TNT December 12, 1985

Tuesday Night Titans (TNT) is something I'd recap more often, if the show's formula wasn't always the same. But I liked last week's episode on WWE 24/7. Main reason: Magnificent Muraco.

He gets better everytime I see him. If he was around today, he'd be over, huge, me thinks.

I liked how he was introducing the cast of "Fuji Chan"...and completely skipped over and no-sold Mel Phillips, deliberately. Muraco had a great egotistical/arrogant slant to his character and his promos are usually decent.

Four matches are seeded throughout the talk show segments. Scott McGhee pins Les Thornton, Hercules Hernandez beats Mario Mancini, Magnificent Muraco pins a jobber in a JIP match, plus Fabulous Moolah (wrestling as "The Spider Lady") pins WWF Women's Champion, Wendi Richter to win the title. Controversial bout, as Richter's shoulders didn't appear to be down. Rumor is that the WWF screwed Richter out of the title, similar to the way they did with Bret Hart in 1997. Richter's post-match antics add to this: she tries to "attack" Moolah, but Moolah suddenly begins no-selling and walks away. Richter then acts all pissy and tries to grab the belt back from the ref and Moolah.

The Herc match may have been one of his first TV appearances in the WWF. His in-studio segment is kinda' sloppy. Fred Blassie accompanies him as his manager and does most of the talking. Blassie calls Herc a "Latin" and goes into a rambling mode about how he discovered him in Mexico, beating up people. Vince and Herc both seem to be cracking up while Blassie is ranting. Blassie didn't have the funny zingers like Bobby Heenan did, but his delivery always came off as humorous.

Oh yeah, was there some connection between Moolah and Fred Blassie? They always seem super-friendly with each other whenever they're on-screen. In this show, Blassie plants a big smooch on Moolah, then has his arm around her while they're sitting on the TNT couch for the rest of the show. It's prefectly understandable that they'd be good platonic buddies.. but did they ever get it on, back in the day?