June 07, 1993
- Vince McMahon resigned as President of WWF recently in a story that was kept hush-hush until now. McMahon was previously both President and CEO, however, he transfered the role of President over to his wife Linda back in May. Aside from speculation that this is somehow tied to the ongoing federal investigation, little else is known. There was a production meeting recently where Vince told employees that Linda was now in charge of the company and he acknowledged the investigation, but that's it. There doesn't seem to be any significant change in the company so far. The company sent a press release about it to the New York Times that was basically a fluff piece about Linda McMahon and her credentials and mentioned their children Shane and Stephanie.
- The buyrate for last week's Slamboree is between 0.3 and 0.4, making it the lowest buyrate for any PPV from either WWF or WCW in history.
- WCW has announced that they will be cutting back from 300 house shows per year down to 200 and they will be almost exclusively in the southeastern United States. Expect more major changes within the coming months, as WCW looks to figure out how to stop bleeding money.
- It's the halfway mark of the year, so once again, Dave gives his opinions on the bests of 1993 so far. These aren't the annual Observer awards, these are just his personal opinions:
- AAA has reportedly lost interest in trying to book Ultimate Warrior, but they are planning to bring Jake Roberts back in soon. Also, expect AAA to raid some more of EMLL and UWA's talent in the next couple of months.
- AAA's TripleMania event aired on TV throughout Mexico last week and it destroyed all the arena shows throughout the country. Everyone stayed home to watch AAA's big event rather than attend any live shows. This has given the union leader plenty of ammo for his argument that televised wrestling will destroy the house show business (much as it has in the United States, they claim) and will lead to less live shows and more wrestlers out of work. This was the crux of the big labor dispute that happened awhile back that was eventually settled, but bad blood remains and the union is still trying to get AAA taken off television.
- Despite the fact that AAA seems to be actively trying to put them out of business, there has been legitimate talk of running a joint show featuring all three groups (AAA, EMLL, and UWA) sometime soon though as of press time, UWA has already backed out of the plan. EMLL appears to still be interested though.
- Several publications in Japan have reported that Jumbo Tsuruta is retiring. Tsuruta has been out of action since last year after being diagnosed with Hepatitis B and suffering some kidney issues from it. However, Tsuruta is still saying he's planning a comeback.
- Dan Spivey was injured in a tag match in Japan and flew home 2 days later. No word on what the injury is but it's reportedly serious enough that he might miss a few months.
- In USWA, Brian Christopher cut a promo insulting Miss Texas (Jacqueline), calling her Miss Third & Vance (the intersection in Memphis where prostitutes hang out, apparently. I've never seen any there, but then again, I rarely drive through that area, so who knows) and then made a racist remark, saying that where he comes from, they "own people like you." Stay classy, Brian.
- In SMW, Tammy Sytch has been doing an angle where she approaches different wrestlers, offering to manage them and they keep turning her down. In the latest instance, she tried to get the Rock N Roll Express, but they kept doing the "We're not worthy" bit from Wayne's World. Then she told them rock & roll was out of date and she wanted to turn them into a rap tag team (holy shit, that would have been comedic gold).
- In GWF, there was some controversy over a new management decision. It's common for the wrestlers to go to the merch table after the shows and take Polaroid pictures with the fans for $5 a pop. Often times, they make more money on the Polaroids than they do from working the actual show. Well, GWF informed wrestlers that they would start handling that (a GWF employee, using a GWF-owned camera would take the photos) and GWF would get the money, which obviously pissed off a lot of guys. The hottest angle in the company right now is between Chris Adams and his wife Toni Adams, who are in the middle of a divorce angle. In response to the photo debacle, Chris Adams told the promoter that he and Toni would march out to the ring in front of the whole crowd and tell everyone that they had made up, which would kill the company's main storyline, if they didn't reverse the policy. Cooler heads prevailed and they are scheduled to have a meeting to work out a compromise, but no word yet.
- A couple of guys do a farmer tag team gimmick in GWF. One of them brought a pig to the ring and the pig ended up shitting in the middle of the ring.
