September 27, 1993
- For the first time in over a decade, a current champion has quit the WWF before dropping his belt. Shawn Michaels, considered by many to be the best worker in the country, quit the company last week. As of press time, the plan is to hold a 20-man battle royal at the next TV taping to crown a new champion. It's the first time since 1975 that a reigning champion quit without dropping the belt. Dave says something about Shawn being unhappy with the company which caused him to gain weight somehow being the problem, with Shawn being up to 240lbs with a noticeable gut. Anyway, both sides are still negotiating because WWF is refusing to give him a contract release so he can negotiate with other companies.
- Doink and the Steiners were both removed from upcoming shows. No word on why for Doink, but the Steiners are off TV because Scott Steiner is apparently suspended for some reason. The Steiners dropped the tag titles to the Quebecers. They should still be able to work their upcoming shows with SMW but otherwise will be off TV for 8 weeks and apparently the Steiners are making noise about wanting out entirely. If so, Dave is sure they'd be welcomed back in New Japan. Problems with the team and WWF had been rumored for weeks and Dave says it's not really a surprise to anyone, given their reputation of being hard to work with. The Steiners are making less money than they used to make in WCW (although still more than Watts would have paid them) and there's also the looming federal investigation which isn't helped by Scott walking around looking like the poster boy for steroids.
- 4 days before the Fall Brawl PPV, the NWA attempted to get a restraining order against WCW to keep them from advertising the Flair/Rude match as being for a heavyweight title match of any kind. Earlier this month, WCW apparently withdrew from the NWA, so the NWA refused to sanction an NWA title change. The two sides had been negotiating to allow Rude to win under the condition that he would drop it to someone else of the NWA's choosing at a later date but then WCW pulled out of negotiations and lawyered up. They're now claiming that when they purchased the NWA belt, they also purchased the right to use the name NWA. A judge agreed to allow the match to happen as a world title match, but WCW was forbidden to use the term NWA (which WCW has already stopped using anyway). The match happened and Rude is the new champion and in the eyes of most fans, he's now the NWA champion, even if they don't say the letters on TV. Dave is sure the NWA will eventually name a new champion but Dave isn't sure if they'll even be able to get the belt back (they didn't).
- Several NWA members were upset that newsletters (such as this one) reported that Hawk, Dibiase, and Terry Funk were the top 3 choices to be the next champion. As soon as those names were leaked, WCW started negotiating with them to potentially sign them, which would prevent the NWA from being able to use them. Hawk has agreed to work several upcoming WCW shows. Animal will be appearing with him but not wrestling. Dibiase and WCW also had negotiations but they didn't go anywhere because WCW didn't want to pay him what he wanted ($100,000+ for 100 dates) and was also told his first match in would be a 30-minute draw with Dustin Rhodes, which Dibiase balked at. Dave says there's not many guys wrestling in this country the caliber of all around performer that Dibiase is and if WCW won't spend the money to bring him in, then the rest of the roster doesn't stand a chance when contract renewals come up. Eh, Dibiase retired like, 2 months after this, so I'd say WCW dodged a bullet there.
- Speaking of Fall Brawl, Dave says it was the worst major show of the year, awful from top to bottom with a dead crowd and even Flair and Steamboat phoned it in on their matches. The best talent in the company (Pillman, Austin, Benoit, etc.) were left off the show. Among the criticisms are Paul Roma being way out of his depth as a member of the 4 Horsemen, the commentary, awful matches, dumb booking, etc.
- A sports management group conducted their bi-annual survey of most liked and disliked sports in America and once again, "WWF Wrestling" was the #1 most disliked. Vince McMahon responded by sending a letter to the organization asking not to be included in any future surveys, stating "the WWF is not a sport."
- Japanese quasi-shoot promotion UWFI will be airing their first PPV in America. Dave says that only the most dedicated tape traders and Observer readers have ever even heard of UWFI so it's going to be a hard sell in this country, even though they have Vader. The promoters are publicly hoping for a 1.0 to 1.5 buyrate, which would be the same as Summerslam and unless hell freezes over, that ain't happening. Even WCW PPVs only draw around 0.5 buyrates nowadays and UWFI doesn't stand a prayer of even touching that.
- The most talked about indie show in months took place in Tod Gordon's ECW this week. The ECW Arena has a capacity of 960, but they packed in over 1,110, the largest show in the company's short history and one of the wildest shows ever in the U.S. (Ultraclash 93). Many people told Dave it was the best show they'd ever seen live, with the main event of the Head Hunters vs. Crash The Terminator and Miguelito Perez stealing the show, including a spot where one of the Head Hunters was whipped into the wall and went right through it into the street. It also saw the debut of a heel tag team called Public Enemy. There was also a scaffold match between Dark Patriot and JT Smith that was said to be very good as far as scaffold matches go. Earlier in the show, Tod Gordon announced that ECW was joining the NWA. Near the end of the show, Eddie Gilbert came out and cut a promo, putting over the company and announcing he was leaving, which is true (see last issue). Dave mentions again that Paul Heyman is now booking for the company.
