July 14, 1984
This is the infamous “Black Saturday” show. In 1984, Georgia Championship Wrestling occupied this exact timeslot on WTBS. Vince bought the stock of the company from the Brisco Brothers (Jack & Gerald). In fact, the Brisco’s briefly teamed together in WWF later in the year. On this date, many fans tuned in expecting their regular NWA action but were shocked when Vince McMahon and his WWF showed up on the screen. Viewers were largely unhappy and I believe around 500 called into WTBS and complained. This was a major move in Vince’s plan to make the WWF a national promotion. In the end, the move to WBTS failed and several months later, NWA programming returned to that timeslot. I wish I knew more about the history behind this but I do not.
Freddie Miller welcomes us to the WTBS studio and then introduces Vince McMahon. He promises us that we will see the greatest superstars in wrestling and then names off the wrestlers we will be seeing tonight, making a point to emphasize how big and muscular they all were. Vince hosted the show from the studio but the matches were not taped here.
Nick DeCarlo & S.D. Jones vs. Adrian Adonis & Dick Murdoch
This match features McMahon and Tony Garea on commentary. Garea is as exciting on color as he is in the ring. This match took place in Canada
Thoughts: Dull match but the crowd was really into SD Jones for some reason. I’m not so sure about showing this off as the first match to the Georgia Championship Wrestling audience though. Adonis is rapidly gaining weight. He is not nearly as big as he was during his "Adorable" phase but heavier than he was before.
Gene Okerlund is with Mr. Fuji and his newest acquisition, George Steele. Fuji Fuji Fuji Fuji
Chris Curtis vs. Jesse “The Body” Ventura
This match is from the show at the Met Centre from June 17th. Before the match, Jesse points and yells at an audience member. Okerlund and Monsoon let us know that he was yelling at Minnesota Viking All-Pro linebacker Scott Studwell. He was never shown on camera. Jesse backs Curtis in the corner then slams him into the turnbuckle. He yells some more at Studwell before knocking Curtis back down. Jesse beats on Curtis some more, stopping to yell some more at Studwell. Slam by Jesse but he misses an elbow drop. Curtis lands a few punches but runs into a knee and Jesse regains control. He knocks him down with a throat thrust and yells at Curtis to get up, referring to him as Studwell. The crowd then starts a “We Want Studwell” chant as Jesse picks up Curtis for the Bodybreaker and he taps out (4:19).
Thoughts: This was more tolerable than most Ventura
Gene Okerlund is with B. Brian Blair. Oh boy, this ought to be exciting. He tells Okerlund that he has been teaming with Spike Huber and has his goals set on the tag-titles. Those two havent even been teaming on TV yet and Huber was only briefly with the WWF. He runs down the competition, mentioning the Moondogs twice then Okerlund cuts him off and thanks him for joining. Blair is awful on the mic, as expected and why on earth did they choose him to interview for their debuting show on a new network?
Immediately after that, Alexis Smirnoff joins Okerlund. He was primarily used as a jobber in the WWF but did stuff with Ivan Koloff in the 70’s. Okerlund mentions the Soviet Union not being in the Olympics and Smirnoff says that the Americans can finally win something. He then proceeds to cut a horrendous promo, which I can barely understand. WWF was 0-2 with these back-to-back interview segments.
WWF Magazine Plug
Ron Hutchinson vs. Iron Sheik w/Freddie Blassie
This is also from the Canadian TV tapings. Shiek starts his pro-Iran stuff to piss off the crowd and they respond with an “Iron Sheik sucks” chant that the announcers are afraid to repeat. Sheik takes Hutchinson
Thoughts: Decent enough squash match and finally a segment worth showing to a new audience. Sheik was good in the ring and his feud with Slaughter was great and could be over enough with just about every type of wrestling fan.
Big John Studd vs. Bobo Brazil
As ring announcer Mel Phillips lists off Studd’s height and weight, Studd interrupts and says he is seven feet tall and over 400 lbs. This match is from the Philadelphia Spectrum. Bobo is a few months away from his 60th birthday here. They start out by trading punches and it looks horrible. Bobo can barely move and Studd is a terrible wrestler to begin with. Studd gets an elbow smash and puts Bobo in a bearhug. Bobo reverses the bearhug but Studd rakes his eyes. Bobo also rakes the eyes and knocks down Studd with a headbutt. Studd takes a breather and comes back in and chokes out Bobo. They then engage in the single worst shoulderblock spot I have ever seen. It was like two people in slow motion bumping into each other in the hallway. Studd gets a headlock for a bit. They run into each other twice and Bobo gets a jumping headbutt after that. He backs Studd in the corner and takes him down with another headbutt but misses a leg drop and Studd covers for the win (5:44) -***
Thoughts: Oh my, this was the worst match I’ve seen from 1984 WWF so far. There wasn’t a single thing in this match that looked even remotely believable. Having Studd do the work for an immobile Brazil
Next week, Vince promises that Hulk Hogan will be here.
