Ryan Navigates '90 - #2 (1/6 - 1/7)

The WWF, NWA, and USWA take center stage.

Good day!

Ladies and gentlemen…the weekend!

In a sharp contrast from the first issue, we’ll spend this article in the good ol’ U.S. and A as the WWF, NWA, and the new-ish USWA share the spotlight. Also, while the last issue was almost wall-to-wall matches, we mostly get promos and vignettes with one match at the end.

---

SATURDAY, JANUARY 6th

WWF Superstars of Wrestling

Monday Night RAW was a few years away, so Superstars was still the show where most of the major happenings occurred for The Fed.

We pick it up with Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake snipping the locks off of a hapless jobber enhancement talent, post-match. However, from the stage speaks “The Model” Rick Martel, feeling his full Inspector Gadget fantasy.

He undoes his trenchcoat to show everybody what a real man looks like. That sounds like a terrible sentence, but don’t worry, he’s wearing (fashionable) clothes underneath. Martel calls Beefer a BUM, which causes Brutus to give chase. Beefcake then STOMPS THE HAT and takes his scissors to The Model’s trenchcoat. STOP IT! THAT TRENCHCOAT HAD A FAMILY!

I don’t believe this led to anything of substance, but it was the typical goofy WWF fun with the snooty French-Canadian getting some comeuppance, and Beefcake was OVER. Plus, he kinda ate with that fit.

EDIT: A big thank you to loyal reader Clint who confirmed that Martel/Beefcake did indeed have a brief house show feud.

Fun fact: Enhancement talent would apparently earn a cool $50 bonus on their pay if they agreed to get their hair cut by The Barber after the match.

It’s time for The Brother Love Show! This week, we have all of the WWF managers. We’ve got Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, Slick, “Sensational” Queen Sherri, Jimmy Hart, and Mr. Fuji. Awesome collection of seconds here, and Fuji. They all explain why their particular charges are going to win the upcoming Royal Rumble.

Sherri proclaims that “Macho King” Randy Savage will win the 30-man battle royal, while Hart puts over Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, The Honky Tonk Man, Dino Bravo, and Canadian Earthquake. Slick tells them to not forget about Akeem, while Fuji proclaims that The Warlord and The Barbarian are strong and…INTELLIGENT?

Heenan puts over most everyone mentioned, but HE manages “Ravishing” Rick Rude, Andre the Giant, and Haku. He then just lays into the other managers. Everybody bickers while Brother Love brings the session to a close. I quite enjoyed the heel managers interacting here. Sherri, Hart, and Heenan are awesome, and I generally like Slick. A really fun way to build to the Rumble.

USWA Championship Wrestling

In late 1989, Jerry Jarrett of Memphis’ Continental Wrestling Association purchased a portion of Dallas’ World Class Championship Wrestling, and the two entities were merged to form the United States Wrestling Association. For a good chunk of 1990, the USWA would promote under that name in both Texas and Tennessee, and talent would sometimes work both areas even during the same week.

This week, we have a show from the Memphis half of the company. Some weeks, we’ll have content from both Memphis and Dallas.

We start with Dave Brown and Jerry “The King” Lawler in the WMC-5 Studio, who throw it to Dustin Rhodes cutting a promo from the Dallas Sportatorium (much to Lawler’s protest).

Dustin, who is still talking like Dusty Rhodes at this point, cuts a promo on rival Gary Young. We will see how FUNKY Young can get in the Midsouth Coliseum this Monday night! Good lord, this was hilariously bad; just rambling nonsense with a bad Dusty impression. Granted, he was only a few months in the business at the point, but this was horrendous.

However, it’s going to be kind of neat to track the progress of someone like Dustin in these reviews. Over the years, we’ll see him evolve from raw rookie who leans on his dad’s personality to a respected professional who can stand on his own.

We throw it to Gary Young’s retort, and good lord, what is with that hair? He looks like a boxer from “Ring King” on the NES.

Gorgeous Gary accuses Dustin of running from him like a scalded dog, then he calls him “an abortion that made a mistake and lived”.

He will beat Dustin all over the arena and promises to slap him like “his daddy should have done”. Dusty’s biggest mistake was not throwing Dustin into a potato sack with a couple of bricks and taking him to the river. That is STRONG hater energy right there. Questionable hair aside, great promo from Young.

We now get Jerry “The King” Lawler cutting a promo with Dave Brown, recounting the history of newly-minted Unified World Heavyweight Champion King Cobra. Lawler spins an insanely long (and kinda racist at times) tale about King Cobra’s real name.

