July 04, 1994
- Jury selection for the WWF steroid trial begins this week and the trial itself is scheduled to start the next day. Dave says that the media and others in the business seem to have a misunderstanding about what this trial is all about and clarifies things. It has nothing to do with all the things Bruno Sammartino or Billy Graham said over the last few years and nothing to do with the ringboy sex scandal case. It all stems from evidence that the government gathered in 1991 when Dr. Zahorian was tried to steroid distribution. WWF is charged with being part of a conspiracy (along with Dr. Zahorian) to get WWF wrestlers to use steroids, and for distributing them. From here, Dave spends a few pages detailing what the charges mean and what exactly the government has to be able to prove in order to get a conviction. No one can deny WWF wrestlers were juiced to the gills, but there's more to getting a conviction that that. Dave thinks proving the conspiracy charge will be difficult. As for the distribution charges, the witnesses who will be called to testify on the prosecution's behalf (Hogan, Vince's ex-limo driver who is suing him, etc.) may have some credibility issues.
- The trial is expected to last a few weeks and publicly, WWF seems confident. After his herniated disc surgery, Vince McMahon has removed himself from commentary and re-hired Jim Ross to fill in. Ross was only given a 2-month contract which says to Dave that they expect Vince to be back behind the desk soon. The trial of Dr. Zahorian only lasted 4 days but it changed the face of the industry and the repercussions are still being felt. WWF has changed drastically, and features mostly small guys having far more athletic matches, but they're having those matches in front of about 40% less fans than they used to draw. A conviction in this trial will most certainly have even bigger ramifications.
- The King of the Ring PPV drew a 0.73 buyrate, which is by far the lowest in company history. The heavily hyped return of Roddy Piper was totally overshadowed right before the show by Hulk Hogan signing with WCW.
- WCW's Clash of the Champions, featuring the live arena debut of Hulk Hogan, also drew a low rating, being the 4th lowest rated Clash ever. The show had more advertising hype than any Clash ever, so this is a huge disappointment. Between this and the low-rated Saturday Night episode featuring the Hogan parade and press conference, it's bad news for WCW. They expected to be riding a huge wave of momentum right now due to Hogan, but it's clear that they've gained no momentum at all.
- The biggest bomb of the week was Sandy Barr's Championship Wrestling USA show featuring Tonya Harding and a bunch of AAA stars. The show was held in a 12,000 seat arena and was an expensive spectacular, featuring an entrance ramp, special effects and lighting, a live band and more. Only 530 people showed up and probably more of them were media people there to see Harding rather than actual fans. All of the major networks interrupted their regular programming to cut live to the arena as the main event started. Harding was managing the heels but received a small babyface reaction when she came out and spent the match sitting in a chair and showing no personality. During the 3rd fall of the 6-man tag main event, she blew a kiss at Konnan to distract him. And that was basically it. All in all, Dave says Sandy Barr wasted a whole lot of money on this endeavor (not just Harding, but the AAA stars, the arena, the setup, everything) and for nothing. In his defense, Barr tried to heavily promote all of this on his Portland public access show, but the tiny number of people who watch that show in the first place weren't watching last week because it aired at the same time as the O.J. chase and everyone was watching that instead.
- The ultimate hardcore match of Sabu vs. Cactus Jack failed to sellout the ECW Arena, to most people's surprise, including promoter Tod Gordon who thought it would be a guaranteed sellout. Gordon made a bunch of excuses (Janet Jackson concert in town the same night, baseball game that night, summer show with no AC in the building, etc.) but when asked, Paul Heyman said they had simply overestimated the drawing power of the match. After the match, Sabu hit Jack over the head with a non-gimmicked beer bottle. Jack was legit injured and didn't work the following ECW show the next day, though he still made an appearance (I have a vague recollection of Foley mentioning this in his book I think?). After the match, Cactus Jack cut a promo that was strongly negative of WCW.
- The latest Clash of the Champions is in the books. Dave didn't like it. The idea was to build the Hogan/Flair match and they succeeded in that, but Hogan was actually booed several times, which isn't a good sign. Most of the matches were bad, except Sting/Flair and they've had better ones. The show ended with both Sting and Hogan threatening to beat up Sherri Martel and Dave says he's heard a lot of complaints about that, considering how much spousal abuse has been in the news lately in the wake of the O.J. Simpson murders.
