Wrestling Observer Rewinder

November 15, 1993

It's been 2 weeks since the Arn Anderson/Sid Vicious stabbing incident and WCW has yet to comment on the matter or take any action, though it's believed by many within the company that Vicious will likely be fired because many see him as the instigator of the fight. Sid denies that, claiming Arn threw a beer mug at his head earlier at the bar and according to Sid, he spoke with WCW president Bill Shaw and is under the impression that Shaw believes he didn't start it. Assuming either of them remain with the company, they're both still too injured (especially Arn) to appear at the next WCW TV tapings, during which 4 months of TV will be taped. The TV shows that aired this week weren't edited, so both Sid and Arn were on the show. Dave says it was eerie to hear Sid refer to himself in an interview on the show as "Psycho Sid."
WCW's refusing to return phone calls or answer questions regarding their steroid policy, which Dave says speaks volumes. It is believed that many of the wrestlers who took the most recent drug test failed it and were required to attend a one-day seminar about the evils of steroids. But yet again, no one has been suspended. Some WCW wrestlers say they believe the company is serious about getting the average lower card guys off the juice, but there seems to be a different set of rules when it comes to the guys higher up the card.
Update on the death of EMLL star Oro who died in the ring recently. The cause of death was listed as cerebral hemorrhaging caused by a brain aneurysm. His opponent in the match said he initially noticed something was wrong when he gave Oro a dropkick and noticed his eyes roll back in his head. But Oro stood up and so the opponent assumed he was just selling and chopped him. When Oro went down again, he never got back up and was dead before they even got him in the ambulance. All three promotions in Mexico (EMLL, AAA, and UWA) held ceremonies in honor of Oro.
Keiji Muto and Hiroshi Hase won New Japan's annual tag team tournament, which was marred with problems. Many injuries and cancellations forced constant re-booking and changes, most of the shows didn't sell out, and overall, it was a disappointment.
After the last match of the tournament, Antonio Inoki got in the ring to lead the crowd in a chant, and even with all his current political scandals, the crowd worshiped him. Inoki announced he would be facing Genichiro Tenryu at the Jan. 4th show. He also announced that he's trying to put together a match against George Foreman in March, but Dave says don't expect that to happen because Inoki has been trying to make that match happen for years and Foreman has never shown any interest.
Dave lists all the upcoming big events in the next week or two. This Ultimate Fighting Championship company has a PPV this week, featuring Japanese shootfighting wrestler Ken Shamrock. ECW has a big show in Philly this weekend (the first November To Remember), SMW has their Thanksgiving Thunder show, WCW has the Battle Bowl PPV, and WWF has Survivor Series. It'll be interesting to see how all these shows do, so close together. Especially the WWF and WCW PPVs, which will air 4 days apart. If WCW manages to keep the buyrate steady compared to previous events, it will establish the concept of monthly PPVs as a success.
Pinkie George, one of the founders and early presidents of the NWA way back in 1948, passed away at age 89. Fun bonus fact, Pinkie also founded a basketball team in 1948, called the Waterloo Hawks. The team soon folded but from its ashes rose a new team called the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, who chose to keep the "Hawks" name and after a bunch of other bouncing around, they eventually became current NBA team the Atlanta Hawks.
Sabu, "who seems to have surpassed Cactus Jack as the biggest risk-taker in the U.S. right now", stole the show at 2 indie shows this weekend. Once in a match against Rob Van Dam and the next night in a match against Terry Funk. Dave gives the first match 4.5 stars but he hasn't seen the second match, but has heard great things. I can't find the RVD match, but here's a potato-quality version of the Sabu/Funk match, which is mostly just a wild brawl all over a half-full high school gym.
On the latest ECW TV show that aired this week, the show opened with announcer Joey Styles pretending to be caught off-guard that the show had started and he was shown reading the Newsday story with the giant headline "Steroids: WWF Boss may be pinned" visible on the camera. "That television show is definitely different," Dave muses.