- Marvel Comics is negotiating to put together a Road Warrior Hawk comic book.
- ECW has a major show scheduled for September and are trying to work out a deal to bring in SMW wrestlers as well.
- Sandy Barr's USA Wrestling was evicted from the Portland Sports Arena because Barr failed to pay his $500 a month rent to Don Owen. The Arena has already been sold to a church group, however, they can't move in until February and the building is still Owen's until then.
- Angelo Poffo, father of Randy Savage, is now working in personnel management for a roller derby company.
- Tom Cole, the WWF ringboy who accused people in the company of sexually harassing and molesting him, then later got a $55,000 settlement and went back to work for them last year, has now filed a $1.6 million dollar lawsuit against WWF, Pat Patterson, Mel Phillips, and Terry Garvin this week. Part of Cole's initial settlement to return to WWF was that they would give him a tryout as a ring announcer and that they would never ask him to retract his initial statements. Cole is saying that they violated that agreement by never giving him his tryout and that they asked him repeatedly to go public and say that the sexual abuse never happened. He also claims WWF basically locked him in a room and wouldn't let him out until he signed an affidavit claiming that his brother was working with Phil Mushnick to tarnish WWF's name. He says he didn't want to sign it and claims he was falsely imprisoned in the room and not let out until he finally did sign.
- Hulk Hogan's new movie Mr. Nanny is scheduled to be released nationwide next week. It was already released in England and did well there, staying in the top 10 for six weeks.
- Beau Beverly is out with a back injury. No word on why Typhoon was pulled from bookings. Scott Steiner is working with an ankle injury. And The Nasty Boys have contacted indie promoters and given the impression that they are done with WWF (indeed, they never came back to WWF again).
- Mike Shaw has been given a new character, called Sebastian Booger, which is said to be a gargoyle gimmick (ha! Well, not exactly...)
- Adam Bomb (Bryan Clark) was given yellow contacts so he'll have weird looking eyes on TV.
- Dave wishes a happy belated birthday to u/Marcin23, but not really.
- Sean Waltman seems to be getting a new name every week. This past week, they were calling him The 1-2-3 Kid but that probably won't stick, says Dave.
- Jesse Ventura was released from the hospital after suffering blood clots in his legs, but still isn't 100% yet so Larry Zbyszko is handling commentary duties for now.
- Sting, Davey Boy Smith, Sid Vicious, and Big Van Vader were in Tampa on the beach a few weeks back, filming an $80,000 mini-movie for the upcoming Beach Blast PPV but that's all Dave knows at the moment, he hasn't seen it yet. Boy, did they ever. I couldn't find the video of the movie on its own, all I could find was the 30 minute pre-show. The mini-movie is from about 2:55 through 11:50 and it is TREMENDOUS.
- Shane Douglas is gone from WCW, although details are sketchy why at the moment. Chris Walker and Robbie V (Rob Van Dam) are also gone, "although I doubt many even realized they were here in the first place," Dave adds. Poor RVD.
- Indie wrestler Lestat The Vampire (Gangrel!) got a tryout at WCW and impressed enough to get a $300 a week six-month contract.
- When Cactus Jack returns, he will likely come back as a heel because for now, the plan is he will have an amnesia gimmick and part of that will be forgetting that he turned face. (Something like that...)
- The highlight of the latest TV taping was the Hollywood Blonds mocking Ric Flair and Arn Anderson with a parody segment called A Flair For The Old (this is indeed pretty great).
- In the Letters section, Dutch Mantell writes in to plug his Ring of Dreams Fantasy Wrestling Camp, where people can come in, get a little three day training and then come up with your own gimmick, ring name, and entrance music and they will do a taping where you can work a match. The match will even have commentary by Lance Russell and Dutch himself. All professional produced and edited on tape and given to you. Not to be confused with a wrestling school, he says.
- Someone else writes in and says Ric Flair sucks and is overrated and also says Dave should quit covering Lucha Libre because nobody likes that either and "if we want to see clowns wrestle, we'll watch WWF." I'm sure that guy's a lot of fun at parties.