February 28, 1994
- An agreement between Hulk Hogan and WCW is almost certainly a done deal at this point. Hogan was mentioned a couple of times on the SuperBrawl PPV, including an interview with Flair where he was asked directly about facing Hogan. Those close to Hogan still insist nothing has been signed, but WCW is clearly under the impression that it's a done deal, if they're dropping so many hints about it on TV. If not, they're going to have serious egg on their face. The New York Daily News reported in their gossip section that Hogan would receive "something like $1 million per PPV event as well as percentage points on each event's gross receipts." Dave dismisses the $1 million per PPV number as hyperbole because most WCW PPV events only gross around $1 million total anyway.
- In a bizarre turn of events, the man who instigated the rape charges against Jerry Lawler has now been arrested and charged with rape himself. John Segevan is the man who went to police and told them that the 13-year-old girl claimed Lawler had had sex with her. The girl later recanted her story and claimed she only told Segevan that because she was trying to make him angry. Lawler has publicly blamed Segevan for the whole thing, claiming he was jealous of the attention the wrestlers were receiving. Segevan was arrested this week and was charged with forcible rape of a 15-year-old after driving her home from a church dance in Louisville.
- As for Lawler, he returns to court this week in hopes of getting the charges dismissed before the April 5 trial date. Dave quotes from the affidavits where the girl admits to making up the story that she and another underage friend performed oral sex on Lawler. She says she told Segevan that because she was mad at him and then he went to the police and when the police asked her about it, she was scared so she repeated the lie to the police because she thought it's what they wanted to hear. But now she says it wasn't true. She does admit to hanging out with Lawler in his hotel room and says that he took her and a friend shopping, but says nothing sexual happened, which is basically the same thing Lawler has said. (So....now that this case is pretty much over, what's our opinion on this? Do we think Lawler got a blowjob from 2 underage girls and then paid them off to recant their story? Or did the girl lie and he got thrown under the bus on bullshit charges? I dunno man...even if nothing sexual happened, it seems a little sketchy for a 43-year-old man to be hanging out with a couple of underage girls in his hotel room and taking them shopping. I wanna give him the benefit of the doubt but eh....)
- WCW's SuperBrawl PPV took place and was actually sold out. They also did a gimmick of giving away 4 free tickets to anyone that turned in a handgun, which supposedly garnered a total of 290 guns and more than 1,000 tickets (wtf?!). As for the show itself, the undercard was awful. Even Bobby Heenan on commentary wasn't enough to make the first hour and a half entertaining. In fact, Dave says it "should be taped for medical science as a last-ditch cure for insomnia." Cactus Jack took his usual sick bumps during the match and ended up being legit hospitalized after the show with internal bleeding and Brian Knobs dislocated his shoulder on a nasty bump near the end of the match so they rushed to the finish. Vader wrestled the main event with a staph infection on his chest (hence the different ring attire).
- Jim Crockett's WWN promotion will be doing their first ever TV taping at the Manhattan Center in New York this week. The show is being booked by Paul Heyman and most of the show will feature ECW wrestlers.
- Terry Gordy is still out of action and will be missing All Japan's annual Champion Carnival tournament, which is the promotion's second biggest tour of the year. Dave says the fact that Gordy is missing this tour, more than 8 months after the overdose he suffered last year, shows just how bad things are with his health (yeah, he suffered permanent brain damage and was mentally slow and out of it afterwards. He eventually returned to wrestling, but he never really recovered and was a shell of his former self. That overdose basically torpedoed the rest of his career.)
- Terry Funk will likely be heading to USWA for the first time in years to challenge Jerry Lawler for the title soon. There's also been talk of bringing in Missy Hyatt, to have her feud with real-life ex-husband Eddie Gilbert, however Hyatt is insisting she is done with the wrestling business, even if WWF makes her an offer.
- The long-awaited first ever match of Sabu vs. Chris Benoit took place at an indie show this week and was reportedly pretty good. After the match, a wrestler named Atlantis "from Mexico" came in to present Benoit with an award and ended up hitting Benoit with the plaque. Afterward, Atlantis removed his mask to reveal it was Jerry Lawler, who said he attacked Benoit because he's friends with Bret Hart and Lawler hates all of Hart's friends. (Video is just the match, can't find the post-match angle).
