WWWF: All Star Wrestling
September 9, 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: Boogie Oogie Oogie by A Taste of Honey
#1 TV Show of the 78-79 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.

• Spiros Arion (w/Freddie Blassie) vs. Frank Williams

It seems like these two wrestled all the time on this show in 1978 and Frankie has never had a chance against him. As usual, Arion crimps the neck to set up a neckbreaker on Williams. Blassie calls Williams a Puerto Rican heavyweight champion. Vince informs us that is in fact not true. Frankie gets FIRED UP just enough to get mad, but doesn’t do anything about it and gets destroyed some more. Arion delivers a backbreaker across the knee and finally decides to pin Williams in 7:32.

• Dino Bravo vs. Baron Mikel Scicluna

Scicluna cheats to take control to start, but Bravo punches back and applies a hammerlock. Vince mentions the WWWF Wrestling Action magazine which he’ll provide more details concerning later on in the show. Scicluna takes over and starts pounding Bravo in the corner. Once Bravo has enough, he runs wild and knee lifts Scicluna for a two-count. Scicluna comes back with a hiptoss and grabs a chinlock. Bravo escapes to the apron, but gets his head smashed on the turnbuckle. Back inside, Bravo gets PISSED and delivers a pair of dropkicks to take care of Scicluna in 5:28.

After the match, Vince grabs a word with Dino Bravo at ringside. Pretty standard “work hard, train hard” babyface promo.

• Andre the Giant vs. Tony Russo & Jose Estrada

This is the first match we’ve seen of Andre on All Star Wrestling. Of course, there’s nothing these two guys can do with the big guy. Estrada takes a Wahoo Chop while Russo gets booted down for the sit down splash. Once Estrada wakes up, he tries coming off the top rope onto Andre, but gets caught and dropped onto Russo. Andre then sits down on both of them and gets the three-count in 3:04.

• Crusher Blackwell (w/The Grand Wizard) vs. Steve King

Blackwell is serious about wearing down King’s arm here. King gets mad, but he’s not going to stop Blackwell. He delivers a backbreaker across the knee and lays his forearm on King’s wind pipe. Blackwell then catches King with a running clothesline and throws him to the floor. Once King makes it back to the apron, Blackwell grabs him and delivers a running powerslam to the other side of the ring for the win in 5:50.

• The Yukon Lumberjacks (w/Captain Lou Albano) vs. Larry Zbyszko & Jim Ray

I know I mentioned it on the last episode we recapped, but how about that mustache on Larry Z. Holy crap. After Albano is done prancing around, Zbyszko ties up with Eric. They are all hammerlocks and wristlocks and the like. Vince mentions next week’s feature bout will include High Chief Peter Maivia and Bob Backlund teaming up. Zbyszko finally decides to tag Ray when Pierre gets him in trouble. Pierre pounds Ray and elbows him down. A big slam and a standing elbow drop finishes off Ray in 5:49.

That does it for this week. Until next time, so long for now.