices hurt fan enthusiasm, but with a steep overhead, JCP wanted to ensure better box-office returns. Many stadiums were less than half full, and the revived country music gimmick fell flat once again. “We feel country music fans and wrestling fans are about the same,” said Sandy Scott, a JCP event coordinator.317 The AWA and UWF had believed the same thing, but it wasn’t proving true. Nevertheless, Waylon Jennings, David Alle
n Coe, and George Jones were three of the musical performers at Bash programs around the country. The other major gimmick of the Bash was Ric Flair’s successive string of NWA world title defenses, one for each night of the tour. He wrestled both the Road Warriors, Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson, Magnum T.A., and Nikita Koloff. On the 13th stop, in Greensboro on July 26, he was defeated by Dusty Rhodes in a cage bout and lost the championship. Flair regained the belt on August 9 in St. Louis. Rhodes, as booker for JCP, was a consistently strong creative force in 1986, and his well of ideas was seemingly endless.
That year, the famed Four Horsemen were born — Flair, Arn and Ole Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and manager J.J. Dillon. They wreaked a lot of havoc on Rhodes, the Rock and Roll Express, the Road Warriors, and any other wrestler who got in their way.318 In May, Magnum T.A.’s rivalry with Nikita Koloff took a unique turn when Magnum, the babyface, punched out NWA president Bob Geigel during a WTBS telecast. Geigel stripped Magnum of his U.S. title and announced a best-of-seven series for the belt, to be played out in July and August. Koloff ended up winning the classic series, four bouts to three. Another interesting scenario showcased Ricky Morton, weighing around 200 pounds, as a challenger to the 240-pound Flair. It was Morton’s speed against the “dirtiest player in the game,” and fans witnessed a number of good back-and-forth battles.
After an absence of more than a year, JCP yearned to return to Pittsburgh and wanted to rent the Civic Arena, the same venue the WWF used, but building officials remembered the egg the NWA laid at Three Rivers Stadium in May 1985. “They haven’t been successful, obviously, so we wouldn’t encourage them to come in here,” explained Civic Arena marketing director Tom Rooney. “I can’t speak for them, but I’m guessing they probably think the [Convention Center] was the reason they were not successful, and not the product. I would tend to disagree with that, because if we said we were going to do the Rolling Stones and we were going to do them on Mars, people would find a way to get there.” In response, Sandy Scott told a reporter, “We’re not worried about the past. We’re very enthused about the future.”319 JCP didn’t let up, filing a lawsuit to get into the building. Finally, Crockett secured a date, on October 24, 1986, and drew a crowd of 10,000 to the Arena.
Between August and December 1986, Crockett made incredible strides. On August 28, he returned to the Los Angeles area for the first time in more than a year and drew a crowd five times bigger than his June 1985 effort.320 Shifting from the Olympic Auditorium to the Great Western Forum, a good-sized structure in Inglewood, Crockett’s event drew 10,000 spectators, and Flair beat Rhodes by DQ in the main event. In an even bolder endeavor that sent shockwaves through the AWA, JCP went into Bloomington, Minnesota, on September 19 at the Met Center, and held a program in Verne Gagne’s backyard.321 Crockett and Gagne had silenced their cooperative efforts just a short time before, ending years of up-and-down business.322
But JCP entering Bloomington, and also Green Bay, Wisconsin, on September 18 was an aggressive move, and Crockett was now the one disregarding old territorial boundaries to press his expansion. On the whole, cooperation between promoters was at an all-time low. Pro Wrestling USA was a dead concept, and in many opinions, was doomed from day one. “Three years ago, I thought the promoters could get together and present a united front,” Gagne told a reporter. “Unfortunately, we’ve gone our separate ways.”323 Demonstrating just how fractured things were, over the last nine months, Crockett had severed his agreements with Gagne, Bill Watts, Jerry Jarrett, and Jack Adkisson, and had already gone into the territories of three of them. JCP still was a member of the NWA, on good terms with Bob Geigel, Gary Juster, the Murnicks, Shohei Baba, Don Owen, Carlos Colon, Ron Fuller, and Hiro Matsuda and Duke Keomuka. For the NWA to stay cohesive, affiliates had conformed to Crockett’s newly instituted booking policies. But how many more changes (and demands) would they agree to before the NWA was nothing but a liability? As it was, booking the world heavyweight champion had become a lot more difficult than in the past, and that in itself was a severe detriment. But it wasn’t necessarily impossible to get help from Crockett in that regard. In 1986, Flair worked a few dates for Geigel, Owen, Fuller, Juster, the Murnicks, and Matsuda and Keomuka, plus went to Honolulu for Lia Maivia and Puerto Rico for Carlos Colon. But Flair’s priority was always JCP cities.
