February 22, 1993
- Bill Watts resigned as VP of WCW this week. Ole Anderson is taking Watt's position and Eric Bischoff has been named Executive Producer of WCW television. After much of his power was taken away the week before, Watts' resignation didn't come as a surprise to most people. However, the timing is more than a little suspicious because word is at least 4 different media sources are working on a story regarding racist comments that Bill Watts made a year and a half ago in an interview. A copy of the interview was faxed to Turner executive and baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron by sportswriter Mark Madden, who asked Aaron for his comment on the interview. Aaron then took the fax to TBS president Terry McGuirk and the announcement of Watts' resignation was made the next morning. Those close to Watts are saying the decision to leave was his. Others are saying he was fired.
- Just a friendly little reminder of what Watts said in that 1991 interview:
- -- Bill Watts
- Hank Aaron was asked about the statements in the interview and called them horrible and despicable and compared Watts to Marge Schott, the president of the Cincinnati Reds, who got in lots of trouble recently for similar racist statements. He says that if they had known about the interview beforehand, Watts would have never been hired in the first place.
- Watts' resignation was met with celebration by both wrestlers and office employees since he was universally disliked by almost everyone, though there is concern about the replacements. Ole Anderson has never really had success in his previous roles booking the company and Eric Bischoff is unproven and there's questions about whether he's entirely qualified for the job he finds himself in now. This also seemingly puts an end to the WCW/SMW working agreement, since Jim Cornette worked exclusively with Bill Watts on that and Cornette has made no secret about his disdain for everyone else in the company.
- From here, Dave basically does an overall look at how business fared under the entire Bill Watts tenure compared to Jim Herd and Kip Frey who ran the company before him and it ain't pretty. TL;DR - everything is down significantly. House show attendance down 3%. Average gate down 27%. TV ratings down 19%. PPV buyrates down 41% and so on and so forth.
- Ric Flair's contract situation has been straightened out and he is officially back with WCW now and will debut at SuperBrawl. Speaking of that show, Ron Simmons shoulder injury is worse than thought and he likely won't be able to work the show.
- Big Van Vader signed one of the most lucrative contracts in wrestling history with the UWFI in Japan. The deal is for $200,000 to work 8 shows, plus he received a $50,000 signing bonus. NJPW is reportedly upset because they claim they created the Vader gimmick and own the rights to it and allowed him to use it in WCW. They are threatening legal action against Vader and UWFI (this becomes a bigger story in the coming months).
- Lots of lawsuits flying around this week: WWF is planning to sue Nailz this week for slander after Nailz claimed Vince McMahon sexually assaulted him. The Green Bay district attorney's office refused to prosecute the claim due to lack of evidence and most everyone in the business believes Nailz was lying. WWF has also filed a lawsuit against Geraldo Rivera, former wrestler David Schultz, former referee Rita Marie and several others who were involved in the Geraldo show episode that aired last year. On top of that, Ultimate Warrior is expected to file a lawsuit against the WWF (as mentioned last week) and Paul Heyman is reportedly planning to sue WCW for wrongful termination.
- The WWF/Geraldo lawsuit has gotten the most publicity, with WWF claiming Rivera and those involved in the episode attempted to extort Vince McMahon out of $5 million dollars in order to keep the rape claims against McMahon by Rita Marie from going public. Geraldo responded by saying, "It's a mark of honor to be sued by the WWF. I will body slam them in court." The gist of WWF's lawsuit is that Schultz and Marie worked together to put together the story and that they falsified recorded audio tapes of Rita Marie saying McMahon raped her (recorded in 1992, but they claimed were recorded in 1988) and used the tapes to try to extort WWF before going to Geraldo and that Geraldo provided lawyers and money to Rita Marie in exchange for her story on his show, despite knowing it was fabricated. They also claim that Vince McMahon and wife Linda have both suffered "severe emotional distress and/or other injuries including but not limited to mental anguish, anger, embarrassment, shame, humiliation, depression and loss of sleep" due to this story.
- Paul Heyman's lawsuit against WCW is reportedly for wrongful termination, professional disparagement, and ethnic discrimination. TL;DR - Bill Watts doesn't like Jews. Shocking, I know.
- Andre The Giant's body was finally cremated on Feb. 11th in Southern Pines, NC and a funeral service will be held at his ranch in Ellerbe, NC on Feb. 24th.
- Shawn Michaels is back to using the entrance music that Sherri sings, which Dave says is a relief to those of us who had to hear the version Shawn sings (of course, they eventually went back to the Shawn version, which lasted for the next 20 years). Since this post doesn't really have anything in the way of videos today, here's the original Sherri version.
- WATCH: Shawn Michaels theme song (sung by Sensational Sherri)
- AAA has signed a deal to run weekly shows at the El Toreo arena in Mexico, which is UWA's key arena. This is basically like if WCW signed a deal to run weekly shows at Madison Square Garden. AAA is just savage. Oh, while we're talking AAA, Dave raves about Rey Misterio Jr. again and basically says he does the most incredible moves he's ever seen.
- Sid Vicious continues to negotiate with WCW. Ole Anderson has been talking to him about coming in for quite awhile and with Ole now in charge of the company, the odds of it happening have increased.
- Raw was pre-empted last week for the Westminster Dog Show, which did a higher rating than wrestling has in that slot in many years (remember the days you'd turn on the TV on Monday night, only to find a dog show instead? Oh, how upset I would get...)