El Hijo del Santo, the son of legendary luchador El Santo, is portraying his father in a movie. The film opened this week in Mexico and got good reviews, with critics being shocked that a wrestling movie could be that good. The original El Santo starred in many movies during his time, but they were all campy B-movies mostly, nothing that ever actually good real, positive critical reviews. Anyway, now that he's starring in a successful movie, AAA is giving Santo a major push. (I can't find the movie or even the trailer online for free anywhere but here's the poster).
Santo: The Legend of the Man in the Silver Mask movie poster
From a business standpoint, WCW's recent European tour has to be considered a disappointment. (From a stabbing standpoint, however, it went great!). There were other altercations during the tour as well. Bill Dundee reportedly had his eyebrows shaved as a rib and Brian Knobbs almost got into a fight with referee Nick Patrick on the bus the first night they were there.
Gene Okerlund's debut aired on TV this week and WCW made a huge deal of it. They plugged it all over TV and Larry King even filmed a promo hyping up Okerlund's debut. "After all these years they finally get some cooperation from TBS to get a CNN celebrity on their wrestling show and they waste it by having him plug someone who can't draw them any money."
On the WCW Hotline, Missy Hyatt reported that Fifi (Ric Flair's French maid manager) is gone. Dave notes that Hyatt also regularly references her real life relationship with Road Warrior Hawk on the hotline, which is funny because she manages the Nasty Boys on TV.
Speaking of Okerlund and the WCW hotline, he was on there this week and tore into WWF. Okerlund says he left over differences with Vince McMahon and said for the past 3 years, he and Vince were barely on speaking terms. He then criticized several of WWF's recent hirings, naming Jim Ross, Jim Cornette, and Todd Pettingill by name, among others. Okerlund then "fell into fiction" when he started saying the show he hosted (All-American Wrestling) had no budget but excellent ratings and that Vince used all the money he should have spent on All-American to launch Monday Night Raw, which Gene says has struggled in the ratings (Raw has actually been a huge ratings success for the company.)
Mr. Perfect has been pulled from the road for the foreseeable future. Word is he asked for time off to take care of family problems. Dave doesn't seem to know any more than that at the moment.
Dave has been getting reports that Bob Backlund vs. Diesel matches on house shows are some of the worst matches anyone has ever seen, but that Diesel (the heel) is getting cheered in many cities.
Matt Osborne, the original Doink, won't be returning. Dave doesn't know who is playing the Doink role now but thinks it might be Phil Apollo.
Bret Hart is in the midst of renegotiating his contract.
Bam Bam Bigelow is off the road right now because his wife is about to give birth.
Dave says "Greg Valentine will be returning (to WWF) in late November which pretty well assures Madusa accepting her offer as well." WTF? Was Madusa dating Valentine in 1993 or something?
On the latest Raw episode, they announced that fans could pick Quebeccer Pierre's opponent for the main event of Raw next week by voting on a 900 number. The choices were 123-Kid, Marty Jannetty, Doink, or Lex Luger. Then they spent the entire hour trying to get fans to vote for Luger, which Dave says "sets a new standard for sleazy, even by the standards of a sleazy industry."
A woman writes in about Bret Hart's recent comments about everyone in WCW being on steroids. She says it's obvious Bret has been on steroids during his WWF career and she calls out Dave for not saying so. "If it was Hogan who made those comments, I'm sure you would have pointed it out," she says and basically calls Dave biased and ends the letter by telling him to "Grow up." Ah, never change, wrestling fans.
Another guy writes in and says he was interviewing Glenn Danzig for a radio station and they got to talking about wrestling. Danzig told the guy that his occasional producer Rick Rubin owned Smoky Mountain Wrestling. The fan is incredulous at this and writes in to Dave to get the truth. And Dave clears it up that yes, in fact, legendary music producer Rick Rubin is the majority financial backer behind SMW. Fun little trivia there. Rick Rubin apparently paved the way for rock stars to dump money into dying promotions.