In addition to Los Angeles and the Twin Cities, Crockett went into Kansas City, Wichita, and Omaha and added a regular stop in Washington at the D.C. Armory. Debuts in Chicago (December 14) and San Francisco (December 30) came before the end of the year, and JCP was definitely primed for bigger business in 1987.
Sadly, on October 14, in Charlotte, the blossoming career of 27-year-old Magnum T.A. ended when he suffered a broken neck in a car accident in Charlotte. The loss of a principal figure and popular idol was immeasurable, and JCP was weakened significantly. Magnum’s in-ring rival Nikita Koloff turned fan favorite following the accident and helped revitalize the promotion, often teaming with Dusty Rhodes and going to war with the Four Horsemen. As a result of all the positive reaction he was receiving, Koloff was pushed into the main event of Starrcade against Ric Flair on November 27, 1986. Their bout, which ended in a double disqualification in 19 minutes, was staged in Atlanta before 14,000 spectators. On the Greensboro end of the show, in front of 16,000 fans, Tully Blanchard went over Dusty Rhodes for the world TV championship in a first-blood match. Another memorable contest in Atlanta was waged between the Road Warriors and the Midnight Express in a special scaffold match. The Warriors were victorious, and Express manager Jim Cornette delivered the most incredible bump of the night when he fell from the 25-foot scaffold to the mat below. His death-defying drop was taken at great personal risk, and he paid the price with a torn ACL in his right knee that required surgery. Starrcade, dubbed the “Night of the Skywalkers,” was a success, and with live attendance and CCTV, the gate was nearly $1 million.
“Big” Bubba Rogers, Dick Murdoch, Brad Armstrong, and Rick Rude were talent acquisitions for JCP, and, in December 1986, Crockett picked up one of wrestling’s top free agents, Barry Windham. Windham, it can be remembered, jumped from the Mid-Atlantic region to the WWF on no notice in 1984, but he was a box office draw, and booker Dusty Rhodes wanted him back. All things considered, it was a smart move. A growing segment of the audience had grown dissatisfied with Crockett’s week-to-week productions, and was tired of never-ending feuds and lackluster TV shows. The arrival of Windham boosted interest in the immediate aftermath of Starrcade. But there was a guy in Florida with a little over a year’s experience who was destined to make a national impact as well. He was Lex Luger, and Rhodes was watching his progression very closely.
Over in the UWF, owner Bill Watts was a busy man. He came out of retirement for two months of active competition in mid-1986, partnering with fan favorites Jim Duggan and Ted DiBiase against the Freebirds. His syndication network was growing impressively, and dozens and dozens of stations were signing on, in places such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and South Florida. But prime television spots were costly, and the UWF was racking up sizable weekly bills. He planned for a major live event at the Rosemont Horizon outside Chicago in October, but that show was abruptly canceled under strange circumstances. It was later alleged that an opposing promotion paid officials at the venue to call off the booking.324 If true, it illustrated the kind of open hostilities in the grappling world, and fanned the warfare even more.
Watts wanted a presence in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, and within a two day span in October, he debuted his syndicated show there and introduced Power Pro Wrestling TV tapings from Fort Worth’s Cowtown Coliseum. On November 9, at a UWF Wrestling taping in Tulsa, each of the company’s three championships changed hands. One Man Gang won over Terry Gordy by forfeit to become the UWF world champion. (Gordy was injured in a car accident and unable to wrestle.) Leroy Brown and Bill Irwin won the tag straps from John Tatum and Jack Victory, and Savannah Jack captured the TV
belt from Buddy Roberts.
Gifted English wrestler Chris Adams was a mainstay on the UWF circuit before going to jail for 90 days following a June 1986 assault. Just prior to showing up for Watts, Adams was actually a claimant to the heavyweight title in Dallas, but he walked on World Class, leaving Jack Adkisson to create a fictitious title switch from Adams to Black Bart. Adams missed the big Thanksgiving program at the Superdome in New Orleans on November 27, 1986, a show that drew 13,000 fans. Champion One Man Gang lost to Jim Duggan by disqualification but won a two-ring battle royal, while Steve Williams beat Michael Hayes in a cage. Former Blade Runner Sting was displaying much improvement, and his tag team with Eddie Gilbert went a long way to round his sharp edges as a performer. The duo feuded with the Fantastics and held the UWF tag belts.
In keeping up with the new norms of pro wrestling, Watts offered many of his top stars guaranteed-money contracts to safeguard his promotion from future raids. Naturally, DiBiase, Williams, Gordy, and Duggan were signed, but in late 1986, when the promotion became cash-strapped, Watts found himself backed into a corner. The situation was compounded by a collapse of the oil industry, and in the South, people were losing their jobs left and right.325 Attendance for UWF shows dropped dramatically. To alleviate some of his cash problems, Watts released several of his top acts from their contracts, Duggan among them. Duggan was a leading attraction in the UWF, and wasn’t someone Watts’s budding national organization could afford to lose.
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