WWF Superstars of Wrestling

When I was a young child growing up in the Washington, DC suburbs during the mid to late 1980's, My aunt who lives in Northwest Washington, DC was a long time wrestling fan and she got me hooked from that day forward. In my area, WWF Superstars of Wrestling came on WTTG-TV channel 5 in Washington and I watched Superstars every Saturday afternoon to see what was going on during the week in the WWF. It was the show to watch if you were a World Wrestling Federation fan back in the day, and compared to the popular shows of today, Superstars was a ground-breaking wrestling show during the ladder half of the 1980's.

WWF Superstars of Wrestling was a brilliant show which I began watching in 1984.

There were a lot of differences between this show and today's shows such as WWE Smackdown and WWE Raw. For starters, the majority of matches on these programmes featured big wrestlers such as Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Jake "The Snake" Roberts taking on those jobber wrestlers who always got their butts kicked within minutes. There were big matches on WWF Superstars but the majority were jobber matches.

There was quite a bit of talk on this show. There would be interviews with big stars, skits giving the fans a tease about what was to come, skits about new wrestlers coming to the WWF and talk about the latest upcoming PPV events. Watching this show was kind of like reading WWF Magazine because you got all the news and gossip you could want.

All in all, WWF Superstars of Wrestling was a great show. I'm not sure if it sill airs today and if it does, it is most likely a highlights show of Raw and Smackdown but in it's heydey, it was great!

Remember during the 80's thru syndication mostly on Saturday nights on my TV the "WWF" had on a weekly program "Superstars of Wrestling". And the show was packed with action and entertainment with news, gossip and the showcase of feuds and the introduction of the latest wrestling stars made one glued to the TV set for one hour. It was hosted by Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura who always bickered and bad mouthed one another during the matches and introductions. The matches were entertaining with the main events being interesting. Later on the Brother Love segment part of the show was fun and "The Undertaker" and Paul Bearer segment was a wicked and wild view to look at! Overall a great showcase of how far out and wild the "WWF" was during it's best and most entertaining glory days!

Before the WWF became cartoon with Hulk Hoagan leading the way, the events of WWF TV broadcasts of the very early 1980s resembled the wild, wild west with all kinds of grudges and vicious acts of violence performed by some of the wrestlers that are known today to be the WWF's most beloved stars. Some of these seemingly very real moments stand out. A maniacal Sgt. Slaughter whipped then champion Bob Backlund with a riding crop after Backlund showed him up in a fitness test. Welts were all over Backlund! Sarge made the Iron Shiek look like a daycare provider! Slaughter also issued a challenge to anyone who could break his dreaded cobra clutch hold. This led a legendary and bloody alley match with commentator Pat Patterson. Hall of Fame member Blackjack Mulligan with Freddie Blassie came into the WWF with a claw hold that was censored on television. He claimed he was the true giant at 6'7" and challenged Andre long before Big John Studd in 1984. Adrian Adonis used his ominously named "Good Night, Irene" sleeper to take out the competition. A New Yorker clad in black leather, he was an ominous figure. George "the Animal" Steele was far from a crowd pleaser, as well. Even Jimmy Snuka was a fearsome sight as he set out maim opponents until Ray "the Crippler" Stevens delivered a piledriver onto the cement floor leaving Snuka a bloody mess. All these encounters took place a decade before hardcore wrestling was ever spoken of.

For all newer wrestling fans or older fans who don't recall, "WWF Superstars of Wrestling" is a perfect example of how wrestling used to be presented on television. Long before wrestling's explosion in popularity on Monday night cable TV, most wrestling fans used to be satisfied with these one-hour syndicated wrestling programs. Typical programs featured big-name wrestlers against jobbers (those wrestlers who always lost); interviews that were taped (usually) weeks in advance; promotions of upcoming wrestling events; promos, or skits, of wrestlers soon to either make their debut or introduce a new gimmick; updates of current events, feuds, etc. in a given wrestling organization; maybe but not always a confrontation between two currently feuding wrestlers; and perhaps a main event pitting two big-name wrestlers against each other. Most people were satisfied with these 60-minute programs for years. Of course, professional wrestling has improved greatly much better since the Monday night explosion, and the makeup of syndicated and cable wrestling programs has greatly changed. But for those who perhaps caught the professional wrestling bug in recent times, this is how it was. The now-defunct American Wrestling Association (AWA) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) organizations -- plus other regional promotions that have long-since folded in the wake of Vince McMahon's expansion of his WWF -- had syndicated wrestling programs similar to "WWF Superstars of Wrestling."