October 12, 1992
- WWF's tour of Germany last week was a huge success. With many cities seeing WWF live for the first time, nearly every show was sold out and the crowds were incredibly hot and bought tons of merch. And the company decided to toy with old-style wrestling, with every match ending in a clean pinfall and Ric Flair defending the title in 30-minute matches, beating Bret Hart or Randy Savage clean every night (most of Flair's US matches in WWF have been in the 8 minute range) and the matches have gotten rave reviews. In Munich, for some reason, Flair and Papa Shango (both heels) were the 2 most popular acts on the show.
- Animal and Crush debuted as the new Legion of Doom on this tour and were over huge, with fans having no problem accepting Crush (I actually looked into it and apparently, Animal & Crush only teamed up 13 times, only house shows. Soon after that, Animal left and was retired for 4 years while Hawk continued to work a full schedule in Japan. They didn't reunite until 1996 in WCW).
- Meanwhile, in the U.S., WWF drew it's lowest cable TV ratings in history. Compared to the same week last year, ratings are down 25% and down almost 40% from two years ago.
- The Steiners had another meeting with Bill Watts this week that ended with them storming out of his office when he wouldn't negotiate or budge on his contract restrictions. At this point, it's almost a certainty that the Steiners are leaving at the end of the year when their contracts are up.
- Kerry Von Erich was finally sentenced on his forged prescription charges. The judge gave him a 10-year suspended sentence, 10 years of supervised probation, and $6000 in fines.
- Lots of uncertainty in EMLL right now. On top of so many stars jumping to AAA, there seems to be large sums of money missing and they're being audited. There's even talk of it possibly being bad enough that someone might be going to jail for it. There's also a story that the booker has been extorting wrestlers, getting them to give him money in exchange for better spots on shows.
- In AJPW, rookie Jun Akiyama is making a great impression, with guys saying he already works like a veteran despite only having literally 3 matches in his career so far. Word is he's a natural and has potential to be a huge star. And indeed he did.
- Big Van Vader had to pull out of NJPW's tag team tournament because his knee hasn't full recovered yet from surgery (that becomes a pretty big deal in the coming months). Also, the Steiners are being advertised for NJPW shows in November but it's possible Rick won't yet be recovered by then. With their WCW contracts expiring soon after, if Rick is able to work, expect them to drop the IWGP titles.
- The Great Sasuke is starting a new promotion soon called Michinoku Pro.
- In USWA, The Tazmaniac debuted and looked impressive. That would be Taz, of course.
- Jeff Jarrett debuted for WWF last week as part of the working agreement with USWA. No one knew who he was and he didn't get over well.
- Tito Santana is out with an injured back and Undertaker is back in the ring after suffering a broken collarbone.
- Randy Savage and Elizabeth's divorce is now final.
- Looks like Bob Backlund is in line for a major push, which is funny since most WWF fans don't really remember him. They acknowledged that he's 43 years old and Dave thinks they may be trying to give older fans a "middle-aged hero" like George Foreman currently is to boxing fans.
- Wrestlemania 9 will no longer be in Madison Square Garden. No word yet where it'll end up.
- In WCW news, Dave mentions that "A guy with an auto racer gimmick got a try-out, although I'm not sure who he was." I'm assuming Bob Holly?
- Steve Austin and Brian Pillman have a few tag matches booked, but they aren't going to be a regular tag team because Austin is vehemently against the idea. Interesting, considering what actually ended up happening with them and how fondly Austin talks about those days now.
- If there is a 7th game of the World Series this year, it would go head-to-head against Halloween Havoc. You would think they wouldn't make that scheduling mistake again considering it happened last year and was partly to blame for the low buyrate, but yanno....WCW.
- Brian Hildebrand (later known as referee Mark Curtis) writes in to the tape-trading section to let people know that he is looking for a tape of the Country Music Awards.