February 06, 1995
- The issue opens with an obituary for Crusher Jerry Blackwell, who died from pneumonia complications at age 45. He was regarded as one of the best big-guy workers ever but the obesity had led to poor health. He pretty much retired in the late 80s after a bunch of health problems. He was mostly known for his run in Verne Gagne's AWA in the early 80s and was one of Hulk Hogan's frequent early opponents in those days and in fact, he was the first big 400+ pound wrestler to allow Hogan to bodyslam him, which helped get Hogan over as a powerhouse which is the gimmick he still uses today against big monster wrestlers. He also had a run in the WWF in the 70s and feuded with then-champion Bob Backlund. In the 80s, Vince McMahon tried to bring him back to the WWF but Blackwell wouldn't go due to his loyalty to Verne Gagne.
- Harley Race was in a serious car accident this week, which is why he wasn't at Clash of the Champions. Race broke both of his hands and suffered a broken hip. This caused some problems because Race was scheduled to be involved in an angle after the Hogan match at the Clash and WCW had already pre-taped some voiceovers of Gene Okerlund talking about how Race interfered in the main event, but he ended up not being there. The voiceovers about Race interfering in the match still ended up airing on TV. Because WCW.
- Speaking of Clash of the Champions, Dave was there and didn't much care for it. He's especially critical of the angle where Vader powerbombed Hogan and Hogan immediately no-sold it and jumped to his feet. He also criticizes the infamous spot where Randy Savage dropped the elbow on Hogan to revive him, which is just too stupid for words. Basically, Hogan's ego is out of control and everyone backstage was reportedly complaining about it. Behold, the stupidest thing you'll ever see:
- Clash of the Champions was in Las Vegas because that's where the NATPE convention was, which is where a bunch of TV execs meet every year and everyone goes to try and win them over. Not many execs showed up to the Clash, but WCW did succeed in stealing the spotlight from WWF. Vince McMahon, Diesel, Undertaker, and Jim Ross were all in Vegas for the event, but WCW got much larger crowds at their booth because they had Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. Bischoff even gave a speech saying WCW is where the stars are and WWF has WCW rejects like Kevin Nash as their champion. WWF is still the #1 company in the U.S. but they definitely didn't look like it in Vegas.
- As mentioned before, Weekly Pro Wrestling magazine is putting together a huge show in Japan featuring wrestlers from 11 different promotions. However, this week, a competing magazine called Weekly Gong is trying to put together a similar show on the same night at an arena right next door and has gotten one or two promotions to pull out of the other show and join theirs. They're also trying to get wrestlers from U.S. promotions like WCW and ECW to appear as well, with ideas being thrown around such as Randy Savage vs. Sabu. AJPW has long been an isolationist promotion, refusing to work with anyone else, but they're even considering getting involved in one of the shows, although they would want their promotion's match to be the main event and NJPW wants that spot also.
- Things are looking so bad for UWA that they are renting out the arenas they had booked to EMLL, figuring they can make more money on the rent than by running shows. They're all but dead at this point.
- Because of the economic situation in Mexico, EMLL is only using 3 foreigners right now: Chris Jericho, Vampiro, and Black Magic (Norman Smiley). There's rumors that AAA is trying to get Jericho to jump ship to them.
- A 22-year-old student training at the New Japan dodo named Hiromitsu Gompei died this week after undergoing brain surgery from injuries suffered in training. Gompei reportedly took a bump wrong on his head during training and was rushed to the hospital and immediately taken into brain surgery but didn't survive (this is actually a much bigger story but Dave never covers it after this. So allow me: Gompei was a friend of Hiroshi Hase and Hase had actually been the one to convince Gompei's parents that he would be safe training at their dojo and then he was the one who had to go back later and tell them their son had died. As for the death itself, ALLEGEDLY, Gompei did something to upset Kensuke Sasaki, which led to Sasaki going full-Bob Holly on him and basically assaulting him in the ring and he did a suplex to him and legit dropped him on his head, which led to the brain injury. Word is those involved with the dojo covered the whole thing up and Sasaki was never charged with anything. Hiroshi Hase left NJPW not long after, reportedly because of this incident. ALLEGEDLY. Ahem.)
- Jushin Liger is hoping to return to the ring in April or May.
- The latest on Eddie Gilbert no-showing SMW: Gilbert had previously told Cornette he couldn't appear at SMW's upcoming shows because he was working in Puerto Rico as booker for the WWC promotion there. He then called back and reportedly left Cornette a message saying he didn't want to burn any bridges, so if Cornette absolutely needed him, he'd be there. When Cornette called back the number in Puerto Rico, it had been disconnected. Cornette called Gilbert's parents and they said they'd try to get him to show up. But the show came and went and Gilbert never appeared.
- It's not confirmed but it's believed Ric Flair's first match back from "retirement" will be at Slamboree in May, probably in a tag team match with Vader against Hogan & Savage.
- WCW sent Paul Levesque a letter saying that they are enforcing his non-compete clause, which means even though he's done with WCW, he won't be able to join WWF until May.
- WCW will be raising PPV prices from $24.95 to $27.95, and they're hoping the increased price won't lead to less buys. Dave thinks they're probably right (indeed they were. It's why PPV prices for both companies jumped from about $15 in the early 90s up to damn near $80 for shows like Wrestlemania 20 years later. They kept raising the prices little-by-little, year after year and people kept buying).
- Roddy Piper filmed an angle where he was on crutches (claiming he had been attacked by a shark and showed a big scar on his leg....real story, he recently had hip replacement surgery) and got into a spat with Shawn Michaels, who eventually knocked Piper off his crutches.
- Yokozuna hasn't been on TV lately because he has been ordered to lose weight for his own health before they'll let him back on the road. However, he still appeared on WWF's behalf at the NATPE convention in Las Vegas.
- WWF's new backstage announcer Stephanie Wiand has been pretty much awful and it hasn't gone unnoticed by the company, who have all but taken her off TV for the most part.
- The 1-2-3 Kid injury angle last week was indeed just an angle. He worked the house show the next night and was fine.
- Some guy writes in and scolds Dave for covering the "barbaric" UFC and says it's competition to wrestling, so Dave shouldn't promote it. (He also criticizes Observer readers who have voted for Undertaker as Best Gimmick for the last 4 years, calling it a corny, juvenile monster gimmick that is completely insulting the intelligence of fans). Somebody else writes in with the same complaints about UFC. People just don't want Dave to be covering this stuff. He defends it by pointing out that every UFC show so far has had some ties to pro wrestling and points out that their success on PPV directly impacts the PPV business and wrestling.