I won’t go into all the details here, but the payoff with the name (“Onyx, because he was onyx-pected”) was pretty funny, and there are bits here that may earn a few uncomfortable “I’m going to hell for laughing” chuckles.

He then gets serious, pledging to take out King Cobra in a No Disqualification match and making him proclaim Lawler as the TRUE KING OF WRESTLING. Lawler calls out Eddie Marlin, the general manager of the USWA, to make the No DQ stipulation official. Marlin declines his request, saying it’s going to be a straight wrestling match for the USWA Unified World Heavyweight title, suspecting Lawler would use all manner of nefarious tactics to take the belt. Marlin explains that Lawler doesn’t have the same stroke in the USWA as he did when the company was simply running as the CWA.

Lawler continues to ask for the No DQ stip, but Marlin rebuffs him. Cobra then comes out, as Lawler now pleads his case to the man himself. Cobra tries to retort (and not doing a great job, honestly), but Lawler persists in goading him.

The King concedes and will wrestle Cobra in a normal match, but then holds up a can of Raid and says for him to “stop leaving his deodorant in the dressing room”. JESUS, dude. Lawler pretty much carried this thing and came across as a complete dickhead. Marlin and Brown also played off him fairly well.

NWA Worldwide Wrestling

Worldwide, along with NWA Pro, was the NWA’s syndicated Saturday offering.

We pick it up in the ring with Woman (and her heavy, Nitron) and Norman the Lunatic. Mr. The Lunatic presents her with a painting he spent many, many hours on.

Woman throws it down and slaps Norman, then Nitron steps in…only to get clobbered. Kevin Sullivan runs in and bonks Norman on the head with the painting and smears it into his face! The heels leave while Norman does get a pretty supportive reaction from the fans. This is very much in the vein of the George Steele/Miss Elizabeth storyline from mid-1980s WWF, but with the malevolent Woman in place of the kind, demure Elizabeth.

Norman is the former Makhan Singh from Stampede Wrestling, and the future Bastion Booger in the WWF. Nitron is a young Tyler Mane, who would go on to do pretty well in Hollywood as Sabretooth from the X-Men movies (and 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine), and as Michael Myers in the terrible Rob Zombie Halloween films.

We now cut to a promo with the Four Horsemen, represented by Ric Flair and Arn & Ole Anderson. They were babyfaces at this point, not something often associated with the Horsemen. We are short one Horseman, though, so they offer that spot to rival STING!

Arn cuts a HELL of a promo here, putting over the grit and skill needed to be a Horseman. Heck, *I* want to join the Horsemen after that one.

It was rumored that Tully Blanchard was set to return to the Horsemen as well. Him and Arn, who were The Brain Busters in the WWF, were set to leave the Fed in late 1989 and rejoin the NWA, but Blanchard tested positive for cocaine. This led to Blanchard getting an early boot from the WWF (and Bobby Heenan replacing him on their Survivor Series team), and the NWA rescinded their offer of employment.

Arn ended up getting supremely hosed from a money standpoint because of Tully’s foolishness. The Busters were offered big money to leave the WWF and return to the NWA as a duo. However, without Tully, Arn’s bargaining value plummeted, leading to him getting low-balled by the NWA. He had to take the offer since he was now out of a WWF gig.

NWA World Championship Wrestling

This is the show that would eventually become WCW Saturday Night.

First, we join Bill Apter, senior editor and longtime photographer for Pro Wrestling Illustrated, among other magazines that would be collectively referred to as “the Apter mags”. He presents a few NWAers with their 1989 PWI Awards. Gordon Solie gets the PWI Editor’s Award for lifetime achievement in broadcast journalism, Scott Steiner nets the Most Improved award, and Ric Flair gets the Wrestler of the Decade award and his fifth Wrestler of the Year plaque. Everybody is appreciative of their awards, and it was a nice little segment.

Did Scott not own a suit back then?

And just because we’re on the topic, let’s look at the rest of the PWI Award winners for 1989:

• Tag Team of the Year: The Brain Busters (Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard) - Good choice here. The Busters added a TON to what was an all-time tag division in the WWF, and they ended Demolition’s record-breaking run with the WWF Tag Team Championship.

• Match of the Year: Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat (WrestleWar) - I mean, you couldn’t go wrong with any of the Flair/Steamer matches.

