The AWA's Final Years: Analysis, Commentary, Profiles and More

By DA White

Everyone needs an escape and what could be better than professional wrestling? The AWA has always held a special place in my entertainment world. As a six-year-old in 1981 I watched every possible minute of "All-Star Wrestling" that I possibly could. When ESPN began televising the AWA in 1985 I was thrilled. I could then watch the weekend shows and the ESPN ones. I was an AWA fan from the second I saw it until the last time I saw a show from the Rochester Mayo Civic Center on ESPN. When the internet began to explode on to the scene I found that I could re-live the fun and sometimes silly action. As more and more AWA fans got online the amount of information increased tremendously. At the same time that message boards and fan websites started to pop up Kayfabe came to it's complete and final end. There had been no secret for quite some time that wrestling was a "work" and not a "shoot". But there had always been an agreement that promotions would always hide it just enough and fans would buy-in. Well, in the late 1990's the last of the Kayfabe world collapsed. This meant that former wrestlers and even guys still in the business would openly discuss things that had formerly been held as top-secret. Announcers and others that worked in the business were also doing these interviews, publishing books and giving very honest interviews about their time in the business. 
While it was sad to see the end of Kayfabe, it also allowed for a huge amount of information, many stories and a ton of information to be told and released. When you combine this with the internet becoming a huge part of everyday life, it was a major opportunity for people. For me, it was an opportunity to explore my hobbies. 
I immediately wanted to know everything I could about the American Wrestling Association. As I read everything I could find and watched everything I could watch my interest grew even higher. I then became very curious about how this incredibly successful wrestling organization essentially crashed with-in a few years. I found the reasons it went downhill and the process to be fascinating. So what better place to start than at the end? 
If you are a fan of professional wrestling and especially a fan of the AWA, you'll love this book. Take a look at the different AWA cards and read commentary on a variety of aspects involving the AWA. You'll also find links to some matches and wrestler profiles. Enjoy this trip down memory lane and make an escape back to 1987-1991 and enjoy the action!

• Language: English
• Publisher: DA White
• Release date: Jul 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386285489

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Copyright © 2017 by D.A. White and Expert Promotions LLC

All rights reserved. This book or any portion there of may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Expert Promotions LLC, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Edition, 2017.

Dedication:

I want to thank and dedicate all of the people who did that little extra to make the AWA one of my greatest childhood passions and still one of my favorite past times. We all need an escape every now and then and the AWA gave me that somewhat silly and always enjoyable outlet. I have loved re-watching matches and hearing shoot interviews about what really went on in The Major League of Professional Wrestling. There were people who went the extra mile as wrestlers, behind-the-scenes professionals, TV production people and countless others. I also want to thank the people who did research before me about the AWA. Many, many other super-fans have posted memories, videos and other items that re-kindled my love for the AWA. In the future I would like to do an entire links book to direct people to this myriad of (literally thousands) or places.

Introduction:

I am an AWA fan. A huge one! I am not. However, an AWA historian, nor did I ever work for/with the promotion. I began watching as a six-year old in 1981 and I didn’t stop until the bitter end. I remember watching every Saturday and Sunday morning. I watched both days because I always thought that the Sunday show might have a match that wasn’t on the Saturday show. Well, at least that’s what I told myself. In reality I think I just wanted to see the same matches and the same interviews for a second time.

Back in those days it wasn’t as easy to feed your appetite for a hobby as it is nowadays. All I had were those two hours a week, the occasional wrestling magazine and my imagination. Nowadays it’s possible to watch so many of the old matches of my youth. It’s also possible to find the details of cards/events from years gone by. Unfortunately there were a lot of matches that were never on tape and there are discrepencies about the various AWA cards from 1987-1991. Big, big discrepencies! I did my best to find out which matches occurred on which cards and in which cities. I looked around everywhere trying to see what I could verify. Sometimes it even felt silly as I wondered if anyone cares. The reality is that people DO seem to care about all-things AWA. I also spent a ton of enjoyable hours looking up and re-watching AWA matches on Youtube.  I provided a basic summary of each year as well as commentary on the various events/cards. I also threw in some descriptions and summaries of certain AWA wrestlers.  I picked out a limited number of videos as well. If you can’t copy/paste them, then you can just put them in the Search area online and they will pop up. As I’m sure you know, watching one video will lead to another and another. If you share this interest with me (AWA or old school territory wrestling in general), I am sure that you will enjoy this book. While the AWA closed a long time ago, the passion for nostalgia about this organization and this era seems to be constantly growing. The great thing that I learned in writing this book is that there is always something new to learn and to find about the AWA. The well truly never runs dry!

1987

This was the year that things took a turn for the worse in the AWA. But when you look at the full compilation of cards that the AWA held during the calendar year, you notice a lot of top notch talent. The beginning of the year started off with wrestlers like Snuka, DeBeers, Bockwinkel, Leon White (Vader), Boris Zhukov and tag teams like Rose-Somers and The Midnight Rockers. In addition, Scott Hall was still around for a while, Earthquake Ferris was a regular and Curt Hennig had his break-out year. You can also see that for the first part of this year the AWA was running shows on a pretty regular basis.

As the year moved along the focus turned to Wahoo McDaniel, Adrian Adonis, Tommy Rich, Kevin Kelly and The Original Midnight Express. The Midnight Rockers left for New York as did Boris Zhukov, but it’s hard to say that his damaged the brand any further. Losing guys like Buddy Rose and Scott Hall hurt, but by this time the excitement was gone from the AWA and bringing in Lawler, Dundee or Dick Slater didn’t do anything to excite the masses. The AWA had also become a mostly-Wisconsin promotion. They still had the Minneapolis events and traveled to Denver and Salt Lake City, but there was just about nothing in the Dakotas, Chicago and even the California events weren’t helping the cause.

