WWWF All-Star Wrestling Review 08-26-78

Who was that masked man???

WWWF ALL-STAR WRESTLING 08-26-78

All-Star Wrestling is taped from the Fieldhouse in Hamburg, Pennsylvania.
Taping date is August 9, 1978.  Your announcer is Vince McMahon

MATCH #1: CRUSHER BLACKWELL (w/THE GRAND WIZARD) VS. CHARLIE BROWN

[spacer height=”20px”]Referee is Dick Woehrle. This is Blackwell’s return to All-Star Wrestling. Vince sells it like Blackwell has never worked here before, though he had a run in 1975 into 1976. Vince talks about things he has “heard” about Blackwell, even though he’s called a ton of his matches only 3 years prior. Blackwell scoops up the Wizard and sits him down gently on the apron to help him out of the ring. How nice. Blackwell sends Brown out of the ring for the fun of it. Action returns to the ring and Blackwell lands a nice falling headbutt. He follows that with a nice fist drop. Crusher with a backbreaker and then he toys with Brown for what feel like forever. BLACKWELL THROWS A DROPKICK!!! Nice. That woke Vince up. Awesome Kneedrop. BIG LEGDROP finally ends it… No way Blackwell pulled Charlie up at the count of 2. What a heel.

POWERSLAM to Brown, and that does the trick after 6:06.

Winner is Blackwell

[spacer height=”20px”]Notes: Every big move that Blackwell hit was meaningful and downright impressive. He made even a kneedrop look awesome. The only problem I had with this match is you have a big monster, he should have finished Brown off in quicker fashion in his return (or debut as Vince would lead you to believe). There was lots of playing around and punches thrown to draw out the match and eat up some time. It brought the overall match down with all the downtime, but the moves were impressive enough to make up for some of that. Good stuff but still too long.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #2: DINO BRAVO VS. TONY RUSSO

[spacer height=”20px”]Russo is a top journeyman enhancement talent of the time period. Dino moves at a fast pace to start, but Russo grounds him with a side headlock. Dino finally has enough of this and fights back. DROPKICK BOUNCES OFF RUSSO’S HEAD. LMAO. That was awesome. Airplane Spin. This is over in 4:28.

We get a replay of the dropkick bouncing off Russo’s head. LOL. It didn’t get old.

Winner is Dino Bravo

Notes: Bravo had this thing where as soon as he was announced as the winner he would jump out of the ring immediately, never selling the wins. It seemed odd. There have been a couple instances where he leaves ringside before he’s even announced the winner. Nothing to see here. Move along, sir.[spacer height=”20px”]

RINGSIDE INTERVIEW WITH THE GRAND WIZARD & CRUSHER BLACKWELL

[spacer height=”20px”]The Wiz says he is holding the atomic bomb, meaning Blackwell. Crusher knows he’s the greatest RASSLER in the world today. Blackwell is looking forward to wrestling Bob Backlund. Blackwell wants to get the title from Backlund to get it back for the Grand Wizard. Crusher wants to injure Backlund and teach him a lesson for taking the belt from the Wiz. They talk about Blackwell’s strength and amazing agility. Blackwell compares his strength to Superman.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #3: WWWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS THE YUKON LUMBERJACKS (w/LOU ALBANO) VS. CARLOS CRUZ & STEVE KING

As the Lumberjacks dominate King early on, Albano keeps waving a necklace in front of the camera. I’m not sure if he’s trying to hypnotize the audience or what’s going on in the mind of Captain Lou. Cruz finally gets the tag and he hesitantly comes in against Eric. Solid kneelift from Eric. The Lumberjacks dominate Cruz for a while until King can tag back in. King comes in a house of fire. He dropkicks Eric twice, Eric bumps off both. A third dropkick sends Eric into the corner to tag in Pierre. Now Pierre eats a dropkick and begs off. Pierre finally cuts King off and slams him in the heel corner. Double teaming ensues by the champs.

King battles back, he lays some shots into Eric and tags back to Cruz. Carlos immediately misses a dropkick on Eric. Huge jumping elbow drop from Eric gets the win after 7:56.

Winners are the Lumberjacks

Notes: .I’ve said it before, no squash needs to go 8 minutes. This was on the long side, but pretty decent. Scott Irwin continues to impress for his size. I almost didn’t like Irwin bumping off those dropkicks, but it showed he was a team player AND he wasn’t lazy.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #4: THE SUPER DESTROYER (w/THE GRAND WIZARD) VS. MIKE MILTON

[spacer height=”20px”]The masked Super Destroyer here is actually Nikolai Volkoff. It’s kind of funny since we just saw the real Super D (Scott Irwin) wrestle in the previous match. Super Destroyer Volkoff dominates with generic offense. Milton tries to fight back and uses the top rope to hold onto while he tries to jump up for a dropkick, LOL. It only knocks Volkoff back a step or two. Super D is right back in control and sends Milton outside the ring. Lots of stomping ensues. Over the shoulder backbreaker wins this in 5:20.

Winner is Super D

[spacer height=”20px”]Notes: This was my first time getting a look at this particular Super Destroyer. Before now I had only heard stories of his existence. I had heard rumors of it being Don Jardine (The Spoiler) or Killer Kowalski, but you can immediately tell it’s neither man because of the body type. Both men were much leaner than this particularly Super D. After a couple of offensive moves it became easy to tell this was in fact Nikolai. And true to most, if not all Volkoff matches, this sucked a D…. A SUPER.. D.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #5: HAYSTACKS CALHOUN, LARRY ZBYSZKO & TONY GAREA VS. BUTCHER VACHON, MOOSE MONROE & BARON MIKEL SCICLUNA

OH YES! Larry Zbyszko has grown his 70’s PORN MUSTACHE!!! Well, this is the 70’s so I guess it’s just your average porn mustache.

[spacer height=”20px”]Garea starts out with a backdrop on the Butcher and Vachon almost forgets to kick out. Well that would have been a quickie. Garea, the guy I least want to see from the face side, insists on wrestling every heel and never tags out before the heels take over on him. Scicluna gets control of Garea and the heels work him over. Garea comes fight back with a big slam on Vachon and we get a tag to Larry Land. Zbyszko tries his hand with Monroe. Moose uses a foreign object to jab away at Zbyszko, but Larry falls into the face corner and HOT TAG TO CALHOUN!

Haystacks drops Moose with a back elbow. Larry gives Moose a knee. And Garea is tagged back in and defeats the Moose with an abdominal stretch in 5:21

Winners are Haystacks, Garea & Zbyszko

[spacer height=”20px”]Notes: I hate to say it, but Garea could have handled this match all on his own. Haystacks does one move, a back elbow that he basically walks through. Larry barely does anything. Another underwhelming appearance from Calhoun who is more of a prop in the corner to look at, at this point.[spacer height=”20px”]

Closing Thoughts: This feels like the first show without Luke Graham in a long time. For that, I am thankful. However, even without Graham this show wasn’t very good. It was cool to see the return of Blackwell to the show and a super rare appearance by the Super D (who didn’t last very long), but the matches here this week weren’t very good.

Thanks for reading this edition of the Retro Rasslin’ Review. Next time we’ll have a look at the ladies in action, Backlund and Maivia team up, plus a real live BEAR!!! Well, a Russian Bear anyway…