Rock'n'Roll X 4th NWA WTTT Date

[convoy71]

It's been noted in the title history under Jim Crockett Promotions, Rick Mortan and Robert Gibson beat Manny Fernendez/Rick Rude? to regain a 4th NWA World Tag Team Title. Now the note is that due to knowing Rude was leaving for the WWF they taped title change months before in apparently Spokane, WA.

Can anyone confirm the date of the taping? (not when it aired which was May 1987)

[Dan Poutsma]

The R 'N R victory they showed was actually from a non-title match that took place around winter 1986.

After Rude left for the WWF, Ivan Koloff replaced him for about a nanosecond as Fernandez's tag team championship partner. Then Manny left as well and they just aired footage from a non-title victory that took place months prior and said it was a title change.

[HMFiles]

But the weird thing is, Manny stayed in JCP until around September. (I specifically recall seeing a match against Jimmy Garvin which was after Garvin's July feud against Flair.)

The story I read was that Manny was no-showing certain matches with Koloff.

OK . . . . but why was he suddenly available soon afterwards?

And, since he was available, why not have the Express win the belts in a match against Koloff & Manny instead of this imaginary nonsense?

[Heretic]

Personally, I think because substitute partners look even more bush league. I think of the time in the AWA when Boris Zhukov was a tag champion with Soldat Ustinov, and Zhukov left for the WWF. They brought in Doug Somers so Somers and Ustinov could drop the belts to Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee. What kind of a makeshift team is Ustinov and Somers? And doesn't it undermine the value of the title when you acknowledge on air that your tag team title is not enough incentive to keep a wrestler from jumping to the WWF?

Likewise, what kind of a makeshift team is Manny Fernandez and Ivan Koloff? Okay, they had a manager in common, but other than that, again, you'd have to publicly acknowledge that your title isn't important enough to keep a wrestler from jumping to the WWF.

So what they did made sense. If you pull the wool over 99% of the fans' eyes, then why not? It's no less "non-sensical" than "around the horn" title changes, in which on-air announcers don't mention where and when a particular title change took place. At least with the non-title footage, they made it appear to look as though the actual champs dropped the belts, and then left town because they no longer had the belts. It protects the value of the title that way.

[HMFiles]

Heretic's points are well taken. He's absolutely right that the handful of us scratching our heads mean nothing compared to the vast majority of the audience who believe that Rude & Fernandez lost.

However, if they were going to use the old footage anyway, then why did they bother announcing Koloff as the new substitute champion?

My only guess is that they didn't realize until (immediately) after that that they could pull a fast one with the older video.