The AWA, at this point, was relying on its ESPN contract. They would bring all of the talent they could to the Showboat in Las Vegas and had over a dozen matches for these tapings. These matches would be re-played on ESPN for months. The idea was to make fans think that the AWA was still a large, sprawling wrestling organization with an impressive, deep roster. While the number of events began to tail off by the fall and winter of the calendar year, Verne Gagne did seem to want to keep the AWA going as a full-time promotion. As I point out in the card-analysis, on some occasions there’s a tremendous amount of talent on these cards and they’re all getting paid. This was the year that the AWA seemed to be paying out much, much more than they were taking in. They would scale back considerably during 1988.

The unique thing about 1987 in the AWA is the fact that you had certain cards and certain matches that were amazing. There were six-man matches where the Showboat crowd was ready to riot and Rose, Sommers, Zbysko, Michaels, Jannety and Gagne (Greg) were tearing the place down. Then you can see that top names like Jerry Blackwell and Curt Hennig were main eventing cards with under 1,000 fans (sometimes well under 1,000) in attendance. The product was certainly better than the business-outcome, that’s for sure. But as we get to a discussion of quality, the AWA did have issues in 1987 in this department.

The announcing on ESPN featured an aging Rod Trongard who was shaky even on basic details and not smooth in the least. Lord James Blears had been a wrestling and surfing (and World War II) legend, but he seemed to be struggling for things to say. He sounded like he was 85-years-old even though he was in his mid-60’s. When they tried Russ Francis or Ray Stevens things didn’t improve much. Occasionally over the years Bockwinkel or one of the Gagne’s would be used and that was preferable to the cast of characters they had next to Trongard. If they would have replaced Trongard with Larry Nelson and put Zbysko on color commentary it would have been far, far better. Would this have saved the AWA? No, but improved quality does seem to have benefits beyond what we often times can see.

In the ring the quality of wrestling was okay and sometimes more than okay. This would not be the case in future years. The AWA, like other wrestling promotions, was benefitting from the old system or training. The wrestlers of 1987 were still trained in the old fashioned way. Starting soon after ’87 you’d see more and more wrestlers that weren’t as schooled in the basics like taking a back drop and selling drop kicks. Enjoy taking this trip back in time to 1987....

1/10/87 – Logan, UT

Midnight Rockers defeated AWA Tag Team Champions Buddy Rose & Doug Somers via DQ

Jimmy Snuka no contest Larry Zbyszko

Colonel DeBeers defeated AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel via DQ

Scott Hall drew Ninja

Sherri Martel defeated Candi Divine

Leon White defeated Boris Zhukov

The AWA was struggling by this point, no doubt about that. When you look at this card you see a fantastic array of wrestlers. Snuka vs Zbysko was an interesting match-up along with solid pros (Bockwinkel, DeBeers, Zhukov) and young talent that would achieve a lot (Hall, White-Vader). Fans in Logan were lucky to get this card! I saw an estimated attendance figure of 800 for this one. That’s not what these wrestlers deserve but all things considered with the size of the town (about 30,000 at this time) it isn’t horrible.

1/11/87 – Salt Lake City, UT

Scott Hall won battle royal

Colonel DeBeers no contest Jimmy Snuka

Midnight Rockers & Candi Divine defeated Buddy Rose & Doug Somers & Sherri Martel

Non-Title

Larry Zbyszko defeated AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel

Scott Hall defeated Boris Zhukov

Leon White drew Ninja

Various reports list this as a 4,500-5,000-ticket-sold event. Not bad and Salt Lake City was a reliable AWA town. This event was held at The Salt Palace, the main venue in Salt Lake City. The reason the fans in Logan, UT were treated to such a great event was the fact that they had Salt Lake City right around the corner. The AWA used the same talent but switched the match-ups. There were so many great cards, but the TV wasn’t good at all. The AWA would have been best off using these house shows for their television instead of the sporatically attended shows at The Showboat in Vegas. This ideawas advocated by some of the wrestlers years later in shoot interviews.

1/15/87 – Oakland, CA

AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel defeated Larry Zbyszko

Midnight Rockers defeated AWA Tag Team Champions Buddy Rose & Doug Somers via DQ

Colonel DeBeers defeated Jimmy Snuka via DQ

Sherri Martel defeated Candi Divine

Leon White defeated Boris Zhukov

Earthquake Ferris drew Ninja

This was reported as being a small near-1,000 person crowd. Oakland was an area that Verne tried to grow in 1985 and into 1987, but it never worked. Fantastic workers, especially Zbysko, Bockwinkel, Sommers, Rose, Rockers and Zhukov but so few turned out to see it. Earthquake Ferris was a local guy but that didn’t help much.

1/16/87 – Denver, CO

Leon White defeated AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel via DQ

Colonel DeBeers defeated Jimmy Snuka

Mr Saito & Super Ninja defeated Greg Gagne & Shawn Michaels

Marty Jannetty defeated Buddy Rose

Sherri Martel defeated Candi Divine

Boris Zhukov defeated Earthquake Ferris

Leon White vs Bockwinkel should have been on ESPN. Gagne/Michaels is an interesting pairing. I wonder why they did this while having Jannetty vs Rose in singles. I wonder if Gagne wanted to if he could partner with Michaels and re-create High Flyers magic.  Sherri Martel and Candi Divine were two of the best women wrestlers of the era.

Colonel DeBeers

DeBeers was a successful wrestler in the Pacific Northwest, but he is most remembered for his time in the AWA. His outwardly racist rants are difficult to even listen to today and they were even