February 13, 1995
- WCW taped 3 months of TV at Disney Studios again last week and among the spoilers coming out of the tapings: Hogan filmed an interview talking about how he beat Vader at SuperBrawl (Dave thinks if Hogan really does win the match, it won't be a clean win). The Butcher (Beefcake) turned babyface using the name The Man With No Name. Dave says this was done because Hogan and Beefcake hang out a lot in public so they turned him face so it won't violate kayfabe. And the Hogan/Savage vs. Vader/Flair match was confirmed for Slamboree in May so that will be Flair's first match back from "retirement."
- Gene Okerlund set an all-time low for sleaze this week by teasing fans to call the WCW 900 Hotline to find out about a "45 year old former heavyweight champion" that had died. The obvious implication was that it was Ric Flair. Of course, it was Crusher Jerry Blackwell (the obituary from last week). The hotline received a record number of calls from people thinking Flair had died and Dave is completely disgusted by WCW and Okerlund for exploiting Blackwell's death.
- After Vince McMahon and Jacques Rougeau's recent falling out, WWF returned to Montreal this week and drew their biggest house show crowd since Rougeau's retirement, drawing over 12,000 for the show, main evented by Shawn Michaels vs. Pierre Ouellete.
- Dave says the most talked about small promotion in the world right now is ECW. Even Eric Bischoff is bothered by them, recently making a comment on TV about how WCW runs arenas, "not bingo halls." ECW has 2 of the most exciting wrestlers in the world as top stars (Sabu and Chris Benoit) and has the most creative and innovative TV show in the business (Dave notes that the 1-31-95 episode was one of the best hours of wrestling TV he's ever seen). It has a cult following of fans who are rabidly passionate about it. The recent show Dave attended had fans from 20 different states and 4 countries who all traveled to be among the 800 or so people to watch this wrestling show in a tiny, dirty bingo hall. He reviews the show he attended, which seems to have been the very beginning of the Raven/Tommy Dreamer feud. The show also featured Cactus Jack (who was in Tokyo the night before and flew 19 hours straight to get to this show) vs. Sandman, who suffered a severe concussion from chair shots and had to be hospitalized after the match. Jack realized Sandman was hurt and kept trying to pin him to end the match but Sandman was so out of it that he forgot the finish and kept kicking out and wouldn't stay down (I think Foley writes about this match in his book, it's kinda famous).
- Chris Candido was scheduled to face Dan Severn at an indie show this past week, where he would drop the NWA title to Severn. But the show was cancelled due to bad weather and Candido is starting with WWF in March. So now the NWA powers that be are scrambling to get a show booked for a date where Severn and Candido are both available. The idea for Severn to be the new NWA champion is because they want him to bring the belt with him the next time he fights for UFC, hoping that it will give them some huge exposure and maybe draw some UFC fans to follow indie wrestling. Dave doesn't think it's likely.
- At the upcoming New Japan show in North Korea in April, they will be doing an Olympics-style opening ceremony, with Inoki of course carrying the torch.
- Jerry Lawler regained the USWA unified title from Sid Vicious this week (Sid's first and only time doing a job in USWA) because Sid is returning to WWF in a few weeks (more on that in a bit).
- As has been the case for 15 years, the Saturday morning live Memphis show for USWA remains the highest rated television wrestling show in the United States, averaging a 10 rating in the Memphis market. In fact, at its peak in the 70s-80s, the show used to do as high as a 23 ratings and even rivaled the ratings that the SuperBowl garnered in Memphis. It had more viewers at its peak than any television show on network TV except the show Dallas.
- Chris Candido will face Boo Bradley in 2 weeks in a loser-leaves-town match in SMW. This will of course lead to Candido leaving and he'll be showing up in WWF soon after.
- Al Snow is replacing Eddie Gilbert as Unabomb's partner in SMW as a group called the Dynamic Duo.
- ECW now has a TV deal in Birmingham, AL and are close to making a deal for television in New Orleans as well.
- Herb Abrams has supposedly landed a short-term deal for a weekly time slot on ESPN 2, which leads Dave to say, "ESPN continues its streak of always getting the worst possible wrestling that's on the market. Someone in the company must have a self-fulfilling prophesy about nobody being interested in pro wrestling and wants to deliver ratings to prove that point." (Herb Abrams was awful, is basically the gist).
