January 03, 1994
- Waddup err'body! Time to dive into 1994! As always, this will be posted each day, Mon-Fri, unless real life gets in the way. Let's get started...
- In what Dave calls easily the best build-up for a single match in WCW's 5-year history, Ric Flair defeated Vader at Starrcade to win his 11th world title (or 10th or 12th, depending on what version of wrestling history you choose to accept or ignore). The original plan of Vader losing the title to Sid Vicious was scrapped after the stabbing incident a couple months ago. The arena was packed, with less papering than any recent WCW shows and the gate was the highest they've had in awhile, all of which can be attributed to Flair's local celebrity in Charlotte and all the local promotion he did. In typical WCW fashion, the week before the show, they sent out promo material for February's upcoming SuperBrawl PPV that advertised Flair defending the title, which obviously gave away the result for Starrcade. The New York Post even covered it, telling people about the snafu and saying to bet on Flair at Starrcade if they wanted to make some money. But leading up to the show, Flair gave some of the best promos of his career and WCW made it feel like an extra-special show. And the match itself was fantastic as well. From build up through the final post-match interview, Dave thinks this was pretty much the defining moment of Ric Flair's career. Oh, and the rest of Starrcade was completely forgettable.
- From here, Dave does a loooong (9-page) career rundown of Ric Flair. Lists all his accomplishments, recaps his career, etc. It's basically his Wikipedia page if that had been a thing in 1994. The most interesting part to me, which I actually didn't know, but maybe some of you did: Flair almost jumped ship to WWF in 1988, around the same time Arn and Tully went. Around this time, Crockett was negotiating to sell his company to Turner Broadcasting, but Turner had made it clear that the deal hinged on Flair coming along. So if Flair had ended up going to WWF at that time, Turner would have pulled out of the deal and Crockett likely would have gone out of business (since there were no other potential buyers at the time). Which means there never would have been a WCW and Vince would have had a monopoly on US wrestling back in 1989 instead of 2001 (I mean, AWA was still breathing until 1991, but....yanno).
- Canek won the UWA title from Vampiro Casanova in Mexico, and it's expected that Vampiro will be disappearing from wrestling for awhile, to attempt a music career, although word is that his first two concerts recently didn't draw at all. This is believed to be Canek's 11th reign (although other sources list it as his 14th) and either way, puts him up there with or ahead of Ric Flair for most nationally recognized world titles.
- Possible bad omen for Japan going into 1994. Usually during Christmas week is one of the bigger weeks of the year for business, with almost all the promotions having no problem selling out their final shows of the year. But this time, there were a lot of shows that did disappointing numbers. Most notably, New Japan only drew 1,360 to Korakuen Hall, which is only the second time in 5 years that they've failed to sell out the venue.
- In Michinoku Pro Wrestling, Dave offhandedly mentions that a rookie named Jinsei Shinzaki is getting great praise "doing an Undertaker-type knockoff role." Less than a year later, that rookie would be in WWF under the name Hakushi and he has been the president of Michinoku Pro since 2003.
- ECW drew their second largest crowd ever on Dec. 26th in Philadelphia, in the 1,200 range. Dave doesn't have full details, one of the matches features two guys hung in cages above the ring and one of the cages was supposed to explode (some FMW-type shit). According to reports Dave has heard, only a couple of flares went off while they played the sound of an explosion over the PA speakers. Fans were said to be furious and chanting for a refund. Dave notes that he only has sketchy reports, and I can't find video of it, but the idea of them just shooting off a couple of flares while playing boom-boom sounds over the speakers is absolutely hilarious to me. It was called a Body Count match between Pat Tanaka and Rocco Rock at Holiday Hell 93 and apparently never aired because it was so bad. Somewhere in their vault, WWE likely has a copy of this. Here's Joey Styles talking about it.
- Terry Funk and Sting both have recurring roles in Hulk Hogan's upcoming Thunder In Paradise show.
- AAA president Antonio Pena is headed to Japan this week to try and negotiate working deals for AAA with both New Japan and FMW. Dave thinks it would be a major feather in their cap if they can get a deal with New Japan but FMW is the more realistic possibility. He's also meeting with all the Japanese magazines in order to try to get them to cover some AAA stars so that they'll mean more when they come work in Japan.
- A new WWF wrestler named Kwang The Ninja was introduced in a short vignette on TV last week. Dave isn't sure, but he thinks it might be Tazmaniac (Tazz) under the mask. (Nope! It was actually the LEGEND Savio Vega.)
- A Current Affair did a segment on the McMahon indictments (I can't find video of this one, anyone?).
- Madusa debuted at the latest TV tapings as Alundra Blayze "pretty much doing an American Gladiators woman knock-off" instead of flaunting T&A which Dave seemed to expect. The match was treated as a serious contest, which was good, but the crowd seemed to want the T&A they weren't getting. Dave says it's going to take time to reprogram the audience and says the plan is for the women's division to get a serious push, headed by Blayze. (There's a 16-year-old girl who sometimes hangs out backstage and some say she started this women's revolution...). Anyway, as best I can tell, the "tournament" to crown a new champion never actually happened, looks like it was one of those phantom tournaments like Pat Patterson being the first IC champion. This appears to be Blayze's first match in WWF:
- Barry Windham was mentioned prominently on WCW TV this week, so Dave thinks he might be returning to the company, but hasn't heard anything for sure yet.
- WCW drew 3,000 fans to a Christmas-day show in Denver, which is one of the biggest house shows they've had this year, thanks to hometown hero 2 Cold Scorpio doing heavy promotion. And in typical WCW fashion, they proceeded to completely tank the whole show. The Nasty Boys no-showed, Flair/Rude only went 9 minutes (while all the lower-card matches before it had gone 15 or so) and then to cap it all off, Sting/Vader only went 45 seconds, which infuriated the crowd. After the match, Flair came out and he, Sting, and Vader all started brawling. During the brawl, they tumbled over the top rope. Then, an advertised battle royal started and it was announced that, since they had gone over the top rope (BEFORE THE BATTLE ROYAL EVEN STARTED!) those 3 were eliminated. So then the battle royal started and some of the wrestlers hadn't even shown up. As late as 5 or 7 minutes into the match, more guys were wandering out from the dressing room to enter the battle royal that was already in progress. It came down to the final 2: Rick Rude and hometown hero, 2 Cold Scorpio. This is WCW, so you can already figure what happened next. Yes. Rick Rude tossed Scorpio to win. Dave seems baffled that this company could manage to draw such a big crowd and still manage to kill the town within a few hours.
- WCW will be announcing a new on-screen commissioner soon. Dave says expect it to be Nick Bockwinkel (it was).
- One final note from Dave to end the issue: "The WCW flashing high-tech interviews in the new Events Center segments are annoying rather than effective."