• Feud of the Year: Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk - The Steamboat series was great, but the Funk feud was awesome because of how unhinged Terry was. The “I Quit” match they had was sensational; one of the best ever for that stip.

• Most Popular Wrestler of the Year: Hulk Hogan - Well, yeah. We were still in the thick of Hulkamania. Flair was second, and Sting ranked third.

• Most Hated Wrestler of the Year: Randy Savage - Again, solid choice as Savage had a tremendous (and completely justified) heel turn on Hogan.

• Most Inspirational Wrestler of the Year: Eric Embry - …why? This should have gone to second-place finisher Nikita Koloff, who came back to the business after losing his wife to Hodgkin’s disease.

• Rookie of the Year: The Destruction Crew (Mike Enos & Wayne Bloom) - Odd to think of the future Beverly Brothers winning THIS award over Dustin Rhodes and Scotty the Body considering how their careers would pan out (Scotty would go on to be Raven).

• Manager of the Year: Bobby “The Brain” Heenan - I can see people putting Gary Hart over The Brain, but I can’t bitch about Bobby getting some flowers.

We check back in with the Four Horsemen, specifically Ric Flair and Ole Anderson. Ole as a babyface is just weird, considering he’s one of the more miserable bastards you’d find in the business.

Flair boasts about picking up Sting for their unit, then Sting himself and Arn Anderson come out to join the others. Sting seems rather pleased with his decision to join the Horsemen, though he’s not sure WHY he’s receiving those compliments from Flair. Hmm...

Jim Ross asks Arn about the upcoming Clash of the Champions cage match with him, Sting, and Flair against the J-Tex Corporation (Buzz Sawyer, The Dragon Master, & The Great Muta). Arn puts over the prestige of the Horsemen and hypes the approaching main event, and Flair closes out with his “wheelin’ and dealin’” catchphrase. Sting seems like a bit of an odd fit, but it’s an interesting dynamic for a union that will TOTALLY last forever and NOT result in The Stinger being turned on by a pack of career heels.

---

SUNDAY, JANUARY 7th

WWF Wrestling Challenge

“Mean” Gene Okerlund welcomes “Macho King” Randy Savage and “Sensational” Queen Sherri to the interview platform. Savage and Sherri get tremendous heel heat here.

Gene asks about an article in WWF Magazine that refers to Sherri as the Macho King’s ‘weapon’, but Savage chalks that up to jealousy from everyone in the WWF. Okerlund then brings up the Royal Rumble match. Savage lists off some of the heavy hitters in the match (Ultimate Warrior, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant), saying they will all FALL to the Macho King! As an aside, that Rumble match is STACKED, like the 2008 Smackdown roster.

Gene then asks about The Brother Love Show segment set for the Rumble with Sherri and Dusty Rhodes’ manager, Sapphire. Sherri threatens to send her back to where she came from. Savage then promises to make the COMMONERS of the WWF BOW TO THE MACHO KING!

Savage and Sherri took what could have been an albatross in the “king and queen” gimmick and really make it into something special.

NWA Main Event

NWA World Heavyweight Championship: Ric Flair (c) vs. Bobby Eaton - Two excellent and giving workers in a title match? Well, this should be good. Bobby was still firmly in the Midnight Express tag team, but I’m sure this will be very competitive.

Manager Jim Cornette introduces Beautiful Bobby as “Chase” by Giorio Moroder blares on the loudspeaker. Flair goes minimalist today, forsaking his ornate robe for his entrance.

They grapple in the corner for a bit until Flair sneaks in a big chop that Bobby sells like he was shot with a blunderbuss in the chest. The lads battle over a top wristlock until Eaton gets a knee to the breadbasket. Eaton gets a quick shoulderblock, but soon runs into a hiptoss, then Flair takes over with a headlock. They work off of that for a bit, then Flair catches Eaton with a shoulderblock that causes Bobby to bounce and stagger out of the ring. Flair soon runs Eaton back-first into the ringpost, then chops him off the apron.

Once Eaton re-enters, Flair resumes his advantage by working over the arm. Bobby punches out of it, so Flair pelts him with chops. Eaton soon catches Flair with a headbutt to the guts, then punches away at him from the apron, but Flair intercepts Bobby and tosses him into the guardrail.