Final Thoughts: This was about as bad as it gets in terms of introducing a product to a new audience. The show was filled with bad matches and interview segments. They didn’t showcase their top talents and this came off as a “B” show. It wasn’t hard to see how this failed to get over with the NWA audience. The ratings for this show declined sharply when WWF took over.
What's interesting is that this episode seems to have nothing to do with the slow, slow build to the first Wrestlemania which you've otherwise been covering. No Lauper/Albano/Richter/Moolah, no Piper...
ReplyDeleteThey seemed to want to have established this as a recap show. It was a really dumb move in the part of Vince. He had no clue that this audience dislike his product. Making them watch interviews with Blair and Smirnoff as well as matches like Brazil vs. Studd also didn't help
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, the Georgia Wrestling contract with WTBS specifically called for unique content. Vince tried to do an end around by hosting taped content from the studio, but Ted Turner was having none of it, threatening lawsuits and undercutting McMahon by giving Sunday afternoon and Saturday morning timeslots to other wrestling promotions, until Vince finally cut his losses by selling the program to Jim Crockett.
ReplyDeleteDidn't JCP end up buying the timeslot back for something like 1/10th of what Vince paid for it?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't buy the timeslot "back", because they never had it in the first place. Vince bought Georgia Wrestling from the Briscos, which included the timeslot for wrestling on WTBS. He sold just the timeslot to JCP, only a small porition of the original purchase.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, Vince still owns Georgia Wrestling, worthless though it may be.
What's baffling about this show is that by this point the WWF had several wrestlers that had been regulars on TBS in the past and thus had familiarity with the TBS audience yet none of those guys were on the first show.
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't they give the promo time to Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka, Don Muraco or even The Masked Superstar? Those were guys that TBS viewers had at least heard of. Instead, they devoted promo time to guys who never had promo time before or since.
It reminds me of one promo in the early days of TNA where Bill Behrens was cutting a horrible promo trying to act like a sheriff while Bob Armstong (one of the greatest talkers of all time, mind you) was forced to stand next to that idiot in silence.
When I first saw this show, I just got the vibe that Vince intentionally wanted the TBS show to fail. To put together such a horrendous show for a debut, it's either intentional sabotage or the person putting the show together is the dumbest idiot on the planet and Vince is too smart to fall into the latter category.
And of course Turner actually wanted to give the timeslot to Bill Watts for Mid-South, which was doing gangbusters on Sundays, but Crockett ended up with the slot instead due to some sort of shady deal with Jim Barnett and Watts was actually forced off the station. Watts probably could have survived for a lot longer with that TV deal, to say the least. I'm sure he would have self-destructed eventually anyway because he just wasn't ready to adjust with the times, but it would have been interesting.
ReplyDeleteIn all fairness to Vince, it's not like there was months of planning involved, like in the launch of Monday Night RAW. There was NO indication that this was happening a week prior, so that means that Vince had at most seven days to put this show together. Probably less than that. He bought Georgia Championship Wrestling, then had to immediately replace the content, from the Atlanta studio no less.
ReplyDeleteHe probably made do with whatever was available at the time.
That's a good point except that the matches and promos that aired were lifted from shows that had better matches and promos, so it obviously should have been a no-brainer to air the better stuff instead. It's not exactly impossible to fast-forward a tape for a few more seconds on less than a week's notice.
ReplyDeleteCase in point, the Jesse Ventura match came from the same show that had a great, entertaining brawl between Hulk Hogan and David Schultz. It's more obvious than the ending of a Bullwinkle cartoon that you should air that match instead.
I should also point out how supremely stupid it is to have a debut show without putting your champion on the show in some way, shape or form.
That would be like the NFL having the first game of the season not involve the reigning Super Bowl champions.
I don't follow this. If this was intended as a "recap show," what the hell were they recapping? Alexis Smirnoff had virtually no TV exposure at this point, and Bobo hadn't been on TV in probably 10 years. A recap show generally catches the viewer up on recent goings on, but none of that happened here. It was like a random array of jobber matches tossed against the wall.
ReplyDeleteAll of the matches were introduced by Vince in the studio but they were all at least a month old. Maybe I should of used a different term because you make a good point. This first show was just like you said though, a bunch of random matches tossed against a wall along with interviews of lower midcarders.
ReplyDeleteYeah, sorry for the nitpick. I love these old reviews you're doing, keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I didn't take any offense to your comments. Actually, you were right about what you said. I'm not thin skinned when it comes to my reviews so I encourage all comments, as long as they are relevant to the topic.
ReplyDelete