WWWF All-Star Wrestling Review 03-25-78

Time to chop some wood!

WWWF ALL-STAR WRESTLING 03-25-78

All-Star Wrestling is taped from the Fieldhouse in Hamburg, Pennsylvania.
Taping date is March 15, 1978.

Your announcer is Vince McMahon.

This is the first of a couple of episodes that are missing a segment or two. This episode only has a run time of 30 minutes while most episodes have a run time of approximately 46 minutes, which means 2 segments are missing. With only 3 matches and a promo this show should go by fast… hopefully.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #1: LARRY ZBYSZKO VS. THE GOLDEN TERROR

[spacer height=”20px”]If you’ve never seen the Golden Terror character, picture a Conquistador with a cheaper costume. Speaking of characters, the Golden Terror was played by a character in himself, “The Duke of Dorchester” Pete Doherty. Doherty was no stranger to WWF rings as himself, often doing jobs in his native city at the Boston Garden. Doherty became somewhat of a local heel comedy act for the Boston fans, with his crazy look, unmistakable voice, and sometimes goofy antics and sell jobs during his matches. Doherty would even go on to do some commentary for the WWF in the mid 80’s, and I don’t mind telling you that shit is hard to sit through.

This is a competitive match for TV. At one point the Terror was managed by Lou Albano, but he’s worked his way down the card since then, mainly doing jobs for all of the baby faces and doing the odd time limit draw with the underneath guys like SD Jones on the house shows.  This match goes back and forth with holds being applied, counters, hip tosses. It’s a lot of the basics but it remains competitive with both men trading control while trying to get their opponent down on the mat. As the match goes on I notice how filthy the Terror’s gear is. Literally every part of the body that touches the mad has a dirty black tint to it. His kneepads, butt, back and the back of his arms are just filthy. Buy new gear or use a better detergent, fella.

Finally, the Terror gets the upper hand and climbs to the middle rope. Terror leaps off onto a prone Zbyszko and hits a……..STOMACH CLAW????? He jumped off the middle rope to apply a CLAW??? How the hell does that work? Larry sells the claw but eventually gets to his feet in the hold. Terror would jerk Zbyszko back to the mat and leave the Claw hold applied, Larry gets his feet in the ropes but the Terror refuses to break the hold. Referee Willie Webber calls for the bell, disqualifying the Terror in the process after 8:03.

Winner is Larry Zbyszko by DQ

Following the match the Terror tries to get in some extra licks, but Zbyszko fires up and starts firing back as we head into a commercial break.

Notes: Zbyszko was well above the status of the Terror here, but I get the point of not jobbing the Terror out on TV so much. This keeps the masked man more meaningful for when he does jobs on the house shows. This was your basic match but I enjoyed most of it. The constant back and forth and action from the two kept the match flowing and it made for a fine TV match.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #2: THE YUKON LUMBERJACKS (w/LOU ALBANO) VS. FRANKIE WILLIAMS & PAUL FREIDMAN

[spacer height=”20px”]This is the Lumberjacks first set of All Star tapings. The Lumberjacks are Pierre and Eric. Pierre also previously worked as Private LeBeouf in Bruiser’s WWA, as well as Igor Volkoff and a handful of other mildly successful gimmicks throughout the territories. You may know Eric as Scott “hog” Irwin, brother of Wild Bill Irwin. Eric also worked famously under the mask as the Super Destroyer and one of the originators of the superplex. Here the duo take a moment to pull their jeans off over their wrestling boots. On the opposing team Freidman is oddly built. He’s well put together but his head is really small for his body.

Referee here is Dick Woehrle. The Lumberjacks maul over Freidman to begin things, just punching and stomping him into the mat. Williams tags in and actually trades some blows with Pierre before the heels take over once more. The Lumberjacks cycle through beating the piss out of Freidman again. Pierre throws Freidman’s face so hard into the corner that his face actually slide across the turnbuckle and almost into the ring post. LOL. Irwin impresses during the match by throwing a dropkick, it didn’t get up too high but it was impressive for a guy pushing 300 pounds. Scott “Eric” Irwin is what Jim Ross would refer to as a HOSS, by gawd. Williams tags back in and the match is soon over as the Jacks land a pair of DOUBLE AXE CHOPS, which would make it QUADRUPLE AXE CHOPS to the chest of Frankie. Well, they are LUMBERJACKS, what were you expecting? And this match is over after 7:39.

