February 14, 1994
- For the first time ever, the Observer's top story is about Eastern Championship Wrestling. The small indie promotion from Philadelphia put on what many have called the best house show from any promotion this year, called The Night The Line Was Crossed. The show sold out the small ECW Arena (with extra sets of bleachers) and packed over 1,300 people in to see the triangle match between Terry Funk, Sabu, and Shane Douglas. The match went to a legit 1-hour draw in what has been called a great match. All 3 men (all technically heels) got a standing ovation after the match. Another widely praised match on the show was Public Enemy vs. The Bruise Brothers brawling all over the building. The Sheik, in his late 60s, also wrestled his first match in the U.S. in several years on the show.
- WCW's next batch of TV tapings is scheduled for this week and they will film 4 months of TV. The only thing Dave knows so far is that Sherri Martel will debut as a heel manager for someone. These tapings will show the new direction of WCW now that Dusty is no longer booking.
- The month of March has traditionally been the peak of business for U.S. house shows. But house show business here is so weak now that both WWF and WCW will be touring Europe for most of the month instead, and often head-to-head in the same cities on the same days or within a day or two of each other. Dave doesn't think it's a coincidence, since WWF is notorious for trying to cockblock WCW shows just because they can.
- AAA and UWA in Mexico have apparently agreed to work together, which comes as a major surprise to many. The story seems to stem from EMLL starting its own union a few weeks ago. This is all really complicated, so to try and sum it up as best I can: EMLL and UWA were working together to combat AAA. But after EMLL broke away to start their own union, which killed the relationship, UWA is struggling and basically need to work with someone to survive. So they came crawling to AAA and the agreement seems to be AAA wrestlers working UWA shows, with AAA getting a portion of the gate money each week. Dave basically says AAA has UWA bent over a barrel here since UWA didn't have a lot of leverage to negotiate with.
- The Royal Rumble 94 buyrate is up slightly from Survivor Series, but is still one of the lowest buyrates in WWF PPV history and looks to be about a 25% drop from the Rumble 93 buyrate. The noticeable increase in TV ratings for Monday Night Raw doesn't seem to be translating into PPV buys or house show attendance.
- Dave gives 5 stars to a Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue match in All Japan and calls it a match of the year candidate. However, the match happened in 1993 and aired on Japanese TV late in 1993 so it's actually not going to qualify for this year, but I guess Dave is just now seeing it 2 months later.
- New Japan is struggling a bit, with houses being down lately. Dave chalks it up to a lack of foreign draws, no charismatic Japanese heels, and the New Japan vs. WAR storyline having run its course. The company is relying on aging legends who are obviously past their prime and not having built up enough younger names to be seen as viable main eventers.
- PWFG, a shoot promotion in Japan, is advertising a show for later this month with the main event being Yuki Ishikawa vs. Glen Jacobs. The company presents itself as shoot fighting, but it's actually worked and still features some typical wrestling moves (the video below isn't that match, but it's him against another guy in the same promotion).
- There is a well-publicized murder trial happening in West Memphis, AR, and one of the alleged killers is a man named Jessie Misskelley Jr. and he's a big wrestling fan who hung out with aspiring wrestlers and idolized Jerry Lawler and the other USWA wrestlers. Several indie wrestlers claimed that Misskelley was out of town at an indie show on the night of the murders and thus, has an alibi (this, of course, is the famous West Memphis Three case).
- Chris Jericho and Lance Storm will debut for SMW sometime next month and will be using the team name The Thrillseekers.
- In ECW, they did an angle where Sandman was blinded by something thrown in his eyes and then accidentally punched his valet (and real-life wife) Peaches. In later tapings that will air after, Sandman started acting like a heel towards his wife, saying that's what happens when a woman puts herself in a man's place and "life's a bitch, then you marry one" and things like that. This is obviously meant to turn Sandman heel, but Dave says, given ECW's fanbase, it might just turn him into more of a babyface. Looked for video of any of this, but couldn't find it. But it looks like every episode of ECW TV from 1994 is on the WWE Network so I'm sure it's there somewhere. There's a quick shot of it in the ECW commercial up above.
- Miss Elizabeth resurfaced on TV this weekend as a commentator for a speedboat racing show on ESPN.
- Jim Crockett's WWN promotion is scheduled to shoot a TV show in New York at the end of the month at the Manhattan Center, using primarily ECW wrestlers.
- During an indie show in New Jersey, Abdullah the Butcher wrestled and his opponent's manager got involved. The manager had never bladed before, so Abdullah did the job for him, juicing the manager. But he ended up cutting too long and deep and the manager ended up needing more than 40 stitches (if 40 stitches is all he got from letting Abdullah blade him, he got off lucky).
- At a recent ECW show, the promotion's booker Paul Heyman got on the mic and told the crowd that ECW isn't going to have somebody levitate after losing their match and they aren't going to have you buy a ticket and then ask you to call a 900 number to determine who won the main event and they aren't going to bore you to sleep like WCW. He also took shots at Jerry Lawler in reference to his ongoing rape charges.
- The New Jersey chapter of the DARE anti-drug group has previously sponsored indie wrestling shows, but has decided to stop doing that in the wake of the recent McMahon steroid indictments. They felt it would look hypocritical, which Dave says goes to show that the general public pretty much lumps all pro wrestling together and that whatever happens to WWF can have an effect on the industry as a whole.
- One of the rumored locations for AAA's Triplemania 2 was the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum but that definitely won't be happening now, after the recent earthquake there caused significant damage to the stadium and because of repairs, it isn't expected to be re-opened until 1995.
- Ted Turner and wife Jane Fonda were in the front row for the first half of WCW's latest TV tapings. They were interviewed and Turner came across okay but didn't seem to have any knowledge of the product. Dave says all the wrestlers' workrate was up while wrestling in front of Turner.
- A "6'5 newcomer" named Terra Ryzing (real name Paul Levesque) debuted in a dark match at the latest WCW tapings. He's a student of Killer Kowalski's wrestling school and apparently looked good enough that he will debut on television on the Feb. 26th show.
- Also at the tapings, the Nasty Boys were in a match that will never air because it got out of control. It was a squash match and somehow during the match, Jerry Sags and jobber Bobby Walker got into a legit fight in the ring, which included Sags even trying to bite the guy's nose. After the match, in the locker room, the Nasty's jumped the guy again and Blackjack Mulligan had to step in and break things up.
- Even though WCW is telling everyone that Ric Flair is the head of the booking committee, Dusty Rhodes was still there at the tapings and supposedly was heavily involved in meetings about the next tapings.