August 23, 1993
- Dave traveled to the south to attend some SMW shows this last week and he opens the issue with a long rambling opinion piece about the company. After existing for only 18 months, Smoky Mountain Wrestling has carved itself out a niche as one of only 4 legitimate full-time wrestling promotions still operating in the United States (the others being WWF, the clear #1 but has a huge cloud hovering over them with a Justice Dept. investigation. WCW, which is the laughingstock of the industry and only exists because Ted Turner hasn't pulled the plug yet. And USWA, the lone survivor of the days of the territories, still limping along). But SMW is different. From top to bottom on every show, you almost never see a bad match. The company is decidedly old fashioned and caters to the many fans of a bygone era that still exist. They still barely break even most shows and every day is a fight to stay in existence, but the company seems to thrive on that. Dave says their house shows are on par or better than pretty much anything else being done by any other promotion in America right now.
- From here, Dave essentially talks about all the top stars on the roster, who they are, how good they are, etc. Some notable thoughts: Brian Armstrong (Road Dogg) being green and not having the look of a star. Tracy Smothers possibly being the most improved wrestler in the world this year. Chris Candido has all the potential to be a superstar but will likely be held back by his short height. And finally, Tammy Sytch "is going to be a major star in this business."
- WWF is riding a wave of momentum right now, with record-high ratings for Monday Night Raw and drawing a bigger-than-usual crowds at several house shows. This can be credited to the company cutting back to one house show per night and having all of their top stars on one show instead of having them split between A and B shows. Whether the increased houses from one show per night can recoup the money lost by eliminating the B-shows remains to be seen.
- The first Yokozuna/Lex Luger match will take place this week in Memphis at a USWA show. It's being used as a test-run to see how the two work together before their big match at Summerslam the week after. (I was SO into this Lex/Yoko feud at the time and I had no idea they had a match right here in my city before Summerslam! Fuck!)
- WCW's latest Clash of the Champions took place last week and the most notable thing that happened was what Dave calls "the most unintentionally funny and embarrassing moment in recent wrestling history" when Fred Ottman, debuting as The Shockmaster, tripped and fell through a wall during his debut.
- Road Warrior Hawk ended up striking a last minute deal with WCW after all and was revealed as Dustin Rhodes' mystery partner. More surprisingly, Road Warrior Animal showed up as well (though he didn't wrestle because he's "hurt" and still collecting a big insurance payout). This surprised a lot of people because there's been rumored to be significant heat between Hawk and Animal. In fact, WWN (the new promotion in Texas that Paul Heyman is involved in) had brought Hawk in to be their top singles star and at one point, they had tried to get Animal to come in as well, but Animal no-showed when he found out Hawk would be there. But that seems to have been squashed, and both men showed up to the WCW show. Animal's insurance policy stops paying out in February, and at that time, they are expected to reunite as a team in WCW, which would be a huge blow to WWN since they planned to build the company around Hawk as their top star.
- AAA is holding a show in California on Aug. 28th and it looks likely to break records. Advance ticket sales have already made more money than any WCW show this year. The largest Lucha show ever was last year in L.A. which made $119,000 and holds the record for the largest gate every for an indie show in the U.S. This show could very well break that record.
- Speaking of AAA, Eddie Guerrero has been doing a pro-USA gimmick, trying to get Mexican crowds to chant "USA! USA!" which has made him a heel. Classic Eddie.
- At a show in MA, Jerry Lawler and Vince McMahon filmed an interview segment in front of WWF fans which acknowledged the USWA vs. WWF feud that's been simmering on USWA TV, which built to Vince saying he'll be at ringside for an upcoming Lawler match in Memphis. This won't air on WWF TV, but was filmed for USWA TV.
- Eddie Gilbert's booking philosophy in ECW seems to be about catering to the hardcore crowd (smarks, if you will) because that's the audience they've been drawing and it seems to be working. The W*ING wrestlers who came in from Japan were the most over wrestlers on the show, with all the fans seeming to know who they are, the Headhunters in particular being the most over act on the show.
- Former AWA TV producer Mike Shields has weeks of television tapings booked with the Aladdin Hotel in Vegas for a new promotion he's apparently starting. The only names Dave has heard involved are Papa Shango, Barry Orton, and Lanny Poffo. But apparently, The Aladdin Hotel management are under the impression that Hulk Hogan is involved in this new promotion somehow, but he's most certainly not, and word is Hogan isn't planning to get involved with wrestling again for a long time, if ever again. He's focused on acting.
- Survivor Series will be headlined by an All-American team with Luger, The Steiners and someone else against a foreign menace team led by Yokozuna and Ludvig Borga.
- Undertaker missed 3 nights of TV tapings due to an illness.
- A jobber got thrown into the ringpost by Bastion Booger and "had his face practically explode" and was bleeding everywhere. This probably won't make television.
- The local newspaper in Wilton, CT published an article talking about WWF's upcoming event there, mentioning the scandals and talking about how the American vs. foreign menace storyline is played out. WWF responded by turning the show into a charity event and donating $8000 to local children's clubs. Kill em' with kindness.
- WWF is negotiating to get Jim Cornette on the Regis & Kathy Lee show the morning of Summerslam (from what I can tell, they ended up getting Yoko, Cornette and Mr. Fuji on the show, but I can't find any video of it).
- Vince and Linda McMahon were named to the Board of Directors for the 1995 Special Olympics.
- The upcoming WCW show at the 65,000 seat Alamo Dome is being billed locally as The Great American Bash. Hector Guerrero is being brought in to work the show and Hector and Sid Vicious filmed a promo against each other which involved some local politicians and got wide local media coverage. Sid Vicious made some heavy racial remarks about Hispanics in the promo to get heat (can't find video of this either).
- Expect Terry Taylor to be brought into WCW as the new Fourth Horseman. Taylor has more than enough ability for the role, but his credibility as a main eventer has been sot by both WWF and WCW for the last few years, Dave says.
- Someone writes in asking about the 1990 match where the Rockers won the tag team titles but then it was ignored. Dave recounts the story about how Neidhart was going to be fired so they booked a title change. During the match, one of the ropes broke. Later on, NBC told WWF that the SNME show was only going to be 60 minutes long instead of 90 minutes. So WWF had to edit the footage and cut some stuff. Around the same time, they had decided not to fire Neidhart after all. So the decision was made to just cut the tag title match out of the show and ignore it like it never happened. The next time they were in town, to explain it to the local fans who saw it happen, an announcement was made that Jack Tunney had later ruled the match a no-contest because the rope broke and so the Rockers didn't win the match. Kind of a famous story nowadays, I've even seen it told on WWE DVDs. But I never knew that the reason for the match was to get the title off Jim Neidhart so they could fire him. WWE seems to leave that part out of the story these days.
- Another guy writes in saying that he stumbled across ECW on his local TV station (airing at the same time as WCW) and says he was blown away by how fresh and exciting the ECW product was and said if both shows continue to air at the same time, WCW will have one less viewer.