WCCW Christmas Star Wars, Dallas, GA
Request via Ko-fi. To say that 1985 is no longer the height of World Class would be an understatement. The request was an amended one and for “World Class Star Wars shows matches, particularly Von Erichs-Freebirds stuff,” but there’s only so much of that available in full, so I wanted to chuck this in, too.
Rick Rude is the NWA American heavyweight champion, not quite fully broken out as a big star in The Business yet, but on his way for sure. Great look, can talk, had already done well in Memphis. Wasn’t a Great Worker but had everything else, and in time became a hell of a worker, too.
Lance Von Erich is the fake cousin of the Von Erich boys. David died in early 1984. Mike got rushed into the ring despite him not really wanting to wrestle and also not being good at it. In August of 1985, Mike had shoulder surgery, then suffered toxic shock syndrome. He’d come back to wrestling, but shouldn’t have, and was never the same personally or professionally, committing suicide in 1987.
But at this point he is still alive, but out, and Fritz needs a third Von Erich, so he cast a kid named Ricky Vaughn (real name William Vaughn) as Lance, the son of Fritz’s fake brother Waldo Von Erich. Most of the Von Erichs, notably Kevin, were sincerely against this and tried to talk Fritz out of it. But Frtiz’s territory was starting to really struggle, and Kevin and Kerry were getting badly over-worked. Instead of just pushing someone else into a top babyface spot, Fritz created a fake cousin, which is not usually a great sin in wrestling, but the Von Erichs in Texas were just a totally different thing, and a lot of people saw through it, and it damaged what the crowd thought of the Von Erich family.
That’s not to say Lance wasn’t popular, though. He gets good cheers coming out to John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” here, and he was a good looking, pretty athletic young wrestler. I also just bought his 2020 autobiography Lance By Chance on Kindle, so that’s something I’ve done with my life.
Rude has Percival Pringle III in his corner. Rude slaps Lance in the face before the bell, and Lance cracks him right back, but Rude doesn’t really budge. I mean he doesn’t stonewall it, really, but he’s not cowering around or anything.
Lance out-foxes Rude a bit quickly, and Rick bails out to the floor to regroup. Back in and Lance goes to work on Rude’s arm. If Ricky Steamboat threw deep armdrags, Lance Von Erich throws shallow armdrags. Ricky Rude comes back with an exciting chinlock, one of his specialties until around ’89 or so. Probably still then but he learned to use them better, more selectively.
Don’t worry, Lance has all the fire needed, including a backdrop, a hiptoss (sucks as much as his armdrags), and and a dropkick for two. There’s some problematic language happening in the audience toward Percy Pringle.
Referee David Manning eats an errant shot from Lance in the corner, just enough to give him some problems with his eye he has to turn away and deal with, but it doesn’t actually prevent him from seeing Pringle interfere with his cane, which is the DQ win for Lance, who continues to do damage to Rude after the bell, chasing him from the ring. So Lance wins but does not get the strap. Manning takes the mic so he can cut a quick dickhead promo on Pringle for something everyone already understands (“You did that just to save the championship! OK I’m done!”) but Fritz was losing his faith in what people understood or didn’t by this point. Fritz had lost the plot in general. That’s why there are 7800 people at this show, compared to 18K in ’82, just under 20K in ’83, and even 17K in ’84 for the same Christmas Star Wars event at the same venue in the same city on the same date. ’86 would draw 7K, and ’87, when the bottom had totally fallen out after Mike’s suicide, was down to just over 2600. It was also the last “Star Wars” show World Class ever did.
Anyway, Lance was, you know, a better wrestler than Mike or Chris, but couldn’t hold a candle to the other boys, and because even if you bought that he was a Von Erich, he wasn’t one of the Von Erichs, so he was never going to really catch on. But then neither was Mike. Rude isn’t really good good yet so he can only do so much here, and the match just kinda goes by, with Lance doing his best to work “the Von Erich style,” but that’s something that takes a special level of ego, delusion, and pampering.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
You must be logged in to post a comment.