October 14, 1991
- Paul E. Dangerously (real name Paul Heyman) has been suspended indefinitely by WCW. Heyman has an announcing contract and it's no secret that WCW is wanting to change his role from announcer back to manager (for the Enforcers and perhaps for Rick Rude if the company can strike a deal with him). Heyman didn't want the role change unless they were going to make a new financial deal, since being a manager requires more travelling. However, from all accounts, the suspension has nothing to do with money.
- WCW has quietly been negotiating with Jerry Jarrett's USWA on a deal that would result in a title unification match between WCW champion *Lex Luger and USWA champ Jerry Lawler, which would then result in the winner being recognized as the NWA champion (assuming the company can get the big gold belt back from Flair, which they're still trying to do). The idea is for Luger to challenge "all world champions," knowing that Flair and Hogan won't respond, but allowing Luger to go around and unify the WCW title with all other championships and revive the NWA system of all the territories working together against WWF. Well this idea was supposed to still be a secret, but reportedly, Paul Heyman told Eddie Gilbert about it. This led to Jerry Jarrett believing too many people know about the plan and pulling the plug on the whole thing. Heyman has denied telling Gilbert and in fact claims he knew nothing about it until finding out after it was scrapped, but WCW suspended him regardless.
- More on WWF budget cuts, as stated last week, the main change will be the way live shows are routed in order to cut down on travel expenses that have gotten out of control. The layoffs were attributed to the current recession. Many within the company are still blaming the WBF launch, which is stagnating and many within the industry are already predicting the bodybuilding organization won't be around much longer.
- As for the upcoming Tuesday In Texas PPV, it's an experimental idea that Vince says he has toyed with for awhile. There will be a big angle taking place at or before Survivor Series that will be used to hype the PPV and otherwise, no money will be spent promoting it outside of that.
- In Mexico-strike news, there has been a little bit of progress, with EMLL agreeing to change the time of their television show. In response, the wrestlers' union has agreed to let wrestlers work some upcoming EMLL shows as a sign of good faith. But the strike is still technically continuing until EMLL takes the show off the Sunday schedule completely. It is thought that the union will likely settle for the show to be aired on a day during the week. But Sundays are the biggest day for live events in Mexico and they don't want a televised show going head-to-head with live business on that day.
- Suburban Commando opened this week to mixed reviews but it's not being torn apart the way No Holds Barred was, so that's good. Hogan made some small waves within the business this week when he again appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show again, this time to promote the movie, and implied that wrestling was more entertainment than sport. Which isn't news to most people, but a lot of old-timers who still hold on strongly to kayfabe weren't happy.
- WATCH: Hulk Hogan appears on Arsenio Hall Show to promote Suburban Commando
- Entertainment Tonight has cancelled their story on steroids in wrestling because they have been waiting to conduct an interview with Billy Graham after he files the lawsuit he has been talking about filing. However, Graham has yet to file the suit and until he does, ET doesn't want to run the piece without having that on the record and an interview with him about it.
- Fifteen years later, Dave has uncovered the true story of what happened 15 years ago in the Antonio Inoki/Muhammad Ali match that happened in 1976! It turns out the original plan was for Ali to beat Inoki senseless with punches, which would lead to Inoki blading. The ref would want to stop the match, but Inoki would beg him not to. Ali, then feeling bad for Inoki, would also ask the ref to stop it. At this point, Inoki would hit Ali with an enzuigiri out of nowhere and pin Ali. This would give Ali an excuse for doing the job (he was caught off-guard with a bit of a cheap shot) and possibly even set up a rematch. And it would make Inoki look like the never-give-up superhero he presents himself as in Japan. However, prior to the match, Ali began to get bothered with the idea of throwing the fight and decided he didn't want to do the job to a wrestler. In the end, after a lot of back and forth, the whole thing turned into a legit shoot, and a boring one at that, with Inoki laying on his back the entire time, afraid of getting punched, and throwing kicks at Ali's legs. Ali only received $2.2 million of the $6 mil he was promised, which led to lawsuits on both sides. Also, contrary to what WWF or WCW might claim about Wrestlemania 1 or Starrcade 83, the Inoki/Ali match was actually the first event to really be broadcast nationally on closed-circuit TV.
- WATCH: Antonio Inoki vs. Muhammad Ali
- In Oregon, the wrestling commission held a meeting. Art Barr, who had his wrestling license revoked after a rape case in 1989 (which also cost him his job with WCW), was in attendance to try and get his license reinstated. He was told to resubmit his application (it never really happened. Art Barr ended up going to Mexico instead and forming one of the most famous tag teams in Mexican wrestling history with Eddie Guerrero before dying of a heart attack in 1994).
- Over in GWF, "The Boss" that runs the company hasn't been revealed yet, but it won't be Madusa Miceli anymore, as she has been snatched up by WCW. The Boss will be revealed at the 10/18 tapings.
- The rules (and participants) for the upcoming Chamber of Horrors match are still murky. As of now, all they know is that it will be an electrified cage and the way to win is for all members to escape the cage within a time limit. Those still left in the cage when the time expires will have to face "instruments of torture." (None of this ended up being the case.) Dave quips that this definitely sounds like a Jim Herd idea if there ever was one and then suggests that the torture should be forcing the losers to watch the Great American Bash 91 PPV from start-to-finish.
- Steve Blackman, who used to work for Stampede, recently got a tryout at the latest WWF tapings.
- In the letters section, everyone is raving about the Roddy Piper/Ric Flair angle that saw Vince get hit with a chair. I'm only writing that so I have an excuse to post it:
- WATCH: Roddy Piiper/Ric Flair angle, with Vince getting dropped by a chairshot