September 21, 1992
- And now we skip almost 2 weeks for some reason, as Dave's newsletter schedule continues to baffle me.
- Tension in WCW has reached a boiling point. Bill Watts was brought in to stop the financial bleeding in WCW and to do so, he's been making drastic cuts in nearly every area. As you would expect, this hasn't set well with many in the company who have been asked to take paycuts or have been inconvenienced or had their jobs made harder due to the extreme budget cuts. It all reached a head this week with Brian Pillman.
- Earlier this year, Pillman signed a lucrative 2-year contact with WCW under Kip Frey. Then came Bill Watts, who is admittedly unfamiliar with Pillman's work and saw his contract as way too large. Pillman was asked to give up the incentives in his contract (which pay him more money based on his push and how well he gets over and things like that). Pillman refused, and so he has been turned into a jobber since Watts took over. Pillman was essentially put into a position where he was told to give up the incentive bonuses or they would bury him and he wouldn't get paid the bonuses anyway. Pillman (understandably) refused and has been jobbing to Brad Armstrong at house shows ever since, despite being one of the most popular stars in the company.
- Other stars are in a similar situation. Watts recently offered Rick Rude a large cash payment now (still significantly less than he would make over the long-term) for him to give up his current contract and instead work on a per-night deal with no guarantee of a number of dates. This is the same sort of deal being offered to most wrestlers that have long-term guaranteed contracts that Watts is trying to get rid of.
- Meanwhile, Barry Windham was asked to retire and take an office job with a lesser salary and Watts is scheduled to meet with Sting (who has probably the best guaranteed contract in all of North American wrestling that doesn't expire until 1995) later this week. In short, Watts has essentially given the message that if you don't take a substantial paycut, he will intentionally ruin your career.
- 1991 vs. 1992 business comparison again, for the month of August. WWF business is down overall, however, the massive live gate from Summerslam this year actually put them financially about equal to last year. Overall, everything else is basically the same trend as before. WWF and WCW down significantly from the year before, AJPW is about the same, and NJPW is thriving compared to this time last year.
- Big news for AAA, as they landed a television deal on Televisa Ch. 2 in Mexico City for their weekly TV show, which Dave says is the equivalent of getting a weekly NBC show in America. It's the most powerful TV station in the country and airs throughout South and Central America.
- Meanwhile, people continue to jump from EMLL to AAA. Art Barr, Lizmark, and Lizmark Jr. are all rumored to be heading in soon and Chavo and Eddie Guerrero are both expected to jump soon as well. Meanwhile, this Rey Misterio Jr. continues to blow Dave's mind week after week.
- In GWF, they started an angle where Scandor Akbar threatened to file a lawsuit against the company and put them out of business for not allowing him to hang an Iraqi flag in the Sportatorium. The crowd was mostly indifferent to the whole thing but cheered when he mentioned putting GWF out of business. Ouch. Also, local Texas wrestler Booker T worked for the promotion this week and had a match that ended with Black Bart branding Booker T's ass with a branding iron.
- Bruno Sammartino got a small part in the Robert DeNiro movie "The Loft," where he'll play a tough pizzeria owner who talks to kids about staying off drugs. Apparently DeNiro was a big Sammartino fan and it was his idea to give him the role. Also, Sammartino will be appearing at the WCW Halloween Havoc PPV in some capacity. (So Bruno's acting appearance was actually on a TV show called Tribeca and the name of the episode was "The Loft." Not a movie. Anyway, the show only lasted 7 episodes and as far as I can tell, DeNiro only produced it, he didn't act in it. And I can't find video of Bruno's part, unfortunately.)
- Kevin Von Erich made some, uh, interesting statements to a St. Louis newspaper last week. When asked why he was 2 hours late for an autograph session, Kevin replied he was in Oklahoma, working with a group called Feed the Children.
- "Oh man, it's a great group. I don't care if you hate my guts or whatever. They're fighting some disease that, I told you I can't get political. But if we can't take care of the little kids, who will? The homosexuals? The homosexuals are in charge of the media. They'll run you down if you oppose them. The people I talk to are America. But if you don't dance to their tunes, you don't get on television. It burns me up. Radical groups in San Francisco are telling you the whole country's like that. Well, it ain't. They all keep doing it and dying, and they call us ignorant."
- Uh....
- Dave gives advice to anyone who has an idea for a gimmick and wants to propose it to WWF or WCW: trademark it first. Both companies have been known to steal someone's gimmick idea and use it for another wrestler. He doesn't name names here, but if you remember last year, that's exactly what happened with the Repo Man gimmick. Some guy contacted WWF with the idea and wanted to come in as that character. WWF said they weren't interested and a few months later, someone else was portraying Repo Man on TV and the original guy was assed out.
- The main event of Survivor Series is currently scheduled to be Warrior & Savage vs. Razor Ramon & Ric Flair. Ramon has been getting a super push since debuting, going over Randy Savage at house shows.
- Wrestlemania 9 will be taking place at Madison Square Garden. Not quite, Dave.
- Ric Flair and Mr. Perfect appeared on Regis & Kathy Lee this week. They were asked about Elizabeth a couple of times and seemed uncomfortable talking about it but acknowledged that Elizabeth and Savage's marriage had broken up.
- Crush will be teaming with Animal as the new Legion of Doom now that Hawk is gone.
- Bruce Prichard has been re-hired by WWF and will work as JJ Dillon's assistant but will not be returning to TV as Brother Love.
- Ted Dibiase & IRS are going to be broken up as a team soon (sure, in like, a year).
- IFBB-owned magazine Flex ran an article about the demise of the WBF and it was a very smug, in-your-face type of article. The piece claims that the WBF losses were around $15 million and that the WBF magazine alone was losing $200,000 a month.
- WCW injury report: Jake Roberts has a concussion, Cactus Jack has a badly torn groin, among other injuries, and Vader suffered an injured wrist.
- Lance Russell plans to retire in November. He planned to retire at the end of the year anyway, but WCW sped it up so they could stop paying him sooner.