November 16, 1992
- Jake Roberts checked himself into the Betty Ford rehab center this week and his WCW future looks bleak. Roberts no-showed all of his matches last week and Watts has said that Roberts violated his contract and is telling people he's fired. Dave notes that Jake Roberts had been to rehab at least once before while in WWF and had been suspended for failing drug tests on at least 2 occasions during his WWF tenure as well.
- Interesting story out of Japan. Remember a few weeks back when Lou Thesz challenged all world champions of all companies in the world to come together and determine a real world champion? Well a company in Japan called UWFI accepted the idea and their champion, Nobuhiko Takada (with Lou Thesz at his side) proposed a match against NWA champion Masa Chono (of NJPW). NJPW and Chono had no knowledge of this taking place. The idea was for Takada to challenge Chono, knowing that the challenge would be denied and therefore it would look like Chono was scared of him. But NJPW called their bluff and agreed to negotiate for the match, which sent the media into a frenzy. UWFI execs and Takada went to the NJPW offices to meet with them and later they all came out and told the media that the 2 sides couldn't come to terms in the negotiation to make it happen. In reality, this was a way for NJPW to save face because they were upset at being blindsided like this and mad at the media for giving it so much coverage that they felt they had to respond. In the negotiations, NJPW made it clear that if the match happened, Chono would win and that wasn't negotiable. UWFI obviously disagreed with that plan. So both sides essentially agreed to save face for the media and just say they couldn't agree to terms.
- More controversy in WCW as they've booked Ron Simmons in a match called a "Ghetto Odds" match (which is just a handicap match) featuring pretty much every black guy they have on the roster, plus Cactus Jack and Barbarian (who is Tongan). Time and time again, Dave says that WCW has shown that they don't know how to book a black babyface without doing racial angles and lists several examples from the last few years.
- AAA is trying to copy what worked for WWF 8 years ago, putting together a 3 hour special featuring celebrities and rock stars to hype their upcoming huge show in February. This is of course the same technique that made the first Wrestlemania such a success and AAA is hoping the same thing will work in Mexico.
- The Oregon Athletic Commission meeting to determine whether or not to strip Sandy Barr of his promoter's license for using unlicensed wrestlers (Art Barr in particular) has been postponed for 6 weeks because Barr didn't have legal counsel.
- The usual October comparisons from the year before. As usual, everything is down, especially WWF compared to October of 91. Dave also does comparisons of Bill Watts first 5 months vs. Kip Frey's first 5 months leading WCW. Under Watts, attendance, average gate and TV ratings are all down from what they were under Frey.
- Road Warrior Hawk and Kansuke Sasaki are forming a team in New Japan called "The New Road Warriors." This has caused some very bitter feelings with Road Warrior Animal. After quitting WWF, Animal reportedly tried to go to NJPW to reform the team with Hawk, but Hawk didn't want him to come in so there's definitely bad blood between the 2 former partners. Current plans for the big 1/4 Tokyo Dome show are for the New Legion of Doom to face the tag team of Antonio Inoki and Hulk Hogan, assuming they can get the long-rumored deal with Hogan finalized.
- In All Japan, Andre The Giant has been working 6-man tag matches and Dave says that it's just sad watching him now because he can barely even get into the ring, much less do anything while he's there.
- HBO is considering doing a TV series (a drama) based around pro wrestling. Never happened and in the early 90s, probably wouldn't have been anything anyway. But with all the great prestige programming HBO does nowadays, I'd love to see that now. Speaking of, really looking forward to the GLOW series that is coming to Netflix next year. But I digress...
- Eric Embry's condition has improved after his car accident and it'll probably be about 4 months before he can return to the ring, says Dave. Or never, says history.
- The injuries to Joe Thurman from the Vader powerbomb aren't as serious as first thought.
- Macho Man's divorce from Elizabeth was acknowledged in the newest issue of WWF Magazine.
- Another slow issue. Things pick up again quite a bit tomorrow.