Leading up to that Oct 86 Cotton Bowl:
May 86
Ken Mantel had quit WCCW and took a big swath of talent to him in the new UWF. (Freebirds, OMG, Kamala, John Tatum, Sunshine. Iceman, Chris Adams, Missy Hyatt, Akbar and Missing Link)
With Kerry about to be hurt, David dead, Kevin had a bum shoulder and Mike fried, the biz was toast.
Brody was booking so we got slugs like Blackjack Mulligan and Jeep Swenson in to headline. Swenson quit when Brody stiffed the fuck out of him in a match.
Hayes lost a stipulation match on WCCW TV and then went on UWF TV, reneged on whatever the stip was and bad mouthed the Von Eriches.
Fritz then booked the Freebirds to a show in July, knowing they would no show, so he could sue them for breach of contract over jumping to the UWF.
The Blade Runners were supposed to come in, with fellow roided stiff Jeff Gaylord as the new top heels. Sting stayed with Watts instead. I'm not sure Gaylord ever appeared. Warrior ended up as a face despite being named Dingo as some sort of street thug lingo from Gary Hart (Dingo and Socko was the plan)
Fritz, ignoring reality, tried to run New Orleans to stick it to Watts.
The last Texas Stadium show, with all the UWF bound talent, still drew 17,000-20,000 depending on the source. The commission of Texas says 20K. The promotion kayfabed 24K+
Mulligan beat up a ref legit in July and wasn't fired. A week later he refused to work with Kevin VE because Mulligan had a sternum injury and he didn't want the stiff Kevin to hurt him more. This led to a locker room fight and Kevin got his ass kicked. Fritz was mad BJ wasn't fired over the ref incident after Kevin got whooped.
Chris Adams was back in WCCW and won their "World" title. He was about to go to jail over the head butting a pilot thing, so he was stripped on TV and the World title was handed to Black Bart of all people. Then announcer Marc Lowarance declared he had never heard of Black Bart before.
This was Adams last show (Look at this fuckin' line up!)
9/12/86 Dallas
Bart Batten beat Killer Brooks
Mighty Zulu drew Mark Youngblood
Mike Von Erich beat Matt Borne
Chris Adams beat Buzz Sawyer by DQ
The Grappler beat Brad Batten
Chris Adams & Steve Simpson beat Dingo Warrior & Jos LeDuc
They were about to bring in Bam Bam Bigelow, but made him a Russian to avoid using the "Bam Bam" nick name.
That Cotton Bowl show with Steamboat still drew $70K. Fritz was pissed though and planned to come out of retirement at the Thanksgiving show to face Abby to try and pop business.
They also wanted to haul Kerry out to be in the corner of his brothers. The WON claimed Kerry was off the juice and down to 190 pounds as he recovered. (His amputation was actually a few months after the accident, so he would have been pretty fresh off major surgery)
