December 21, 1992
- Dave starts the issue by wishing everyone an early Merry Christmas and New Years, noting that 1992 has been one of the most unique years in the history of wrestling. Business-wise, definitely the worst year ever, but in-ring, there's been more great matches than probably any other year. And it's also been one of the most news-filled years, most of it bad and scandalous, but yanno.
- One of the most intruguing things this week was how Jerry Lawler would handle his sudden WWF appearance to his hometown fans. Lawler is clearly a heel in WWF and still a babyface in Memphis. His excuse is that he's having to follow WWF all over the country because Koko B. Ware (the current USWA champion and still-WWF employee) is afraid of him and running, so he's trying to chase him down. Which....doesn't explain why Lawler is an announcer, but whatever.
- Starting January 11th, the WWF will premiere a new 1-hour show starting at 9pm called WWF Monday Night Raw. The 2-hour Monday night Prime Time Wrestling show is a thing of the past, due to declining ratings. Supposedly, the new show will be aired live and unedited.
- The planned WWF Saturday night show Slam & Jam has been changed and will now air on Saturday mornings instead and will probably be given a new name (it ended up being called WWF Mania).
- Dave attended a recent WWF house show and gives his thoughts: Bob Backlund is just not over and it's sad. Hart/Flair was a good match that Flair completely carried. And finally, with the exception of maybe Ric Flair, there's no one in Shawn Michaels' league right now in the United States. He's just that good.
- The NJPW Jan. 4th show, which is billed as a joint show with WCW, will only have 3 WCW workers on it (Simmons, Sting, and Dustin Rhodes) which means it's unlikely WCW will ever air the PPV in the U.S. Plus, none of them are in marquee matches, which probably spells the beginning of the end for WCW's talent exchange with them. Vader is seemingly done with NJPW and sticking with WCW full-time (that becomes a big deal later).
- Speaking of the Jan. 4th show, Hawk and Sasaki (now dubbed The Hell Raisers) recently won the IWGP tag titles and will be defending them against the Steiners at the show. Given that the Steiner Brothers are WWF-bound right after that show, it kinda makes the outcome obvious.
- Rumor is WCW will start the new year with a booking committee instead of just one booker (Dusty), however Dusty is expected to stay onboard and be part of the committee. Dusty's $300,000 salary was surely "sliced, diced, and made into julienne fries by Bill Watts" but whatever his salary was cut to, Dusty probably still couldn't make more money anywhere else, so he's staying. Watts will likely be leading the committee himself and other names likely to be part of it are Jim Ross, Greg Gagne, Bill Dundee, Mike Graham, and Larry Zbyszko. Ole Anderson may be added as well.
- Newspapers in Mexico were heavily critical of Eddie Guerrero voluntarily removing his mask in his AAA debut, saying it was unprofessional. Guerrero blamed EMLL for giving him a masked gimmick in the first place, which he didn't want since he's the son of the legendary Gory Guerrero. The papers said he should have never accepted the mask in the first place if he was going to desecrate it by removing it the way he did.
- Rey Misterio Jr. celebrated his 18th birthday this week.
- EMLL business is the worst in decades due to AAA raiding all their stars and it's worse now that their biggest star, Canadian Vampire Casanova went back to Canada before a big show, claiming a back injury and now he's not scheduled to return until March. Some newspapers are claiming he's quitting wrestling entirely. Vampire is hands down EMLL's biggest drawing star but at this point, he's also pretty much the only star that draws and has been under tremendous pressure to carry the company. EMLL is reportedly trying to work out a talent exchange deal with WWF, but Dave just flat out says that ain't happening.
- Rob Van Dam will be starting with All Japan in February along with Davey Boy Smith.
- Major League Baseball star Cecil Fielder appeared on an episode of GWF and they claimed he was there to maybe get into wrestling to be a two-sport superstar like Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders. As for Fielder, he looked like he wanted to be anywhere else during the segment.
- Ron Harris (member of the Harris Twins) was suspended for 90 days by the Oregon athletic commission. Harris wanted his cousin (Brian Lee, aka fake Undertaker) to be able to wrestle there but his license wasn't in order, so the commission turned it down. So Ron Harris called the commissioner and left a message on his answering machine threatening the commissioner and his children. The tape was turned over to the police and Harris is now suspended from wrestling in Oregon (and now maybe sorta kinda partly owns TNA and is maybe sorta kinda also a Nazi).
- The Steiner Brothers debuted for WWF in a dark match this week and got a lukewarm response.
- Nailz was apparently fired at the latest TV tapings. Dave doesn't have any details yet, but boy does he ever have some next week.
- WWF announced on TV that the winner of the Royal Rumble match will face the WWF champion at Wrestlemania (first time this ever became a thing, for those keeping track). Dave thinks that makes Yokozuna the favorite to win, since Bret will probably still be champion at that time. He also thinks that's a stinker of a main event and they better have a big co-main event ready if they want anyone to watch the show. Even though everyone says Hogan isn't coming back, Dave doesn't buy it and is sure Hogan will be at WM9.
- Steve Austin had a meeting with Bill Watts after refusing to do a job to Erik Watts at a show. Apparently things have been smoothed over and Austin's not in trouble.
- Arn Anderson will be staying with WCW, although probably with a substantial paycut.
- Paul E. Dangerously wasn't flown in to the latest tapings, despite Bill Apter being there to present awards (Dangerously won manager of the year). WCW is also getting rid of Dangerously's monthly column in WCW magazine. The writing is probably on the wall for him in the company, which is no surprise given his and Bill Watts' not-so-great relationship.
- Rick Rude was jumped in the parking lot by a fan who was reportedly much bigger than he was. Regardless, Rude dropped the guy with one punch. Apparently the fan came back later for more and "wound up with his face introduced to the hood of several different cars." TL;DR - don't fuck with Rick Rude.