February 21, 1994
- Dave opens this issue by comparing business stats from the entire year of 1993 to those of 1992. WWF house show attendance dropped 16.7% over the year but seemed to level out and stop declining during the second half of the year and TV ratings appear to be on the rise. As for WCW, TV ratings are about the same as they've been the last few years, but house show attendance (which was already scary low in 1992) dropped by more than 50% in 1993. AJPW TV ratings nosedived by 25% in 1993, but live attendance remained strong. And finally, NJPW had a booming year. TV ratings declined slightly, but live attendance went up by 16.4%. Of all the major promotions, New Japan had the best year, but that can be credited to the inter-promotional feud with WAR creating several dream matches. But with that feud having run its course and with some of the shows later in the year getting weak reviews, the outlook for NJPW in 1994 might not be as good.
- WCW and AAA have both been negotiating with New Japan to start working relationships. Great Muta will work WCW's Spring Stampede in April and Rick Rude will work Japan in March, but that's all that has been agreed to so far. The deal with AAA is for New Japan to send young talent there to learn new styles. Dave says NJPW has a unique style of building new talent: usually, they will debut rookies and have them do lots of jobs or trade wins with other rookies for a year or two. When it looks like the rookie ready to move up and be a bigger star, they send them away for a couple of years to work in other countries and learn new styles, and also because after seeing the rookie doing so many jobs, the fans won't buy them as a bigger star. So after they've worked in Mexico or the U.S. or elsewhere for a few years, they return to Japan, often with a new look or gimmick, and the fans are ready to buy them as a top star. Dave thinks this technique would greatly benefit WCW also. If a guy can survive Japan, they would come back as a better worker and it would weed out the guys who aren't truly dedicated to their craft. That way, WCW "will find out quickly just how dedicated the wrestler is to becoming the best they can be, looks be damned, before giving him the four-year guaranteed contract, promising him the world title, and sending him to Europe to go berserk." (that's a shot at Sid Vicious, for those who might have missed it due to the glaring subtlety).
- AAA's Antonio Pena also met with FMW and All Japan Women as well and made a deal for Bull Nakano to come work some AAA shows. They also worked an angle at the FMW show between Fuerza Guerrera and Great Sasuke to set up a possible future AAA vs. FMW angle.
- WCW has hired the guy who used to be WWF's leading house show promoter. It was previously thought that WCW would be eliminating house shows completely but instead it looks like they will be getting more aggressive about booking arenas that WWF had previously locked them out of in top markets. They've already locked down the Rosemont Horizon in Chicago for Spring Stampede. WWF had previously kept WCW out of that arena for the last 7 or 8 years. It's believed WCW will start trying to run more shows nationally, rather than staying in the Georgia/Florida/Carolinas area they've been running for the last few years. Dave thinks it's all well and good that WCW is willing to spend Ted Turner's money to try and get bigger arenas in bigger cities and all that, but they should spend some of that money on getting better performers and finding ways to get them over with fans.
- The real future of the business, however, is still PPV. It's been the biggest source of profit for both companies in recent years and with the belief that cable companies will be offering upwards of 500 stations in the coming years, it's inevitable that there will be more wrestling on TV and more PPVs when they do. AAA has proven they can draw in certain segments of the U.S. and the box office success of boxer Julio Caesar Chavez proves that there's a market for Hispanic sports to sell on PPV. Dave also says that, if we ever get up to 500 stations, it's inevitable that Japanese wrestling will also start airing in the U.S. Dave thinks of all the Japanese promotions, NJPW would be the most likely to attempt to branch out into the U.S. (still waiting. I know they're on AXS but it's a good month or two behind).
- WWF held a house show-version of the Royal Rumble a week before the actual event, in Madison Square Garden. Owen Hart ended up winning the Rumble match. Meanwhile, 1-2-3 Kid suffered a leg injury, thought to be a possible broken leg, when he was eliminated and had to be taken out on a stretcher. At the same show, the Quebeccers regained the WWF tag titles.
