Where Wrestling's Regional History Lives!
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Where Wrestling's Regional History Lives! |
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- Luis Cuevas Hi there everybody and welcome to the WWC column. My name is Luis Cuevas and I will be talking over for Manuel Gonzalez here in the WWC section. Manuel's knowledge is incredible and hopefully I can provide a fun and interesting column of Puerto Rico history as he did and hopefully I am able to continue the legacy of Manuel here on this site . I've been a fan of Puerto Rico Wrestling since I was a little kid (around 25 years ago) and during the 80's in my opinion WWC was as good or better than any territory in the world with a who's who of wrestling stars coming regularly to the island including Ric Flair, Terry Funk, Harley Race, Giant Baba, Dory Funk, Jack Brisco and many more who to these days are considered the best of the sport .Wrestling In Puerto Rico has received a bad name over the years and hopefully in my columns we are going to show a more positive side to the island. I'm going to be covering shows, interviews with some of the stars from that era and of course the great angles that happened in Puerto Rico during the years of 1983 to 1989 which are the ones covered here on the Kayfabe Memories website.For my first column I am going to be talking about a time frame I just finished watching on tape in the last couple of days... around the 1986 Anniversary where a lot of things started happening on the island. In September of 1986 there is the big show in Puerto Rico called Anniversary 86 and that year it was one of the most special shows in the history of the promotion as the WWC decided to run a Tournament to crown a new Universal Heavyweight Champion as the title was vacated due to injury sustained to Carlos Colon by the hands of Abdullah The Butcher who had thrown ammonia in Carlos' eyes earlier in the Spring during a six-man match between the Invaders and Carlos vs. Abdullah the Butcher and the Starrs. This lead to a great match between Carlos and Abdullah in front of almost 25,000 at the Hiram Bithorn Stadium during the Summer. Due to the injury Carlos had to vacate the title.The Tournament was held over 3 days in the 3 big cities of Puerto Rico. Mayaguez on the West Coast, Ponce in the south and the Famous Hiram Bithron Stadium in San Juan were the final match was going to be held. The tournament had a great roster of legends Like former NWA Champions Terry Funk, and Giant Baba, former AWA champion Ric Martel, former Universal Champ Abdullah The Butcher and well-known challengers Boris Zukhov and Barry Windham. The tournament provided great action and a couple of great matches like the Wild Brawl between Baba and Abdullah in Ponce where they fought everywhere in the Stadium. This match showed a side of the Giant that you did not see everyday. The match finished with Abdullah winning by count-out but not before Baba dominated the match. Another great match in the tournament was a match between Terry Funk and Ric Martel in Mayaguez where Terry Funk won after a great match. The final of the tournament saw Carlos Colon vs. Terry Funk for the title in a great match where Carlos Colon defeated Terry Funk with a small package. The final led to a small-feud between Carlos Colon and Dory Funk Jr. who had interfered in the match between his brother Terry and Carlos Colon. The other big feud in Puerto Rico happened in the tag Team division between The Rock N Roll RPM's and Chicky and Ron Starr. The RPMs were one of the most popular tag teams in Puerto Rico during this time winning the world and North American tag team titles and the number #1 contenders were "The Primos" or cousins in one of the greatest angles in the History of Puerto Rico. Mike Davis was celebrating his wedding anniversary and had to fly his wife and daughters to Puerto Rico to celebrate and the fans in the card bought them gifts that were taken to the ring. While his partner Tommy Lane took their daughters to the dressing Room, Ron and Chicky Starr came to the ring with a gift of their own and decided to open it and show it to everybody and it was a very nice picture of the RPMs. As they were going to give them the picture, Chicky hits Mike Davis and Ron Starr breaks the picture and glass was everywhere. They proceeded to beat Mike Davis to a pulp until Davis' wife tried to save her husband. She also received a beating until the faces saved them. This lead to a long feud that included Peaches who was the valet for Ron Starr and Sasha, a female wrestler from Puerto Rico. This feud saw the tag titles exchanged on several occasions. More...
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