- In the latest on Sandy Barr running shows without a promoter's license in Portland, the commission ruled that Barr was clearly in violation. He had been trying to get around the rules by running "free" shows but charging inflated prices for parking and claiming that the matches were exhibitions. Barr has 30 days to appeal the ruling. But if he continues running shows after the 30 days is up, the state police can shut down the show and arrest everyone involved (including the wrestlers).
- Paul Heyman is still handling the booking for Tod Gordon's ECW, although that may cause some issues in the near future because Heyman is going to work for Jim Crockett's WWN promotion full time as soon as it gets up and running. Heyman wants Gordon's ECW to be part of the WWN promotion, but Gordon wants to promote shows on his own rather than be part of a larger promotion.
- AAA officially announced the location of Triplemania II, taking place at the 65,000 seat baseball stadium in Veracruz, Mexico (plans ended up changing on that but I'm sure we'll get there...)
- WCW has had plenty of mainstream exposure in the last week, in hyping SuperBrawl. Sting's appearance on Arsenio Hall went well, although the promotion for the show called him a WWF champion and Hall seemed totally unprepared. Hall also plugged the PPV by calling it "SuperBrawl four times" instead of "SuperBrawl 4."
- The next day, Ric Flair appeared on Larry King's show. It started bad, when Larry King asked Flair if he had ever wrestled on a PPV show before but it got better when Larry King learned that one of the men in the 1975 plane crash with Flair was a guy that King knew personally from his days as a sports announcer. Flair stayed on the show 15 minutes longer than scheduled because they were flooded with phone calls. Most of the fans asked Flair about things from the 80s and were all lapsed fans who remembered Flair from years ago rather than following him now. He also kayfabed Larry, when asked if the outcome of the matches was known ahead of time, he denied it. When asked if wrestlers really try to hurt each other, he said that while there's an entertainment aspect to wrestling, they're all really trying to win. When asked about the Von Erichs, Flair said the downfall of the family was their failure to recognize their drug issues and deal with them. Another caller asked about Bret Hart, clearly trying to prod Flair, but Flair only said Bret is a great wrestler and great champion. When asked about house show business, Flair admitted that it's down and said WCW is basically in a rebuilding phase.
- Sting, Rick Rude, Johnny B. Badd, Jesse Ventura, and Missy Hyatt all appeared on the Vicki Lawrence show. It was actually taped weeks ago, which is why Missy was on there. When asked about steroids, Ventura said WCW drug tests (no) and pretty much painted steroids as a WWF problem, not a WCW one. Which is funny because WCW clearly has more guys on steroids now than WWF does. Sting joked that there's nothing in his body but bran muffins, which got more groans than laughs (can't find any video of this).
- The reason Equalizer will be going by the name Evad (Dave spelled backwards) Sullivan is because they're going to say he's dyslexic. "I never knew dyslexia also causes you to mess up all your spots in a wrestling match," Dave says.
- Bruno Sammartino, Ray Stevens and Killer Kowalski have all agreed to come in for Slamboree.
- Someone brought up the idea of Sid Vicious returning during a WCW production meeting recently and it was almost unanimously vetoed.
- Marty Jannetty has been fired by WWF for what has to be a record 4th or 5th time, Dave says. All he says is that it was due to problems on the European tour.
- Dave names more celebrities who have been announced for Wrestlemania X. Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block, "which was hot as hell a few years ago and nose-dived faster than any hot band in history," Burt Reynolds, and Jennie Garth from 90210.
- WWF is reportedly trying to bring in Bull Nakano to face Alundra Blayze at Wrestlemania.
- Due to his neck injury, Ted Dibiase won't be wrestling for at least a year and he has yet to get the surgery needed to fix it. He's reportedly close to finalizing a deal to become a full-time announcer.
- On TV, they've been hinting that there is someone who has been in Owen Hart's ear, convincing him to turn on his brother. This may be how they plan to bring Jerry Lawler back if/when his legal issues are cleared up.