Bobby tries some underhanded tactics, but Flair rebuffs and snapmares him into the ring. Moments later, however, Eaton catches Flair with a spinning neckbreaker to finally take the advantage. Eaton rains punches down on the champion and gets some near-falls. Running bulldog gets another two-count, then Eaton sends Flair up and over the turnbuckle. This results in Cornette getting some free shots with his tennis racket as Eaton grinds and pounds away at the Nature Boy.

Eaton kicks Flair into the guardrail, which Ric uses to rebound into the ring. Eaton continues his attack, but Flair tries to retaliate with what looks like a purple nurple.

Bobby pokes the eye and punches away, even withstanding a chop to press his attack. Figure four headscissors from Bobby looks to further wear down the neck, but Flair wills his way back into things…only to eat another neckbreaker for a close near-fall. Back to the headscissors, which Flair escapes, but Bobby’s right on top of him. Eaton hits a vertical suplex and drops a top rope elbowdrop for a very close two. Bobby reapplies the figure four headscissors, but Flair fights back with a blistering chop. They fight to the floor, where Eaton takes a back body drop onto the concrete! Sick bump from Eaton there.

Eaton then takes a hiptoss onto the slightly-more forgiving ringside mat. Flair pastes Eaton, tosses him back into the ring, then actually hits a forearm off the top rope! Flair mounts a major comeback and pounds away at Eaton as “Sweet” Stan Lane, Eaton’s partner, makes his presence known at ringside. Eaton blasts Flair with a back elbow, but Flair catches a top rope kneedrop and it’s FIGURE FOUR TIME! Flair quickly releases to attack Cornette on the apron. He grabs the tennis racket and clobbers both Corny and Eaton! Flair covers for the pin to retain!

**** - This was a FANTASTIC old-school TV match. It was a killer performance from Beautiful Bobby, especially, as Eaton’s bumping and selling was something to behold. Plus, that dude can punch, and he worked well when in control. Say what you will about Ric as a human being, but he was still one of the best in the world at this point. His formula rarely fails in making what could be a mismatch on paper into compelling viewing. He also did a great job selling Eaton’s attack on his neck.

Also, the timing here was impeccable, especially with the interference and comeback spots. The ending, with the cheating heels getting their comeuppance, was very satisfying. Definitely give this a watch.

---

Now it's time for THE TUGBOAT TRIBUNE!

As always, the news comes courtesy of Dave Meltzer and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

• WWF was involved in a pissing match with some PPV carriers over money. Basically, Vince McMahon felt that the 10% cut that PPV companies took was too much, but the majority of the providers held their ground (and they weren’t exactly happy with a lot of Vince’s past tactics and strongarming).

  • The showings of Royal Rumble and WrestleMania VI hung in the balance, with PPV providers refusing to show them unless Vince backed down. While this was going on, the WWF was having their announcers and wrestlers (including Hulk Hogan) plead with fans to call and write their cable providers, complaining and begging them to carry the PPVs.

  • Vince eventually bent the knee as it was apparent that the PPV companies were not going to budge.

• The American Wrestling Association continues to barely cling onto whatever shred of life they can, renewing its contract with ESPN.

  • Also, Pat Tanaka left the company as he’ll be part of The Orient Express with Akio Sato in the WWF.

• In a Windham news blitz, Kendall Windham and Blackjack Mulligan were arrested for counterfeiting, and Barry Windham had to spend $25,000 to bail his brother and dad out of jail.

  • Barry also no-showed several WWF dates and would be gone from the promotion before long.

Oh, and because we didn’t have any footage of it on the Goodhelmet compilation and I totally missed it (not like much of value was lost, anyway), here’s the results of WWF Saturday Night’s Main Event XXV, which took place January 3rd:

• “Macho King” Randy Savage defeated “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan after interference from “Sensational” Queen Sherri.

• Hulk Hogan & The Ultimate Warrior beat Mr. Perfect & The Genius after Hogan pinned Genius with a legdrop, BROTHER.

  • After the match, Warrior accidentally clotheslines Hogan when fending off the heels, giving us some friction between the two.

• Jake “The Snake” Roberts beat Greg “The Hammer” Valentine by disqualification after Ted DiBiase and Virgil interfered.

• Dusty Rhodes battled “Ravishing” Rick Rude to a double-countout

• Dino Bravo pinned “Rugged” Ronnie Garvin after rolling through a flying body press.

EDIT: The show was actually broadcast on 1/27 and we’ll have some footage when we arrive at that date. I’m doing GREAT right now!

---

NEXT TIME: A title change in the NWA! Plus, more content from the National Wrestling Alliance, the USWA, and All-Japan!