September 23, 1991
- The top story is the suicide of Chris Von Erich, yet another tragedy to befall the Von Erich family. Chris is the 4th son of Fritz Von Erich to die before reaching the age of 25. News is reporting that Kevin Von Erich and their mother found him near the family ranch, with a gun in his hand. He had written a suicide note implying that his inability to make it big as a wrestler was the driving force behind his suicide. Chris was the smallest of the family and just didn't have a body built for pro wrestling, especially at the level and success of all his brothers. He was only 5'5 and 165 pounds when he started as well as suffering from chronic asthma. Dave goes into a long obituary of Chris, essentially detailing his entire career and the careers and tragedies of the entire Von Eric family and holy shit, there's a lot of them (not just the wrestler kids, but grandchildren and other family members outside of the business as well). And remember, this is still about 2 years before Kerry also committed suicide.
- WWF is holding a press conference this week to officially announce the Hoosier Dome as the site for Wrestlemania 8, with an expected 63,000 seat capacity. So far, the rumored main event is Hogan vs. Flair, doing a champion vs. champion scenario, although a lot can change between now and then.
- Jim Herd has been named as the president of the National Wrestling Alliance. What that means is that WCW becomes the controlling power in the NWA and Lex Luger therefore becomes recognized as the NWA champion (remember, a few weeks back, the NWA voted to recognize Flair as still being the NWA champion even after he left WCW). Since the NWA is pretty much a meaningless organization at this point, the only reason this really matters is that it puts into question just who legally owns the NWA championship belt, which is currently appearing on WWF television. Both Flair and WCW have claimed legal ownership. Bout to start getting messy...
- Erik Watts, the son of Bill Watts, was all over the national sports media this week because he was the starting QB for the University of Louisville in a nationally televised game against Ohio State last week after their regular quarterback broke his leg the previous week. Watts passed for 303 yards and threw 3 interceptions and they lost the game.
- The Crusher, a big star in the 50s, 60s and 70s had a 6-way bypass heart surgery last week.
- Over in GWF, their heel announcer Steven DeTruth went on TV and said he could pin the Blue Blazer in less than 30 seconds, and if he failed, he would give up his commentary job. "The Blue Blazer" he was talking about turned out to be a blue sports coat. DeTruth suplexed it, even took a bump for it, etc. before pinning it. Cute.
- Meanwhile, ESPN is still wanting GWF to film 46 new episodes for the fall TV season, but GWF doesn't have the financial resources to be able to pull that off. ESPN should probably be happy with what they have, since the GWF ratings are currently double what USWA was pulling before GWF replaced them.
- The hearing in Florida on the bill to establish a wrestling commission (and steroid testing) in the state has been pushed back to November. Expect significant news items to come out of that hearing when it finally takes place.
- WCW has now organized a "steering committee," responsible for discussing with Dusty Rhodes the long-term direction of the company. So Dusty is still the booker, but this committee is designed to keep him in check. The committee is composed of Jim Crockett, Jim Ross, Magnum T.A., Jim Barnett and Jim Herd. Ooookay then. This is what happens when you hire a guy to a contract where you basically can't fire him and then he does a shitty job. A lesson WCW pretty much never learned.
- One Man Gang may be done with WCW after being sent home for refusing to put over PN News. Chances are Cactus Jack will replace Gang in the Chamber of Horrors match at Halloween Havoc (and so he did).
- Steve Austin suffered a dislocated kneecap, no word on how long he'll be out (I dislocated my kneecap in high school and it took about a month to feel normal again. Curious to see how Austin deals.)
- A Galoob toys commercial with Paul E. Dangerously has been pulled because it also has Jason Hervey in it and WCW never got the rights to use Hervey in the commercial. I guess he was just hanging around with Missy Hyatt and decided to jump in or something. I googled and couldn't find the commercial. I found one with Heyman and Lex Luger, but it has no sound but that's it.
- When Brad Armstrong returns to WCW from Japan, he will be wrestling as a masked man either called The Web or Arachnaman. (Sidebar: when I was a little kid, my grandmother worked at a flower shop and I would sometimes go there after school. I remember being a big Arachnaman fan because he was basically Spiderman and I was a comic book kid. I liked the webs he shot out before each match and so I would always take a bunch of ribbon from the flower shop and make my own webs like Arachnaman. I also used to make confetti guns like Johnny B. Badd out of paper towel rolls and fill them full of cut up pieces of paper and ribbon and blow on it really hard so it would shoot out like his confetti gun. My grandmother fuckin' hated it.)
- Oz (Kevin Nash) and El Gigante will be taping an episode of Swamp Thing (can't find video, but it's the episode called "This Old House of Mayan" if anyone is feeling frisky and wants to find it).
- As far as people being off TV in WWF, Curt Henning is now expected to be out for at least a year due to his back injuries. Meanwhile, Kerry Von Erich was out due to pissing blood, and now will be out even longer after the death of his brother. And finally, Kato is serving a 30-day suspension for cheating on a drug test.
- Wayne Bloom, from the Beverly Brothers, spent the night in jail in Milwaukee on a disorderly conduct charge.
- According to those who have talked to him, Ultimate Warrior is telling people he is retired from wrestling. His version of the story is that he made demands to work weekends only and after Summerslam, he was told he was suspended for 90 days and at that time, they would reevaluate. Warrior balked at that and told Vince he quit instead. Dave says Warrior could probably make a good six-figures a year for the next couple of years just from merchandise residuals and wouldn't have to work anywhere if he doesn't want to.