WWWF: All Star Wrestling
August 26, 1978
Hamburg, PA
Hamburg Fieldhouse

Your current WWWF champions are as follows:
WWWF Heavyweight Champion: Bob Backlund (2/20/1978)
WWWF World Tag Team Champions: The Yukon Lumberjacks (6/26/1978)

Pop Culture #1s of the Time:
#1 Movie of the Week: Grease starring John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John
#1 Song of the Week: Grease by Frankie Valli
#1 TV Show of the 77-78 Season: Laverne & Shirley starring Penny Marshall & Cindy Williams

Follow along if you have the WWE Network!

The following wrestling exhibition requires discretionary viewer participation.

Your host is Vince McMahon.

• Crusher Blackwell (w/The Grand Wizard) vs. Charlie Brown

I’m a little confused because Vince is making it seem as though this is Crusher Blackwell’s first appearance in the WWWF when he was featured in 1975 and 1976 managed by Freddie Blassie. Same gimmick and everything. Besides the usual pounding you see in WWWF matches, Blackwell does this cool high impact falling headbutt onto Brown that gets a reaction. He also gives Brown a standing dropkick that should have sent Brown out of the ring.  A jumping knee drop and a legdrop would get the three-count, but Blackwell isn’t finished. He picks up Brown and delivers a POWERSLAM for the win in 6:06.

• Dino Bravo vs. Tony Russo

Bravo plays around with an armbar to start. Russo tries a headlock, but Bravo winds up escaping and delivers a backdrop followed up by a knee lift for two. Bravo gets another comeback and hits his BEST DROPKICK IN THE BUSINESS as well as the AIRPLANE SPIN (or Ode to DeNucci?) for the win in 4:28.

Vince McMahon meets with the Grand Wizard and Crusher Blackwell for an interview. Wizard compares discovering Blackwell to discovering the atomic bomb. He really loves using atomic bombs as a comparison. I believe he called Bugsy McGraw an “atomic bomb” a few years back. Blackwell tells the viewing audience that he’s shown the people he can do a lot of great things, but there’s one particular thing he can do that he’ll be hiding in his back pocket for when he steps into the ring with the guy who stole the WWWF championship from the Grand Wizard. That means YOU, Mr. Bob Backlund.

• The Yukon Lumberjacks (w/Captain Lou Albano) vs. Steve King & Carlos Cruz

Eric and Pierre work on King’s arm to start. King keeps trying to get cute with the big lumberjacks, but he fails. Cruz comes in and has even less luck against the tag team champs. King gets a tag and starts firing off dropkicks at Eric and Pierre while Albano talks over McMahon at the announce table. DROPKICK CRAZY, you might say. Pierre finally gets him to stop and slams King towards Eric for a tag. Cruz gets a tag and he tries a dropkick, but Eric sees it coming and holds onto the ropes to send Cruz crashing to the mat. Big slam and a jumping elbow drop from Eric gets the three-count at 7:56.

• Super Destroyer (w/The Grand Wizard) vs. Mike Milton

Not sure why they needed to put Nikolai Volkoff under a mask, but here we are. This was a character he did for only a few months in 1978 before returning to being Nikolai Volkoff for the rest of his career. He’s got the Spoiler’s mask with the Masked Superstar’s singlet. Just a beat’em up until Super Destroyer delivers the CANADIAN BACKBREAKER for the win in 5:20.

• Larry Zbyszko, Tony Garea & Haystacks Calhoun vs. Baron Mikel Scicluna, Butcher Vachon & Moose Monroe

Larry Z is sporting a real serious soup strainer which I’ve never seen before. Hilarious. Garea has no trouble tearing into Vachon to start. He lets Moose have a try instead. He has the same problems Vachon had being too slow for Garea. In comes Scicluna, he instead just pounds on Garea. Forget running the ropes, just pound the twerp. Now that Garea has been properly beaten down, Vachon comes in to do more damage. Unfortunately, he lets Garea move around and gets slammed. Tag to Zbyszko, he hiptosses Vachon from one corner to the next. Moose gets a tag and hits Zbyszko with a back elbow to take him down. He chokes Zbyszko with the tag rope and brings him over to the ropes to be triple-teamed. As ref Dick Whorle gets the rope away from Monroe, Zbyszko goes over and tags Calhoun. He bumps Monroe in the corner and hits him with a back elbow. Tag to Zbyszko again, he whips Moose into the ropes as Garea grabs Monroe for the ABDOMINAL STRETCH to get the submission victory in 5:21.

Until next time, so long for now.