WWWF All-Star Wrestling Reviews 05-06-78

The American Dream sprinkles some Stardust on this episode of the Retro Rasslin’ Review… If you weeeell.

WWWF ALL-STAR WRESTLING 05-06-78

All-Star Wrestling is taped from the Fieldhouse in Hamburg, Pennsylvania.
Taping date is April 26, 1978. Your announcer is Vince McMahon.

Vince kicks off the show as giddy as I’ve ever seen him, because he has for us a very special interview with Dusty Rhodes. We usually start segment #1 off with a match but this week we get the Dream. Likely a better segment than whatever match we may have gotten. Vince throws to that pre-recorded interview to kick off the show.

VINCE MCMAHON INTERVIEWS DUSTY RHODES

Vince offers a soft spoken and introduction as the camera cuts to an empty arena with only McMahon and Dusty Rhodes sitting in the floor seats. Vince says the seats are empty because Duty fills the seats with fans. I’m not sure how that makes sense, but whatever. Dusty thanks the fans for flocking to the arenas to see him. Rhodes says he gets a natural high from the fans. “It’s not dope, it’s not pot, it’s not whiskey and wine, but I drink a little whiskey and wine”. I’m sure you do some others things too big Dust. Rhodes knows no color barrier, he will eat dinner with all colors. LOL. A man is a man, no matter the color.

Dusty talks about playing with black men at West Texas “We had many black men on the team, I mean boogie get down fever boys”. LOL. Jeeze. The world has changed, the arenas have changed. Now we see blacks and whites sharing popcorn boxes. Dusty likes to make the fans happy, and that fulfills his dreams. Dusty is going to carry on forever and ever. “The American Dream lives in this empty building.”

If you’ve ever seen Vince McMahon interview Dusty in the 70’s you just KNEW Vince was infatuated with him. McMahon was in love with the character and changed his entire tone when interviewing him versus the rest of the roster.

Now we go to Joe McHugh to kick off the show.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #1: HAYSTACKS CALHOUN & LARRY ZBYSZKO VS. MOOSE MONROE & BILL DIXON

[spacer height=”20px”]I never had the pleasure of seeing Haystacks live. He was winding up his career when I was just out of diapers. Though I always heard stories as a kid from my father and uncles about the 601 pounder. You can imagine how big I popped when I finally got my first look at Calhoun on the “Most Unusual Matches” WWF Coliseum Video release in the mid 1980’s. Calhoun has some fun here with the Moose early, even doing a little “boogaloo”  dance as Vince calls it. Haystacks with a splash to Moose in the corner and a tackle, and that allows the Moose to tag out to newcomer Bill Dixon. The faces have an easy time against Dixon, Moose runs in to try and aid his partner but the job guys are thrown together and Calhoun even stomps the hands of the Moose. Monroe legally tags in against Zbyzszko and Larry continues on the offense.

Larry whips Monroe into Calhoun in the corner. Haystacks gives Monroe a very light forearm, even Vince plays it off as Haystacks having fun, though Moose sells it like a legit shot. Moose is smart enough to tag out to Dixon. Zbyszko sends Dixon into Calhoun on the apron and Dixon goes down for the count in 6:29.

Winners are Zbyszko & Haystacks

Notes: Haystacks was pretty much always an “attraction” wrestler but he was winding down here, almost always featured in tag team bouts where he could stand on the apron, and doing a lot less in the ring. We didn’t even get to see the big splash here as Calhoun came in early, did a little comedy shimmy and a few moves, never to tag in again. Instead, Zbyszko used Calhoun as a weapon, throwing both Moose and Dixon into Haystacks while he stood on the apron. Somehow running into Haystacks was enough to keep Dixon down for the count. It was a novelty tag match, it filled a segment. Nothing good or bad to write here.[spacer height=”20px”]

RINGSIDE INTERVIEW WITH SPIROS ARION & FRED BLASSIE

Damn, Blassie and Arion get a lot of interview time. Blassie IMMEDIATELY goes into ripping on the obese ringside fan who sits front row center every week. He says the large front row fan is going to open a fat farm and Haystacks Calhoun will be a member.

Blassie claims all of his clothes are made by Gucci. LOL. He trades Cadillacs in when the ash tray gets dirty. Blassie claims Spiros Arion travels alone because nobody else is worthy. Blassie and Arion are as close as brothers.

Spiros finally gets to speak. Arion says Blassie will always be the man who showed him the light and showed him the way (referring to his heel turn). If Spiros had Blassie as his manager in the early 60’s, Sammartino would ahve never been champ./ Arion says he would have beat Buddy Rogers in 1963 for the title. Wow, Spiros knows his history. Arion keeps rambling as we go into commercial.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #2: “THE IRON GREEK” SPIROS ARION (W/FRED BLASSIE) VS. GENE CRESPO

Gene Crespo makes his All-Star debut. Gotta love Crespo’s sideburns. Vince comments that Spiros has forgotten how to use all wrestling holds since joining Blassie, good cover up Vince. Arion rips the corner pad off the top turnbuckle right in front of referee Dick Woehrle.

