September 06, 1993
- Most American fans have never even heard of AAA, but in the span of one weekend, they became a serious threat to become the #1 promotion in terms of attendance in California and the 2nd most successful house show promotion in America. Over the weekend, AAA held 3 shows in California and drew $384,000. The biggest show, at the LA Sports Arena, is one of the top 5 live shows Dave has ever seen in his 23 years of attending wrestling. The show drew nearly 17,000 people, the 2nd largest crowd in America this year. It's also the 3rd largest gate ($243,000) ever in California (behind Wrestlemanias 2 & 7) and only the 2nd legitimate arena sellout this year (Rumble 92 being the other one) and is officially the largest crowd for wrestling in California since a Freddie Blassie/John Tolos match in 1971. Furthermore, an estimated 7,000 people were turned away at the door because the arena was sold out, so in a bigger venue, it's likely the show could have drawn 25,000 or more. All in all, for a promotion most Americans have never heard of, this show shattered records and changed the landscape of wrestling in America for 1993.
- Meanwhile, WWF's Summerslam PPV was a success in that it drew around 19,000 people, but it still wasn't a sellout. It should still be good for the largest crowd of the year though. More on that in a bit.
- Even WCW had a good weekend, doing the largest rating they've done in years on WCW Saturday Night, due to a Ric Flair/Sting NWA title match that went 40 minutes. The rating equaled the highest rating WWF Raw has gotten so far this year and is most watched wrestling match on cable TV in at least 2-3 years.
- Dave has no update on the condition of Terry Gordy, who passed out on a plane to Japan last week, other than it doesn't seem that serious at this point. Gordy is expected to return to the ring in November for the AJPW tag tournament, but that's all Dave knows. (Turned out it was far more serious than that and Gordy didn't really return to wrestling for almost a year).
- Summerslam is in the books and Dave wasn't impressed. As for the positives, Lawler's antics with the Hart family stole the show and Steiners vs. Heavenly Bodies was as good as can be expected. But this was the 7th out of the last 8 PPV main events to end in a screwy finish, which is simply unacceptable. Dave says he understands why they didn't change the title. The biggest money match they have for WM10 is Yoko vs. Luger, but it won't work if Yoko is the challenger. But it still came off as a weak finish. WWF also made the mistake of repeatedly promising an all-time classic match between Shawn Michaels and Mr. Perfect, but they simply couldn't live up to the expectations and only had a decent match because Hennig simply isn't as good as he used to be. Dave also says that Ludvig Borga is terrible, and follows that by saying Giant Gonzales makes Ludvig Borga look like Kenta Kobashi.
- Back to the overwhelming success of the AAA shows in California again, Dave starts trying to break it down for American audiences and compares them to WWF and WCW. Konnan is their Lex Luger, Perro Aguayo is Randy Savage, Rey Misterio Jr. is 123 Kid, Love Machine & Eddie Guerrero are the Hollywood Blonds, etc. He explains the rules of trios matches. In America, while the faces usually win to send the fans home happy, in Mexico, the heels often win in order to leave the fans wanting to see the faces get revenge. So on and so forth, then he reviews the shows. The main event was a trios match with Konnan, Jake Roberts and Cien Caras and the match was more of an angle with a bunch of other wrestlers (Eddie Guerrero, DDP, Art Barr, Perro Agauyo, etc.) all brawling after the match that had so much heat that the crowd nearly rioted. Dave says he hasn't seen anything like it since the 70s. There were so many drinks and other things thrown in the ring that security gave up trying to stop it.
- In WCW, Shock Master will remove his mask and be repackaged as a character named Uncle Fred, doing a friendly klutz role. This is why WCW is continuing to show his botched debut on TV. Not necessarily a bad idea, says Dave, considering the circumstances. Lord knows he was never going to get over as a monster bad ass after that debacle.
- New Japan held a fancy wrestling/dinner/fashion show at the Tokyo Prince Hotel. The tickets were the most expensive single tickets in wrestling history (around $300 each). The Wall Street Journal in America actually did a condescending write-up on the event. But they sold it out and made $210,000 that night so, yanno, suck it WSJ.
- Mitsuhiro Matsunaga, W*ING's biggest star, has jumped ship to FMW.
- In USWA last week, they did an angle where Lawler vowed to refund the crowd's money if he didn't beat the crooked referee he was facing. Of course, Lawler won. This week, they filmed another angle where a heel Vince McMahon challenged Lawler to make the same money-back guarantee against a real wrestler: Bret Hart. So Lawler accepted and had a cage match with Bret, which saw Lawler pin him clean.
- The Steiners will be defending the WWF tag team titles against the Heavenly Bodies at a few upcoming SMW shows next month.
- SMW has applied for NWA membership. Meanwhile, the NWA wants Ric Flair or Rick Rude (whoever comes out as champion after the upcoming WCW PPV) to drop the NWA title to a non-WCW wrestler at a non-WCW event with one of the other NWA promotions. WCW, of course, is continuing to pretty much just ignore that the NWA exists.
- The most talked about newcomer in GWF is a 6-5, 320 pound guy named Moadib, whose real name is Tony Norris. He's extremely green, but those who see him think he has awesome potential due to his size. Later known to WWF fans of course as Ahmed Johnson.
- AAA sources claim that Hulk Hogan contacted them about wanting to work with the promotion, but his asking price was too high so AAA wasn't interested. They also knew that bringing in Hogan also meant they'd have to bring in Brutus Beefcake and Jimmy Hart and they had no interest in either of them either.
- ECW is planning to start up a wrestling school soon (I wonder if this was the House of Hardcore maybe? Or maybe that came later...). Also, current ECW champion Tito Santana is unavailable for future bookings so expect him to be stripped of the title soon and Shane Douglas will become the new champion.
- In Oregon, promoter Sandy Barr is continuing to thumb his nose at the state athletic commission, running free shows but charging high prices for parking as an excuse to get around the fact that he's not allowed to run shows because his license is suspended.
- At the latest WWF tapings after Summerslam, the only real angles taped seemed to be the face turns of Giant Gonzales (who turned on his manager Harvey Wippleman) and Doink turning face and starting a possible feud against Bam Bam Bigelow.
- Jim Ross's new radio show starts soon, although as of a week ago, only 6 stations around the country have picked it up. A memo was sent to WWF employees to call into the show in order to make sure the "right" types of questions were asked.
- Mr. Hughes was either fired or suspended this week (turns out it was fired) and has been removed from all upcoming shows. Dave doesn't know why.
- Jim Cornette and Yokozuna appeared on Regis & Kathy Lee the morning of Summerslam (I still can't find video). Cornette was told to be funny and not heelish, so he and Yokozuna ended up getting cheered by the studio audience.
- At the latest WCW tapings, the middle section in front of the cameras was blocked off again for models and men in suits as part of what Dave calls the company's "no black kids in front of camera" policy. Geez. Also, some kids were kicked out of the taping for chanting "Shock Master!" at the new klutzy Uncle Fred character. Man, was WCW awful or what?
- Sabu has been told that WCW is passing on him. Dave's response: "Let me get this right. Charlie Norris, Thunder & Lightning, Harlem Heat all passed their tryouts and Sabu failed his?"
- Gene Okerlund will be starting with WCW next week.
- Eric Bischoff has been promoted to Senior Vice President of WCW, in part due to the ratings success of the latest Clash of the Champions.