June 01, 1992
- This issue is 2 weeks after the last one. Guess Dave took a week off for whatever reason.
- WCW has indeed decided to move the Great American Bash PPV to Albany, GA due to the labor strike in Philadelphia as mentioned in the last issue.
- Speaking of moves, the WBF Championship PPV coming up in 2 weeks has been moved from a 12,300 seat venue to a much smaller 2,700 seat venue and Dave's explanation for why is so great that I'm just gonna copy it word for word: "The reason of course was the threat of a series of Martians who had set their sights on the original site to magically cause green ooze to come out of various different body parts on the different bodybuilders. Luckily Titan officials mysteriously got advance warning of the Martian raid, as they seemingly do on all raids by outside agencies, and are going to trick the inhabitants of our Solar System's fourth planet by moving the site down the street. The weak advance (reportedly less than 600 tickets had been told) was just a figment of the imagination of those who were taking tickets and a new magic spell has been cast on the ticket office to forget how slow sales have been."
- And finally, in better moving news, WWF has moved SummerSlam 92 from an arena in MD over to Wembley Stadium in London. WWF has never been more popular in Europe and business in America seems to be tanking, so the move makes sense. It will air on tape delay on PPV in the U.S. The stadium holds 85,000 people and WWF expects a sellout. If that happens, it would be the 2nd largest crowd ever documented for pro wrestling and would probably break the all-time live gate record. The biggest concern is rain, since it's an outdoor stadium. Rumored matches are Savage/Warrior for the WWF title (yup), Bret Hart/Ric Flair for the IC title (nope), and Undertaker vs. Berzerker (nope). If they can get Hogan to come back, he would likely face Papa Shango (nope).
- Kip Frey quit WCW this week, to no one's surprise. He is still with the Turner organization but no longer involved with WCW. He was reportedly upset about being booted out of his position by the surprise hiring of Bill Watts. Jim Ross will be replacing Kip Frey as 2nd in command behind Watts.
- The SWS promotion in Japan has seemingly split in half, with many of SWS's top stars quitting this week. Word is that they are all getting together to form a new organization (this was pretty much the end for SWS. All those guys actually ended up splitting off into several different promotions, WAR being the most notable). It all seems very similar to the EMLL/AAA situation in Mexico. Speaking of...
- AAA has taken over the Sunday night television time slot in Mexico and EMLL has been relegated to a much weaker Saturday night TV spot. Those who have seen the recent AAA shows have been raving about the new promotion. Meanwhile, many of the AAA wrestlers who jumped ship from EMLL are unhappy with the Mexican wrestling union and are potentially breaking away from it to form their own union.
- Jim Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling ran their first major show called Volunteer Slam last week and drew 1000 fans, which is more than WCW drew in the same building a week before and slightly less than WWF drew there before that. It was filmed for an eventual video release. Brian Lee won a tournament to be crowned the first SMW champion.
- The future of GWF appears bleak. Word is the Dallas Sportatorium owner will be kicking Global out of the building soon in favor of another local promotion. GWF will be hard pressed to draw crowds (which are already tiny) to another building on another night after they've been accustomed to Friday nights at the Sportatorium. Plus, any building they end up in will be less TV-friendly and that means ESPN probably won't keep airing their show even if they do film it somewhere new. Rumor is ESPN has been looking to get out of the deal anyway.
- Antonio Inoki held a press conference to announce he will be putting together a wrestling and rock music tour in the Soviet Union in September.
- Masa Saito returned after missing 4 months with a pancreas infection that was thought to be career ending. Big Van Vader suffered a knee injury in Japan and depending on how serious it turns out to be, could be hugely damaging to both WCW and NJPW.
- Kevin Nash (Oz, Vinnie Vegas, etc.) was working in Japan on behalf of WCW but was sent home. No word on why but Dave says you can probably make a safe guess. Drugs? What the fuck Dave, get the scoop man! (Far as I can tell, he never addressed this again. I'm blocked by Nash on Twitter for some reason, someone should ask him.)
- Dave tosses in a tiny passing mention that NJPW has signed an amateur wrestler named Yuji Nagata and then moves along. Nagata would, of course, go on to become one of NJPW's top stars for decades to come.
- The Sheik returned to action for the first time after getting set on fire a month ago.
- GWF has officially announced that Eddie Gilbert has been striped of the GWF North American title (even though he's defending it on his own in USWA) and Danny Davis has been stripped of the lightheavyweight title because both men have quit the company.
- Speaking of, in USWA, they're running a "shoot"-like GWF invasion angle with Gilbert and several other guys who used to work for GWF (before they stopped flying in out of state workers) coming in to "invade" the company. It's basically the Outsiders invasion of WCW, if WCW had been ballsy enough to openly claim that they were being invaded by WWF.
- Portland Wrestling is still gamely chugging along, running a full schedule of house shows in the area despite being without TV for months now. Attendance is continuing to dwindle, but the company just won't die. The latest show only drew about 100 people, even though kids were let in for free.
- New Jersey's athletic commission has raised the price of medical insurance per wrestler from $30 to $53 for each wrestler on the card. The increase isn't enough to really be a big deal for WWF or WCW, but smaller promotions, which already struggle to break even sometimes, are throwing a fit.
- Scott Hall debuted at the latest WWF tapings using the name "Razor Ramone" and doing a biker gimmick. It was a tryout and the matches won't be airing because they apparently want to work on the gimmick.
- In the Murray Hodgson case, on a radio show this week, Hodgson accused Vince McMahon's attorney Jerry McDevitt of paying off witnesses and trying to blackmail others, accusations that could get McDevitt disbarred if true. Meanwhile, two more underaged teens have come forward this week making similar sexual abuse claims against WWF personnel.
- Bob Orton (WWE Hall of Famer, Barry O's brother, Randy's dad, cast enthusiast) was asked about the scandal and said that Barry Orton is telling the truth about the WWF.
- Sid Justice has been removed from the opening videos on TV, so he's probably not coming back any time soon.
- Bill Watts' has said his first priority is to build up the TV ratings because you can't draw people to house shows if no one's watching the TV show. Furthermore, he wants to build a product that is more realistic and believable than WWF. He's also said that he won't be changing WCW's steroid policy (or, to be honest, the lack thereof).