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WWF/WWE/WCW TV and house show rarities


pantherwagner

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It is well worth the time to trawl YT and DM on a regular basis. Over the years, I have found so many Bulldogs/Dream Team, Bulldogs/Harts, Tito/Valentine, Tito/Savage.

 

Lotsa fun Hogan tags where he teamed JYD, Hillbilly, Piper, snuka. And gems like his series vs Kamala, and lesser known matches with Beefcake, Adonis, Orton and Rude.

 

Same for Andre, fun tags teaming with JYD, Snuka, Hillbilly and Orndorff against Stundy and Piper/Orton.

Sarge has become a huge fave of mine, I think he's one of the finest brawlers to ever lace the boots. Sarge/Backlund Cage match from March 21st of 1981 is 5* from me. Also grabbed 4-5 matches vs Iron Shiek, a very good match vs Orndorff, and plenty of tags where his partners were JYD, Orndorff, Andre in various matches vs Sholkoff.

 

Backlund, I really enjoy his matches vs Sarge, Valentine, Patera, Snuka.

 

As Bret Hart is a huge fave, I made it a project to track his early career in WWF. So singles matches vs Sivi Afi, Rick McGraw, SD Jones, Ivan Putski and a ripper vs Lanny Poffo I found interesting, as you can see Bret gaining confidence with each passing month, defining the kind of wrestler he wants to be and letting his inner heel shine. Same for the Hart Foundation tag matches, pretty basic to start but you can see the progression from the squashes to good matches with the Bees, Islanders, Rougeaus, Tito/Pedro, to the great matches with the Bulldogs and Strike Force.

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Funk doc, the Paris match aired on Prime Time Wrestling on 1/18/88.

 

I have that and can upload it if you really really want. Match goes 4 mins with Jones going over.

 

Parv, you should check The Best of WWF Vol. 16 video tape. It's the only one that WWE COD never broadcasted most likely because there is a New Japan match and an All Japan Women match. This is the line-up:

 

Best of the WWF #16 (WF056)

09/13/85 Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Giant Machine

1980s Jumping Bomb Angels vs. Bull Nakano & Condor Saito

1980s Mr. Fuji vs. ???

10/19/85 The Killer Bees vs. Mike Sharpe & Barry O

04/88 The Ultimate Warrior vs. Hercules

04/88 Andre the Giant vs. Jim Duggan

1980s Several Outback Jack skits

10/23/87 Junkyard Dog vs. Harley Race (special referee Andre the Giant)

10/23/87 Jacques & Raymond Rougeau vs. Dino Bravo & Greg Valentine

 

First two matches are from other promotions. Mr. Fuji's match is from somewhere in the Middle East. The 85 match is from the Puerto Rico rainstorm card that you may have already seen. The 1988 matches are from Italy and the 87 matches from Paris.

 

It's a cool tape because they left the original commentary in all the different languages. If I remember correctly the matches from France had a ring skirt with a giant CANAL+ logo, so that was quite a different setting for the WWF.

 

I've always wondered about the Fuji match on that tape. Does anyone know if it was even a WWF show, or just footage that the company happened to have?

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They aired one other match from that Kuwait card on the Christmas Day episode of All American in 1983, which was Salvatore Bellomo vs Moondog Spot, so the footage was from around 81-83.

No idea if it was a WWF promoted card or not or who Fuji's opponent was on Best of WWF tape

 

I went to history of WWF to check for that card and I found this. What a show!

 

12/25/83:

- Salvatore Bellomo pinned Moondog Spot (w/ Moondog Rex) with a sunset flip at around the 10-minute mark (Kuwait City, Kuwait)

- Los Medicos defeated Maravilla & Chicky Starr (Puerto Rico)

- Tito Santana defeated Big John Studd via disqualification at 6:54 (11/24/83; Philadelphia Spectrum)

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Also a good one for this topic: four or five weeks ago Dave Meltzer mentioned on the newsletter that WWE had asked NJPW if they could use some of their footage on the WWE Network, which was apparently declined. Dave then said something along the lines of who would have thought that they were going to use the WWF All American 1983 strategy of using tapes of other territories to measure who was getting over and then sign them.