Spiros repeatedly rams Crespo’s head into the exposed steel, which must not be a DQ in the 1970’s because Woehrle lets it go. A few stomps and punches later, Arion hoists Crespo up in the over the shoulder backbreaker for the win in 4:12.

Winner is the Iron Greek

Notes: Well that wasn’t very good by any means. After having a couple of respectable matches, Arion is right back to phoning it in. Spiros sees how little he can do over the course of 4 minutes before putting Crespo down. Next![spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #3: TANK PATTON VS. SPECIAL DELIVERY JONES

[spacer height=”20px”]Vince sells this like the feature match of the week, and sadly it really is. Patton is undefeated on All-Star. Early on they do the SD Jones “I’m a black man so turnbuckle smashes don’t hurt me” spot, followed by the Patton “I hurt my elbow elbowing SD Jones in the head” spot, because once again we’ve been taught in rasslin that blacks and Samoans have harder heads than any other human. Tank hooks on a bearhug. It’s BEAHUG-O-MANIA for the next few minutes. Jones finally escapes and drops Tank with a dropkick and a series of those hard headbutts sending Tank to the outside. Jones follows him outside and the two men continue to brawl until Wee Willie Webber counts both men out after 6:34.

The two men continue to fight until the result is announced. The inexplicably stop fighting to sulk in the decision.

The result is a double count out.

Notes: .I had only seen Tank in Houston and San Antonio prior to this so it was cool to see Tank work a different territory, even if he was pretty awful in the ring. This was pretty bad.[spacer height=”20px”]

MATCH #4: “HIGH CHIEF” PETER MAIVIA VS. “CONTINENTAL NOBLEMAN” JOE TURCO

[spacer height=”20px”]The Rock’s granddaddy goes in against Turco. Maivia takes Turco down several times. The Nobleman tries to counter with a monkey flip, but Maivia rolls through and grabs another single leg takedown. Maivia applies a headlock and it look like Turco is trying to grab the High Chief’s wiener the entire time he’s in the hold. Peter finally decides it’s time to take it home. He scoops Turco up into a nice looking spinning backbreaker and gets the win after 7:59.

The winner is the High Chief!

Notes: Nothing wrong with this match. The majority of it was Maivia going into different leg takedowns and working the legs of Turco, then busting out his sweet looking backbreaker to get the pin. Obviously, it would have made more sense if Maivia worked over the back before the finish, but it was a squash so it doesn’t need to make a whole lot of sense.[spacer height=”20px”]

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Closing Thoughts:  MINI-RANT First, I want to point out a discrepancy that you may find out there on the internet. There’s a certain site that takes “pride” in receiving and sometimes stealing other people’s hard research and work for match listings. Then they list those results on their site without giving credit, or at least hiding the credit on a subpage nobody ever visits or sees. The problem is they NEVER fact check or even bother to do simple double checking to see if any information they receive is even accurate, and that’s where you get incorrect information. In more recent years that same site has opted to take their internet results given to them (and stolen) from other sources and put them in books, books that they sell. Since they’ve turned their site into a giant SHILL market rather than what it was originally intended to be, the site owner has become even more lazy with updating information. This is why I wanted to clarify some inaccuracies going around on the internet for those of you who consider themselves historians, result collectors, researchers, or at the very least interested in the truth. Listed online for this show was a match involving the Yukon Lumberjacks vs. SD Jones and Pete Austin. As you can see, not only did the match not take place here, but SD Jones was in a feature match this week. Thus, the Yukon Lumberjacks match was actually aired on April 29, the week prior. Also on this certain site that I won’t mention because I refuse to give them the publicity, they list Arion vs. Crespo as having been on 4/29 episode when it clearly aired here. Now I’m fully aware we all can make a mistake or a typo when handling such a large load of content, however these inaccuracies are all over the place on said site, and even worse common sense mistakes are made as well. I encourage everyone to steer clear of these books for sale as they have absolutely ZERO effort or thought put into them, they are filled with simple mistakes that could have easily been fixed, and obvious inaccuracies where if they took one minute to read their own “product” that they’re pasting they’d know as much. Or at least I’d hope they’d know as much. Bottom line, someone is using material they put zero effort into acquiring themselves and are reselling it in sloppy fashion, rather than taking their own site seriously and trying to provide ACCURATE historical information. Okay, rant is over – back to the show.

So this show kicks off with a Dusty Rhodes promo where he basically says nothing, but it’s Dusty so he says it in a way that is still fun and entertaining. And that’s where the entertainment ends. All four matches this week were under par, the Rhodes promo replaced the usual 5th match. The Arion and Blassie promo wasn’t very good this week, Blassie has started to recycle his fat jokes. I’m ready to move ahead. If you’re a big Dusty fan check out his promo and move on, and to be honest even the Dusty promo isn’t anything must-see here this week.