- Hulk Hogan and Antonio Inoki are both confirmed to be wrestling on the upcoming Jan. 4th NJPW show. Inoki vs. Genichiro Tenyru is the likely main event. No word yet on what Hogan will be doing.
- New Japan is indeed planning to appeal the judge's decision in their lawsuit against Vader and UWFI that they pretty much lost.
- In USWA, Vince McMahon made yet another appearance, this time with Jerry Lawler's USWA championship belt (which was recently won by Tatanka, also working heel). Dave says it was another excellent heel promo by Vince. Latest word is Vince will be appearing live at the Memphis show next week. Tatanka also cut a heel promo on TV this week.
- It looks like Sherri Martel is going to start working with SMW. They showed a taped promo of her talking about Tammy Sytch. Tammy responded that Sherri looked like a man in drag.
- Over in GWF, a heel named John Hawk had the tasteless line of the week, saying "The Freebirds are gone and all the Von Erichs are dead, so I'm taking over!" which is bad enough, but it was made even worse by the fact that Kerry Von Erich's two young daughters were in the building. Oh, and that John Hawk guy? Better known these days as John "Bradshaw" Layfield.
- ECW will also be running 2 big shows next week. They have announced 5 major matches for the shows, but haven't announced which of the two shows each match will take place on. The idea is to keep it a surprise so that fans buy tickets to both, but Dave has been hearing a lot of complaints from fans who aren't thrilled about that gimmick.
- Hulk Hogan has signed on to appear for something called Circus of the Stars. I can't find video but I looked it up and it appears to be some weird reality show/variety show TV thing where they brought in a bunch of celebrities and had magic tricks and circus acts and whatnot. Here's a link about it, with a picture of Hogan on the show.
- Luna Vachon's father "Butcher" Vachon is running for Canadian parliament as a 3rd party candidate and has no chance of winning, says Dave. But he does think it would be funny if he got Luna and Mad Dog Vachon to do campaign commercials for him.
- Diamond Dallas Page may be heading to Mexico full-time as part of 3-man group with Eddie Guerrero and Love Machine (Art Barr).
- Monday Night Raw did a 1.8 rating, by far the lowest in the history of the show so far, surprising since ratings have been good otherwise. Dave doesn't know if it's a fluke or not, but there's no obvious reason for the low rating.
- Sgt. Slaughter has been released from the company due to financial cutbacks. He had been working as a road agent.
- Lex Luger should be back in a couple of weeks from his back injury.
- WWF will tour Isreal, Portugal, Austria, and Germany in early-October.
- WWF sent a threatening letter to the new WWN promotion, about the usage of those initials. WTF WWF?
- The Quebeccers' manager Johnny Polo wore a Montreal Canadiens shirt on TV recently. A newspaper in Montreal wrote an article criticizing them for it, believing that they were trying to negatively portray the team. Jacques Rougeau is such a hardcore Canadiens fan that he called the newspaper to clarify the issue, saying that they play bad guys on TV and they were trying to rub it in the Americans' faces that their team had won the Stanley Cup because he's proud of their team and he meant no disrespect. He promised the paper they would never again use the Montreal Canadiens shirt in one of their matches again.
- Madusa is negotiating to start with WWF in November, to likely feud with Luna Vachon, but no deal has been reached yet.
- Survivor Series is expected to sell out because it will likely be the final wrestling event ever held at the Boston Garden, since the arena is being torn down soon (in actuality, they ended up doing shows there until 1995).
- Latest on WCW's steroid tests is that they are going by the "lowering levels" standard. In other words, the first test was a baseline and as long as wrestlers continue to have lower levels of steroids in their system on following tests, they won't be punished. WWF has used this same standard in the past. Several doctors have told Dave that the testing isn't sophisticated enough to accurately detect levels dropping, so this whole thing is just a bunch of bullshit.
- A 1994 Missy Hyatt calendar will be released later this year. You can google and find bits and pieces of it here and there but I can't seem to find all the pics in one place. Here's a commercials WCW aired for it.
- Ted Turner recently bought New Line Cinema, which is the movie company Hulk Hogan works for. So technically, Ted Turner is now Hogan's employer.
- Dusty Rhodes is still considered by most of the wrestlers as being the most influential in the company because he's still handling most of the booking, and many people believe Dustin Rhodes will end up becoming the unified champion whenever WCW ends up combining the WCW and NWA titles. However, in reality, Eric Bischoff currently has the ultimate decision making power and final say.