- WATCH: the "lost" 1994 Royal Rumble, Pt. 1
- WATCH: the "lost" 1994 Royal Rumble, Pt. 2
- WATCH: the "lost" 1994 Royal Rumble, Pt. 3
- WATCH: the "lost" 1994 Royal Rumble, Pt. 4
- WWF had a house show in San Jose last week and Dave attended. Nothing notable really. He says most guys were just going through the motions, except for Shawn Michaels and 1-2-3 Kid. Diesel was over big as a babyface, despite being a heel. And then Shawn and Razor did a ladder match, which saw Shawn taking crazy insane bumps that defied belief. Dave gives it 4-stars. Randy Savage worked against Crush and looked terrible. They also did some type of falls count anywhere type match, but after the fall, the loser has one minute to return to the ring and the match continues. Savage looked horrible. (basically, this was several of the matches from Wrestlemania 10, three months early).
- Eddie Palau, the most famous referee in the history of Mexican wrestling, passed away at 81 from lung cancer. Newspapers reported he smoked anywhere from 3 to 8 packs of cigarettes a day.
- Terry Gordy was scheduled to return to the ring for All Japan last week, but it was cancelled at the last minute. Publicly, they're saying they hope he'll be able to return some time in the spring. Gordy passed out on airplane last year and was in a coma for several days and hasn't wrestled since.
- Antonio Inoki is talking about doing another show at the Tokyo Dome in June, independent from New Japan. Inoki would either face Atsushi Onita or George Foreman. Inoki has wanted a match with Foreman for 15 years, but Dave still says it's not happening.
- The Steiners have reached a deal to work 10 weeks for New Japan in 1994, for $120,000 each. This is separate from their WWF deal. New Japan is also negotiating to make Undertaker a semi-regular.
- USWA advertised a cage match with Jerry Lawler & Brian Christopher against Eddie and Doug Gilbert. However, because of bad weather, the cage no-showed so it ended up being a regular match and the fans weren't thrilled.
- Speaking of Lawler, he appeared on a wrestling radio show last week and said he still expects the charges against him to be dropped soon and said the only reason they haven't so far is because he's a celebrity and the prosecutor is trying to make her name off of him. He also said he knew the girl who made the claim and when it came out, he called her to find out why this was happening. The prosecutor found out he called and tacked on a charge of harassing the witness. He also says WWF put him on hiatus because they knew the steroid indictment was coming and didn't think it would look good to have both members of the commentary team under indictment.
- SMW wrestler Darryl Van Horn did a promo saying that he reads the Egyptian book of the dead, "not the pack of fairy tales that you people read every Sunday morning." That's one way to get heat in the Bible Belt (Daryl Van Horne is better known now as Sinister Minister James Mitchell).
- ECW has an upcoming show next month featuring the first "triangle match" with Sabu vs. Terry Funk vs. Shane Douglas.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story about a local high school wrestler who is King Kong Bundy's nephew. The story noted that Bundy is considering coming out of retirement soon to wrestle for WWF or WCW (indeed he did).
- For the real Royal Rumble PPV coming up, Dave predicts Owen Hart will be the marathon man in the match, but Bret will end up winning. But instead of a title shot, Dave thinks an angle will take place that will see Bret face Owen at Wrestlemania instead. That will free up Lex Luger to get the title shot at Wrestlemania and win the title. Dave makes sure to say that this is just a guess, and not based on anything he's heard. Then he says, who knows, maybe Luger will just end up outright winning the Rumble (or....both?)
- Monday Night Raw's 1 year anniversary show last week tied its all-time ratings record. It was also the first time in months that Raw didn't have to compete with an NFL game.
- Alundra Blayze has been in contact with Japanese companies about sending over women for her to work with in WWF. Dave isn't sure if this has even been approved by WWF or if Blayze just took it upon herself. But names being tossed around include Noriyo Tateno, Akira Hokuto, and Bull Nakano.
- Playboy made an offer to Missy Hyatt to have her pose for the magazine, but WCW made her turn it down, citing a "moral turpitude" clause in her contract. "Imagine, a moral turpitude clause in a wrestlers' contract," Dave muses. Dammit WCW, we missed out on naked Missy Hyatt in her prime!