Winners are the Lumberjacks

Notes: Having not seen the WWWF at the time, I had never gotten to see much of the Lumberjacks outside of the WWF Tag Team Champions Coliseum Video, so they were always a mysterious team to me. I’m happy that we’ve been given these episodes of All-Star to dissect some of the stars from the pre-80’s WWWF timeline. This was the Yukons first set of taping and they did what they needed to do here and got themselves over by just mauling the hell out of their opponents. Scott Irwin looked especially stiff and impressive with a high knee and a dropkick during the match.  Sadly, Scott will pass away in 1987 to a brain tumor at the young age of 35. Their finish here was chops meant to look like axes chopping down a tree. At least they were staying true to the characters. A good old fashioned Demolition style beatdown.[spacer height=”20px”]

RINGSIDE INTERVIEW WITH BUTCHER VACHON & BARON MIKEL SCICLUNA

[spacer height=”20px”]Vince McMahon stands by with two of the lesser pushed talents in the WWWF. Butcher calls out Vince for never interviewing he and Scicluna. The two men talk about their abilities. Vince questions their ability as a team. Butcher says Vince doesn’t study up because he’d know that Butcher is a former long time team and World Champion with his brother Mad Dog Vachon. Butcher also discusses his family training and a daughter that would soon become a wrestler. You may know her by the name LUNA.

Given the guys involved I was groaning before anyone even spoke a word, but to be honest this was quite the fun little promo. Scicluna really added nothing, but Butcher was entertaining from calling out Vince for thinking they were jobbers, to mentioning his family and foreshadowing the eventual debut of Luna. I liked Butcher here.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #3: LUKE GRAHAM (w/THE GRAND WIZARD) VS. STEVE KING & JOSE (MIKE) MADERO

[spacer height=”20px”]Luke “Don’t Call Me Crazy” Graham is here in a handicap match this week. Madero is introduced as “Jose Madera” but would wrestle as Mike Madero going forward. He also even seems a little confused that he was called Jose here. Racist Joe McHugh must think all Puerto Ricans are called Jose. Speaking of McHugh, he refers to Puerto Rico as Porta Rica. Going back to Madero for a minute, I found results of him going back into 1977 as Mike Madero, which makes his name here all the more odd.

Graham quickly takes control sending Madero to the floor. Graham proceeds to kick and choke King with the shittiest kicks I’ve ever seen and the loosest choke I’ve ever seen. Madero returns to the match to grab a headlock on Luke while Graham continues to choke King. Luke no sells it, bodyslams King, then snapmares Jose on top of him and just covers them for a very unconvincing finish in only 2:17.

Winner is Crazy Luke

Notes: This match doesn’t seem to appear on the results floating around on the internet for this TV taping, which could make sense because the lighting of this footage seems different from the rest of the show.

There were a small handful of wrestlers during the 1970’s that when you watched them they basically exposed the business because their work looked so fake Luke Graham was one of those guys. I suppose working against him was a night off since the guy barely touched you, but at the same time everything he did was so light and so fake that it was cringe worthy when trying to review this match. And then he beats a guy by snapmaring him over. The only good thing I can say about this match was that it was short.[spacer height=”20px”]

Closing Thoughts: I went ahead and did some quick research. It looks like we’re missing 2 matches from the show, Butcher Vachon over Frank Marconi, and the team of DeNucci & Dino Bravo over the awesome team of Johnny Rodz & Joe Turco. While I must admit, I would have loved to seen Rodz & Turco team up, it’s safe to say we’re not missing much by having these matches omitted. I am a completionist, so I’m always unhappy when something is edited out or missing, but I’m still happy we got the majority of the show. We should probably be so lucky to have missed out on a Paul Vachon squash, but his promo was actually kind of fun.

I thought Zbyszko vs. Terror was perfectly fine for TV and the Lumberjacks were very convincing in their snug beatdown. And for every bit of snug the Lumberjacks were, Luke Graham was too light. He was a PHONY, a big fat PHONY!

Seriously, getting through that short Graham match was a chore. I even found mention of one of his TV matches from this time period being so awful that he had to go back out and tape it again.

It’s hard to sell you on this episode with a third of the show missing and Graham stinking up the joint, but I didn’t mind everything on the show up until we got to Crazy Luke. If you’re into this old stuff maybe watch the show until you get to Graham, and then skip ahead to the next show.

That’s all I got for this installment of the Retro Rasslin’ Review!