September 07, 1992
- This is part 1 of a double-issue (he sent another issue out the very next day).
- The issue starts with Dave examining the sad state of WCW for 6 pages. This is a lot to sort through so I'll try to make it concise. It starts with a quick recap of Turner Broadcasting purchasing Jim Crockett Promotions to create WCW. They had 2 choices: spend a lot of Ted Turner's money to compete with WWF or settle for being a low budget #2 company and stay under the radar. They chose the latter. In the 4 years since, the popularity of the company has nosedived and they are losing money hand over fist. Audiences don't want the minor leagues. They want WWF. The company has repeatedly lost top stars (Flair, Luger, Sid, etc.) to the WWF and has never truly gotten a top star back. It leads to fans seeing WCW as a feeder system for the major leagues.
- Dave says Kip Frey had the right idea about how to run the company. He spent a lot of money to upgrade the look of the product, made big offers to WWF stars, truly wanted to clean up steroids, and even brought in Jesse Ventura, one of America's top 5 most famous wrestling stars. But Frey also had no experience in the wrestling business so he didn't stand a chance. And now Bill Watts is in charge and is making many of the same decisions and mistakes (trying to cut costs so much that he loses talent, eliminating guaranteed contracts, and essentially just making wrestlers miserable) that led to him having to sell UWF 5 years ago. Because of this, when those previous guaranteed contracts start running out at the end of the year (Steiners, Arn Anderson, Ron Sommons, Cactus Jack, Barry Windham, etc.) and guys are asked to take a pay-cut and sign short-term contracts, you can probably expect to see several of them leave. And you can probably forget about anyone from WWF jumping to WCW in the meantime (basically, the same problem TNA has had: they lost all their top stars, brought in very few notable names, and now half their roster is made up of people no one's heard of and thus don't care about).
- WCW wrestlers are more in need of a union than anyone and there has been talk of it. But it would be a long, messy legal fight to make it happen. And most guys are scared to do it because they know it will ruin their chances to ever go to WWF. Vince McMahon will never hire someone who tried to unionize wrestlers in another company. There. 6 long, mostly boring pages boiled down to 3 paragraphs. Whew.
- In actual news, Ric Flair regained the WWF title from Randy Savage at the latest TV tapings and it will air later in the month. Apparently the match was going so badly at first that Vince McMahon sent Bobby Heenan to signal to the referee to end it. So Flair and Savage brawled up the aisle and went backstage and it was announced to the live crowd that the match would "resume after the referee regained control." They filmed several more squash matches before sending Flair and Savage back out again to redo the match.
- Summerslam buyrate was bad news, down 44% from last year. Dave takes this moment to essentially say that PPV is dying and isn't viable and the company will never be as profitable on PPV as it once was. Sure, Dave.
- Clash of the Champions took place last week and was billed as the 20th anniversary of wrestling on TBS. The matches were nothing special, but throughout the night, they showed old WCW/Crockett/Georiga Championship Wrestling footage and even had live appearances from Bruno Sammartino, Bob Armstrong, Ted Turner, Gordon Solie, Mr. Wrestling II, and Andre The Giant (in what turned out to be Andre's final television appearance in the U.S.).
- The Legion of Doom is no more. Hawk has quit WWF and Animal is staying and will be repackaged as a singles wrestler. Hawk and The Berzerker both disappeared after SummerSlam and missed the flight back home and didn't show up at the following TV tapings. As a result, both were suspended for 6 weeks, however Hawk told them to shove it and quit instead. Hawk has wanted to quit for months, for what Dave says are obvious reasons (doesn't like the steroid testing). Hawk was suspended earlier this year for failing a drug test (not steroids) and almost quit then, but Vince talked him into staying. Hawk was furious about the Penthouse article that came out recently because it listed him as being suspended for drugs and Hawk had been promised that only Vince and Pat Patterson would know that info and it was supposed to be kept secret. Hawk has enough money that he could probably retire but he will likely go work in Japan or the indies.
- Down in AAA, once again, Psychosis and Rey Misterio Jr. (who Dave notes is "barely larger than a midget wrestler") stole the show. Meanwhile, the AAA/EMLL war keeps getting dirtier, with both sides attempting to book arenas near where the competing company is scheduled in order to leech fans away. Also, EMLL introduced a gay character that is clearly a parody of AAA's promoter Antonio Pena.
- It's being reported that Canadian Vampire Casanova (Vampiro) has gotten engaged to Stephanie Salas, a famous model and actress celebrity in Mexico. She actually dumped pop star Luis Miguel to be with him.
- A followup on The Sheik being hospitalized, he's still suffering a lot of internal effects from several months ago when he was badly burned in a match and was recently in a coma and is still hospitalized.
- In FMW, Atsushi Onita pitched an idea for a match with a timer and when the timer gets to zero, the ring explodes with whoever is still in it. Funny because as I type this (July 17th), I actually just saw this match posted on Reddit today!
- GWF gave out about 30,000 free tickets this week to the public, but only about 900 actually showed up. Meanwhile, Sam Houston, GWF's former TV champion, is holding the belt hostage from the company until he gets money he believes he is owed, so they had to use an old tag team belt on TV.
- Ric Flair is opening a Gold's Gym and breaks ground on the location in Charlotte next month. That didn't go well for him if I recall.
- Owen Hart has been told he needs knee surgery that will keep him out of action for a year. Instead, he's just wearing a brace on his leg and working through it, although his tag team partner Koko B. Ware is handling most of the workload.
- There were a couple of negative signs towards Pat Patterson at the Montreal show. Dave doesn't say, but it implies that the signs were probably gay slurs.
- Dino Bravo is wrestling his retirement match in Montreal on Dec. 4th. Pretty sure this never happened and got delayed and then, well...we'll get there.
- During a Sting & Nikita Koloff vs. Jake Roberts and Invader match at a WCW house show in Texas, an elderly man on a walker pulled out a gun and fired a shot in the arena. No one was hit and he was taken down and taken to a mental hospital for evaluation. All the wrestlers bailed out of the ring until it was over.
- Bill Watts' son Erik is working in WCW now and is reportedly making good money and is getting a push despite having almost no wrestling experience. You can imagine how this thrills the locker room.
- Dave reiterates that Cactus Jack is amazing but he has to tone his style down because his body will never last.
- Junkyard Dog is gone from WCW, as is Tracy Smothers. Meanwhile, Shane Douglas started with the company again and rumor is Chris Benoit will be debuting later this month.