 

I wasn't sure what was he talking about so I looked at this:

http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/allamerican.htm

 

I had no idea that WWF back then used so much footage from other promotions in one of their TV shows. It makes for quite an interesting set of listings.

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Yeah it was pretty brilliant on Vince's part. It was common practice to send footage or interviews from an area a wrestler was leaving to the area he was going (There is a Greg Valentine interview conducted by Vince talking about Greg coming to the AWA, for example, that has appeared on some AWA specials over the years). So, when Vince came calling to showcase footage from other areas on his All American show, I think a lot of promoters didn't think twice...better exposure for their own current stars in major markets, right?

Then after Vince had introduced a bunch of those wrestlers via footage sent to him, he promptly took them from their other promotion. WWF fans were already a little familiar with them because of that.

Even more brilliant was not just taking footage of guys he was planning to poach. Gagne and Brunzell, for example, were not leaving Verne for new York.

It's also why you get footage from other areas in libraries that don't make sense sometimes. There was an Iron Sheik vs. IIRC Butch Reed match on an AWA PPV years back, for example. It's why Bruce Tharpe has AWA studio matches and maybe a few others in the Houston Library...sent along to promote someone incoming.

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Yeah it was pretty brilliant on Vince's part. It was common practice to send footage or interviews from an area a wrestler was leaving to the area he was going (There is a Greg Valentine interview conducted by Vince talking about Greg coming to the AWA, for example, that has appeared on some AWA specials over the years). So, when Vince came calling to showcase footage from other areas on his All American show, I think a lot of promoters didn't think twice...better exposure for their own current stars in major markets, right?

Then after Vince had introduced a bunch of those wrestlers via footage sent to him, he promptly took them from their other promotion. WWF fans were already a little familiar with them because of that.

Even more brilliant was not just taking footage of guys he was planning to poach. Gagne and Brunzell, for example, were not leaving Verne for new York.

It's also why you get footage from other areas in libraries that don't make sense sometimes. There was an Iron Sheik vs. IIRC Butch Reed match on an AWA PPV years back, for example. It's why Bruce Tharpe has AWA studio matches and maybe a few others in the Houston Library...sent along to promote someone incoming.

 

I knew that other promotions did it, but no idea that Vince did it so prominently. With the benefit of hindsight you can see that it was a genius move. Almost everybody on the footage from other promotions was somebody that he signed in the next 2-3 years or somebody that he you could see him wanting to sign (Von Erich boys, Magnum TA).

 

He eventually took Brunzell but I'm pretty sure he never had any interest in Gagne or Mike Graham. Not exactly Vince body type guys. Putting over the promoter's boys may have been part of the deal.

 

I'm intrigued about Los Medicos (maybe he was trying to find a replacement for The Invaders) and how prominent Mil Mascaras is on these 83-84 shows.

 

I'm not in any kind of rush to watch this stuff but it would be cool to have it sometime on the WWE Network to pick and choose stuff to watch.

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On a 5 things, they showed clips of a Randy Savage vs. Undertaker match from the 7/30/91 Challenge taping. I hope they release the full match 1 day. International versions of Superstars & Challenge like on French TV would air extra matches. I'm actually getting some stuff soon that I hope have some new exclusives.

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  • 1 month later...

my all-time favorite example of the WWF's booking of short-term main-event heels:

 

sika gets to headline a SNME vs. hogan in '87 (granted, as a replacement for kamala, but still). afterward he steadily drops down the card...culminating in a house show where he jobs clean to SD jones.

Crazy how Vince was just running down Reigns about Sika a few weeks back. This would have been perfect for the whole chew you up and spit you out talk.

 

RCS did you have any luck with that new stuff you were expecting

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