April 08, 1991
- The big news this week is that Sid Vicious has given his notice to WCW. His contract officially expires on Sept. 1st and it appears he's already scheduled to start with WWF on Sept. 2nd. WCW is making a big last ditch push to keep him. Vicious is a perfect fit for WWF and Dave assumes a Sid vs. Hogan feud could be a potential Wrestlemania main event (nailed it). WCW believes there may be contract tampering issues at play and has sent WWF a threatening legal letter over it but Dave is pretty sure WWF knows what they're doing and are careful not to cross that line. Sid is unhappy in WCW with how he's being used lately and is asking for a pay raise that would make him one of the highest paid wrestlers on the roster, behind Flair and Luger. Assuming Sid and WCW can't agree on terms, expect Sid to be taken off TV and only work house shows until his contract expires.
- The WWF/SWS crossover show in Japan this week is being touted as having drawn slightly more than the WCW/New Japan show 9 days earlier, but the real attendance is closer to 45,000 and even that number was because the show was heavily papered with free tickets. Actual paid attendance is probably closer to 30,000. Earthquake was the most over babyface on the card (despite being a heel in America) because of his sumo roots in Japan before he was a WWF star. Legion of Doom beat Hogan and Tenryu by countout. Crowd was angry at the bullshit finish, but considering none of the 4 men would agree to do the job, it was the only real option.
- The top story from the show was an incident (now pretty infamous) that took place, with the Kobe Kitao vs. Earthquake (John Tenta). During the match, Kitao decided not to sell and shoots on Earthquake, kicked the referee (unscripted) and after the DQ, got on the microphone and said wrestling was fake. He was subsequently fired. Kitao was basically a piece of shit anyway. Prior to this, he'd had numerous other incidents and even before pro wrestling, he had been kicked out of sumo wrestling as well. TL;DR - fuck that guy. Here's a video of the Earthquake match. About halfway through, it turns into a real fight, with Earthquake on the defensive, realizing that this dude is out to hurt him for real.
- Once again, WWF has booked a show in the same area as WCW's SuperBrawl show the night before, in an attempt to hurt their attendance the next day. Dave goes into the history of these back and forth battles, with both WWF and WCW booking PPVs, free TV events, and live shows directly in opposition of each other's big events in attempt to hurt the other company. Sometimes even booking the same building and intentionally running long so that the other company wouldn't even be able to start setting up the arena until a few hours prior to the show starting. In the end, it pretty much amounts to the much more powerful WWF bullying WCW, who occasionally retaliates without much success.
- Better info on the numbers are beginning to come in for Wrestlemania 7 and it looks like the buyrate was far worse than initially thought and is by far the lowest WM of all time.
- Former wrestler Tiger Mask is talking about starting a new sport called "Shooting" combining martial arts, judo throws, wrestling submissions, etc. Sort of "mixed martial arts" if you will.
- Ron Simmons and Paul E. Dangerously have both re-signed 1-year deals with WCW.
- Owen Hart is already gone from WCW because they wanted him to cancel his tour of Japan and he refused.
- New characters being prepared for WCW include The Wizard (Kevin Sullivan) and Oz (who will be played by Kevin Nash) but both of those happening depend on WCW getting the movie rights.
- WWF filmed an angle after Wrestlemania where Slaughter threw a fireball in Hogan's face, so that storyline will be continuing.
- Other angles that were filmed at the next TV tapings after WM7: Undertaker locked Ultimate Warrior in a casket and Earthquake "killed" Jake Roberts' snake Damien. Also, Mike Rotunda is coming in soon as an IRS agent named Irwin R. Shyster, which will be similar to the Michael Wallstreet character he plays in WCW. And finally, Undertaker has begun putting his defeated opponents into body bags (that would actually be cool if he brought that back one last time before he retired).
- There are rumors that the IFBB is going to pay Lou Ferrigno big money to come out of retirement in their quest to compete with Vince's WBF.