August 10, 1992
- At the latest WCW tapings, Jake Roberts debuted and "injured" Sting, who was scheduled to fight for the title later that night. Because of it, they held a drawing for a replacement, which was won by Ron Simmons.
- Later that night, Simmons went on to defeat Vader for the WCW world title, becoming the first African-American world champion. While a few people were in the know, for the most part, no one backstage knew of either of these things happening. Even Vader and Simmons reportedly didn't know about the title change plans prior to the show and while there were rumors that Jake Roberts was finally coming in, no one knew for sure until it happened.
- Dave gives his perspective on the never-ending media coverage of WWF scandals: In short, unless the company starts losing product endorsements or TV deals, there probably won't ever be any long-term fallout from this. In the end, Vince McMahon has no one but himself to blame. Not even just for the issues, but for how he handled it. Vince's bullheadedness has been a crash course lesson in how not to handle negative P.R. The constant obvious lying has destroyed their credibility with the press and now the company can't defend itself because they've lost their voice with the media. The company has set themselves up for any accusation to be thrown their way and because of Vince's proven dishonesty, they have no credibility when defending themselves against anything anymore. So if you look at the laundry list of accusations against WWF, it's possible that some of them are false, but since Vince now looks worse than anyone who might accuse him of anything, it doesn't matter to the public.
- Regarding the Penthouse article that came out last week, and specifically the thinly-veiled accusation that Vince McMahon helped cover up the murder of Jimmy Snuka's girlfriend in 1983, Dave states that there's never been any concrete evidence to support that theory. However, Dave compares Vince to other boxing/wrestling promoters who protect their top stars at all cost (example, Don King reportedly trying to pay off the victim in Mike Tyson's rape trial) and says that probably a lot of people in Vince's position might have done something like that to protect one of their top stars (which Snuka was in 83). TL;DR - Dave totally thinks Vince did that shit.
- From here, Dave basically decides to recap each individual controversy and give his opinion on them. In most cases (Hogan doing cocaine, various Pat Patterson sexual harassment accusations, McMahon covering for failed drug tests, accusations by Vince's limo driver about Vince doing drugs and bullying him around, the ringboy sex scandal, etc.), Dave has spoken to multiple independent sources who confirm many of the accusations and overall he believes there is truth to all of those stories to some degree.
- Regarding Rita Chatterton accusing Vince McMahon of rape, Dave has spoken to a couple of people who claim Rita told them privately about it years ago when it happened, so if nothing else, it's not like she just made up the story recently. She had privately told people about it back in 1986 when it allegedly happened. But in the end, there were only 2 people in the back of that limo, and only Chatterton and McMahon know for sure if it actually happened. Regardless, Dave says the legal statute of limitations ran out years ago.
- In AAA, Dave calls Psychosis the best unheralded wrestler on the planet. He also mentions Rey Misterio Jr. doing the bump of the year when he did a moonsault off the top rope out of the ring and missed, going face down splat on the concrete floor. A lot of this stuff is kinda commonplace now with guys like Kalisto, but in the early 90s, it was absolutely groundbreaking. Since Dave decides to keep talking about him every week, here's a compilation of Rey Mysterio back in his early 90s AAA days for those of you who might only be familiar with later WWE-Mysterio and don't remember what this guy was like back when he still owned a functional set of knees:
- In FMW, The Sheik missed several shows due to injury, which Dave notes isn't a surprise when you're 68 years old and still trying to work barbed wire death matches every night.
- GWF also drew a large crowd, but they were almost all freebies from a radio giveaway plus they advertised 50 cent beers.
- Speaking of Texas, Kevin and Kerry Von Erich are reportedly talking about starting up a new promotion. Surely that would go well.
- Retired wrestler Mad Dog Vachon has announced his candidacy for Canada's House of Commons and has gotten a great deal of media coverage in Canada.
- The Philadelphia Sports Bar where Tod Gordon's ECW ran regular shows closed down this past week.
- Randy Savage was on the Arsenio Hall Show and was asked a steroid question. He said they're bad and told kids not to use them but admitted that he had experimented with them at one point, which prompts Dave to respond "Yeah, and I've experimented with using a typewriter at one point."
- Dave acknowledges that WWF has done an incredible job of building Summerslam in the UK and making it feel like a huge deal with the expected record setting crowd and international feel. Yeah, I remember being obscenely excited for that PPV as a kid.
- Brad Armstrong is going to be out for awhile with a knee injury and could end up needing major surgery.
- Terry Taylor is done with WCW and is now trying to get work with WWF again or the indies. WWF offered him a spot to come back under a mask as Mr. Wrestling III (a protege of Mr. Wrestling II) but for some reason, the deal fell apart (and 20 years later, Steve Corino would become Mr. Wrestling III).