Posted on by bdamage1
B. Dangerous
Remember the Time will take a nostalgic and opinionated look at ill-fated gimmicks, poorly conceived storylines, and forgettable moments in wrestling history. Now join me as we take a few moments to unearth that which should remain buried forever and do our best to Remember the Time…
Remember the time the AWA Team Challenge Series was arguably the worst idea in the history of professional wrestling?
The American Wrestling Association was, for decades, a very big deal. Top name wrestlers from all over the world would make stops there and some of the biggest names to ever grace the canvas wrestled for the organization. Who, you might ask? Well, for instance Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Curt Hennig, Stan Hansen, Rick Martel, Sgt. Slaughter, Jimmy Snuka, Jerry Lawler, and The Road Warriors all wrestled there, just to name a few.
Pro Wrestling Illustrated, who has been the marquee wrestling publication for decades printed monthly, what were considered by fans to be the official rankings of major companies and consequently, PWI also determined who “officialy” got World Championship status. The rest were just viewed as that promotion’s Heavyweight title. Of the few afforded this privilege was Verne Gagne’s AWA. During most of the years the AWA existed alongside Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s rankings, the formally recognized “World Champion” companies were the WWF, the NWA, and the AWA. As previously mentioned, they were a big deal.
By the mid-80s though, the AWA started a steady and almost heartbreaking decline. Gone were many of their big names as Vince McMahon continued his push for national dominance, gobbling up such talent as Hogan, Gene Okerlund, Adrian Adonis, Jesse Ventura, among others. The WWF also moved into one of the AWA’s most fruitful markets; Chicago, which harmed AWA revenue.
As time progressed even the pillar that held the AWA up, Nick Bockwinkle, had to retire. The association they had with the CWA and WCCW melted away. Verne Gagne refused many of the changes that would have moved him into the realm of “Sports Entertainment” and kept him in competition with the WWF and the NWA. Sadly, by the time Gagne finally admitted that it was going to take some of that “carny sh*t” to keep him in business, it was far too late.
The year was 1989 and it would finish a lot differently than it would start. In January of that year, Jerry Lawler was the AWA World Champion. Among his contenders were Austin Idol, Kerry Von Erich, Eddie Gilbert, Wahoo McDaniel, and Manny Fernandez. None of those names would finish the year with the company.
By October the Team Challenge Series was slated to begin. By this point the AWA World Champion was Larry Zbyszko and the roster consisted of names like Tommy Jammer, Derrick Dukes, and several former stars about 3 days from retirement.
The Team Challenge Series itself is almost difficult to describe in that it’s just terribly convoluted. The concept in theory was that there would be 3 teams vying for points in what was mostly a variety of gimmick matches. The entire roster participated whether they wanted to or not.
The entire ordeal began with an introduction episode which featured all the hits and glamor of 1985, there in the thick of 1989! There was synth music (now pretty much gone from the mainstream), girls with big hair in bikinis, Verne Gagne droning on about the “new” and “modern” advances of the AWA, and Greg Gagne along with some spazzy nerd in wind suits as hosts, live from the “Satellite Base”. But the cherry on top was the wrestler entrances, which included them walking through screaming fans projected onto a green screen or added in post-production. Either way, they were clearly not real AWA fans and they were on a short and repetitive loop. To really add cheese, the babyfaces passed around fake high-fives to the projected fan wall.
In short, the whole (nearly year-long) event was a combination snooze-fest/cheese factory. I genuinely don’t know that anything valuable actually came from it apart from a lesson in how to not book a wrestling promotion attempting to stay in business.
Throughout the Series wrestlers came and went and even one of the team captains jumped ship in the form of one Sgt. Slaughter, who was about to begin his cutting edge Iraqi sympathizer angle and World Championship run in the WWF. The whole thing came completely unhinged by the end and the awarding of the alleged “million dollar prize”.
Here are a few of the ill-conceived highlights:
• The Destruction Crew destroys an entire building
Again, with the power of green screen technology, Enos and Bloom demolish an entire building with just a couple of swings of their ever-present sledge hammers.
• A completely unrelated “Foxy Boxing” style match
Two girls I had never heard of or have never heard from since boxing… kind of. It wasn’t good. It was really just a space-filler, which was a bad sign that close to the beginning of the event.
• Body Slam Match between “Yukon” John Nord and…
Whoops! It was billed to be against Kokina Maximus; the monstrous future Yokozuna. Instead it ended up being against the near senior citizen Sheik Adnan. Not quite the same hype.
• Football Clash
Okay… this was just terrible. The first man to score 5 times in the other man’s goal would win, but the referee was very clearly biased towards the babyface Trooper and even tackled his opponent, Mike Enos for him. That’s not how wrestling works…
• One-Armed Bandit Challenge
I’m guessing you can figure this out. Yeah. One arm behind the back. Entertainment at its finest. It was The Trooper versus Col. DeBeers, by the way.
• Turkey on a Pole
I’m not sure there’s anyone reading this that hasn’t heard of this monstrosity. If you’ve read my previous posts for know that I’m not a fan of any variation of a Whatever on a Pole Match. This includes ugly birds.
• Battle Royal finals
Won by the legendary Jake “The Milkman” Milliman, securing the win for his team and all the prize money for team captain, Larry Zbyszko.
This is just a tiny, tiny sampling of the nonsense that the AWA Team Challenge Series presented. The scoring made little sense. The teams changed numerous times. Every match was made much more difficult to understand and follow than was necessary. The lack of fans made for really bizarre production issues. The commentary trying to put-over the matches presented in this event was nothing short of laughable. Watching fake fans “pop” for a goose-stepping white nationalist was just uncomfortable. Nothing about the AWA Team Challenge Series was redeeming. Literally, nothing.
In closing, just watch it for yourselves. Mostly on fast-forward would be my recommendation. If you can find footage that hasn’t been edited by the WWE, that’s even better… or worse.
That’s all for this time grappling fans. Until next we meet, Remember the Time…