- It's the PG era! Due to rumors of government regulation of violence on television (and in an effort to sanitize their own image), the WWF will no longer show crotch shots, 2-handed choking, eye gouging, or use of foreign objects (chairs, tables, etc.). In promos, you can no longer threaten physical violence, like promising to break someone's arm or leg or something like that. Also, for whatever reason, Razor Ramon can no longer flick his toothpick at people. On TV a couple weeks back, Jerry Lawler attacked Duke The Dumpster Drose and beat him up with a garbage can. Lawler came up with the angle himself but didn't clear it with the right people because everyone backstage freaked out due to the new anti-violence policy. The angle took place live on Raw (and they pulled the camera back immediately and showed the crowd while it was happening), otherwise it would have been edited out. After a commercial, Gorilla Monsoon apologized to viewers. The following week on Raw, Lawler was legitimately forced to give an on-screen apology (though he did it in a heel-ish way). And you thought PG rules were dumb now (my favorite part about this is Monsoon saying you'll "never ever" see someone hit anyone else with a garbage can in WWF).
- WWF ran an angle at a house show in Montreal for Jacques Rougeau, who is headed out of the company and the show drew the largest house show crowd WWF has had in months. In Montreal, the Rougeau family are legends and the Quebeccers (heel everywhere else) are over huge as babyfaces. So they did an angle where the tag team champions, the Headshrinkers (usually faces) tore up the Quebec flag to get over as heels. The Quebeccers then challenged them for the tag titles. Rougeau ended up eating the pin due to shenanigans and then his partner Pierre and manager Johnny Polo attacked him. Other wrestlers ran in, including Montreal legend Pat Patterson ran in and also got beat down. Jacques Rougeau ended up doing a stretcher job and Pierre and Polo left to massive heel heat. Though it should have been the main event, this match actually took place about midway through the show because WWF was worried about Pierre and Polo getting so much heat that they didn't want them trying to leave the building at the same time as the fans were, for their safety. So they did it midway through the show so they could get Pierre and Polo out of the arena before the fans left. Rougeau is reportedly retiring from wrestling to open a gym, but he's expected to come back for one last match in October, the next time they're in Montreal, for a blow-off match against Pierre, which is expected to draw an even bigger crowd.
- Antonio Inoki was featured on the cover of the Japanese language edition of Sports Illustrated last month (can't find any pics).
- In USWA, Lance Russell took an accidental bump during a brawl near the announcers desk. He was okay and later commented on it, saying, while he's getting slower, the wrestlers are all getting faster.
- Speaking of USWA, Reggie B. Fine stole Koko B. Ware's pet bird Frankie. Later in the show, Fine came back out with a platter of fried chicken, claiming that he had cooked Frankie, then started eating it and said it was finger-lickin' good.
- In another note on the Tonya Harding thing, almost all of the news coverage of the match mentioned Art Barr's 1990 rape charge, which surely he was none too thrilled about.
- Jim Powers came in and worked a match on Raw last week and got a lot of people talking because he's very obviously on steroids. A WWF spokesman responded saying that Powers was only brought in as an extra to work that match and isn't signed and WWF does not drug test unsigned jobbers.
- WWF and WCW both have European tours happening at the same time in September, and both sides have reportedly reached out to Davey Boy Smith to work the shows. Likely he'll end up working the WWF tour since there is still bad blood with WCW over how he left last year.
- Kevin Nash reportedly contacted Sid Vicious and told him to call WWF because they were interested in him, but Sid never called because he's supposedly not interested in working there at the moment and would rather work in All Japan or WCW. Dave also notes that, "Vicious really is playing softball almost every day this summer."
- Bret Hart is one of the major investors in a new hockey franchise in Calgary for the Western Hockey League (that team ended up being called the Calgary Hitmen because of Bret Hart and even had the pink/black color scheme).
- A meeting was held with WCW employees and Eric Bischoff was reportedly furious about the snafu that led to Clash of the Champions results being revealed on national TV a week before the show happened.
- WCW will be spending more than double the amount of money on advertising for Bash at the Beach than for any other PPV in its history.
- Dave notes that at a recent WCW TV taping, Terry Funk pissed off a fan so much that the fan tried to jump the barricade with a gun, but security stopped him.
- In the letters section, it's mostly people writing in with questions about the steroid trial. Should WCW be worried? Dave doesn't think so. While it's obvious that WCW has lots of wrestlers on steroids, there's no evidence that Eric Bischoff is trafficking drugs through the locker room or anything. The WWF case stems from evidence that the government gathered in the Dr. Zahorian trial, so WCW doesn't really have much to worry about in the case of the government cracking down on them. Someone else asks about Hogan's expected testimony and Dave says it's likely that Hogan's Arsenio Hall interview will be brought up and Hogan better be careful not to tell the same bullshit lies because he'll be under oath this time.