- Jim Crockett's NWA promotion in Dallas drew 600 fans to a show and featured a match with John Hawk (JBL) vs. Tony Norris (Ahmed Johnson) which many said was the best match they'd seen at the Sportatorium in several years.
- Vader reportedly made a play to get his big money WCW contract extended. He currently has 2 years remaining, but he tried to negotiate to get it extended for another 3 years, in exchange for putting Hulk Hogan over clean. Dave doesn't know how that negotiation went.
- WCW is still trying to put together a cruiserweight tournament and contacted Chris Benoit about it, but Benoit is reportedly happy only working ECW and New Japan so he turned them down.
- On TV this week, Eric Bischoff buried Jean Paul Levesque, talking about how Alex Wright beat him and how a lot of people thought Levesque would be a big deal but turned out he was just another guy who couldn't cut it in this business. As we all know, Bischoff was right and this Paul Levesque guy was never heard from again.
- Eric Bischoff wants to run his own UFC-type events and was negotiating with Rickson Gracie while in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago. Gracie apparently wants a huge guaranteed amount of money to do it but word is WCW is still strongly considering it.
- Paul Wight, the 7'2, 440-pounder who was recently backstage at a WCW show, is reportedly being brought in under the name Paul Bunyan. He's currently training in Atlanta for his debut. Hogan wants a new Andre The Giant-type heel for him to face and this is likely to be the guy.
- Sid Vicious is expected to re-debut with WWF at the next set of tapings, coming in as Shawn Michaels' new bodyguard.
- Speaking of Shawn Michaels, while out injured, he has been working as color commentator alongside Vince McMahon on Raw, but when he returns to the ring, it's rumored that Jesse Ventura will be returning to commentary. It's thought that bringing back Ventura is also part of an out-of-court settlement for the $1 million that WWF owes him after losing the lawsuit with him last year. Ventua's current WCW deal expires at the beginning of March and he's currently making $5,000 per week to sit at home and do nothing, so if he does return to WWF, he won't be coming in before that expires.
- Undertaker is currently out with a knee injury.
- Gary Plummer of the San Francisco 49ers was on a radio show and said that, after their SuperBowl win, Vince McMahon offered him $30,000 to wear a WWF hat and say on camera that he was going to celebrate by going to Wrestlemania. Plummer turned down the offer. Reportedly, his teammate Ken Norton Jr. accepted the deal.
- The New York Daily News reported that Lawrence Taylor was paid over $100,000 for participating in the angle at the Royal Rumble and would be paid another $100,000+ to work Wrestlemania. Dave doesn't know how accurate those figures are.
- Raw won't be airing next week because of the Westminster Kennel dog show, which traditionally outdraws Raw (FUCK, I hated that stupid dog show when I was a kid...)
- Diesel is participating in a celebrity slam dunk contest in conjunction with the NBA All-Star game and will also take part in an MTV celebrity softball game (can't find video of either, sadly).
- Among the celebrities expected at Wrestlemania, other than Pamela Anderson, keep an eye out for "one of the kids from Home Improvement" and "the guy who plays Martinez on NYPD Blue."
- WWF turned down a Make-A-Wish request to have Bret Hart visit a terminally ill 11-year-old boy. Usually, the sick children come to the arena but in this case, the kid is too sick to leave his home and WWF's policy is that they don't let wrestlers go to someone's house like that. Naturally, the refusal made front page news in Worcester, MA and WWF got a ton of negative heat for it. So the next day, WWF responded and said that while they still wouldn't authorize Hart to visit the boy at his home, they would have Bret give him a phone call, which got yet more negative press in the paper the next day.
- In a recent newspaper article, WWF's publicist was quoted telling all sorts of lies. For starters, he claimed that the WWF is a $200 million dollar-per-year company (when they testified in court earlier this year, the number they gave under oath was $100 million) and claimed that at their peak in the 80s, the company was grossing $500 million per year. In reality, their best year ever was $186 million, so not even close. They also claimed the steroid trial cost the company $4 million in legal fees, when it was actually only $3 million.