April 10, 1995
- The two biggest and most important shows of 1995 both took place this past Sunday with WWF's Wrestlemania and Japan's 13-promotion mega show at the Tokyo Dome. Dave went to Japan for that show, so he hasn't actually seen Wrestlemania yet. But he has some numbers. The show drew a legit 15,000 sellout and due to the excellent hype around Lawrence Taylor, it's believed that the show likely did a 2.0 buyrate or above, which would make it one of the 3 or 4 highest grossing shows in history, but that isn't confirmed (bet your ass it ain't...). The Taylor hype helped the entire industry immensely, giving pro wrestling significant mainstream coverage that for once wasn't focused on a scandal. And LT is getting rave reviews for his performance.
- 60,000 people were at the Tokyo Dome to watch a show with the greatest collection of wrestling stars to ever appear on the same stage. Every company put their best match forward, trying to outdo the other promotions. Reports are the show set an all-time gate record of between $5-6 million. The show was put together by Weekly Pro Wrestling magazine which gives all the promotions so much vital media coverage that they were afraid to not take part in the show for fear of offending the magazine. But all the other media outlets didn't even cover the show because they see the magazine as competition. With the success of this show, it raises the issue of media outlets holding competing shows and promotions having to pick and choose which ones to send wrestlers to while not burning bridges with the others. Dave explains how the magazines and newspapers are much more important in Japan as far as promoting shows than TV is, unlike America. Companies like FMW and UWFI, for example, routinely sell out stadiums without any TV presence.
- Notes from the show: At one point, Cactus Jack tried to light a board on fire and it wouldn't light and it was one of those awkward, embarrassing moments where time stood still and all 60,000 people realized something had gone wrong. Terry Funk did a moonsault from the top rope to the outside of the ring and everyone thought he was dead. The JWP promotion stole the show with the opening match, which Dave gives 4.75 and says is the best opening match he's ever seen on a show. AJPW had what Dave calls the best men's match ever held at the Tokyo Dome. As for the IWA match (Funk, Nakamaki & Leatherface vs. Cactus Jack & Headhunters), Dave calls it "the most amazing clusterfuck of incredible moves that you'll ever see. If someone edits this right, it'll look like one of the greatest matches of all-time." And in the biggest shocker, NJPW had Shinya Hashimoto vs. Masa Chono in the main event and they completely sucked. Dave is flabbergasted that New Japan would have put on such a shitty match in the main event and allow themselves to be shown up by literally every other promotion on the show (videos of this show are hard to find on YouTube but here's the IWA match).
- Eric Bischoff has been under extreme pressure to cut loses in WCW and as such, several corporate shakeups have taken place. Jim Barnett, Don Sandifer, and Bob Dhue are all no longer with WCW. Word is that this won't be the last of the budget cuts and expect more heads to roll, on both the corporate side and the wrestlers side.
- Steve Williams, the top foreign star in Japan, missed one of All Japan's biggest tours and latest word is that he's been suspended, possibly for as long as a full year. So far, all that is known is that Williams arrived in Japan for the tour but then eventually boarded another flight and returned home without ever leaving the airport, leading to rumors that he was jumping to either New Japan or WWF, both of whom are openly very interested in him. But Williams deal with AJPW is pretty great and he'd be unlikely to give it up (yeah, this is weird. He was gone from AJPW for pretty much exactly 1 year and then he returned and continued full-time with them for awhile. So yeah, he most likely was suspended for a year for some reason. But I'm writing the 1996 issues now and as far as I've seen, Dave never really addresses it again, so no idea why he was gone).
- WWF will be running its final show at Boston Garden next month and are trying to make it a huge event by bringing in legends like Fred Blassie, Jay Strongbow, Gorilla Monsoon, Killer Kowalski, Pedro Morales, and more.
- Davey Boy Smith and his wife Diana have responded to the criminal and civil cases brought against them by a man who claims Smith attacked him in a bar for dancing with his wife. Davey Boy claims the whole thing was made up and that there was no fight and Diana says she would never dance with drunken strangers at a bar.
- The reason WCW did the angle of stripping Vader for the U.S. title this week was so they could get the title off of him and on to Sting without Vader having to do a job to anyone. Vader is still the UWFI champion and they don't want him doing jobs, which is why Vader's matches with Hogan have all been ending in DQs (because Hogan ain't doing any jobs either).
- Latest word on WCW's plans for a cruiserweight tournament and title have pretty much been dropped and Brian Pillman's planned push has died off with it.
- Dusty Rhodes has decided not to quit WCW over the firing of his son and will be inducted into the WCW Hall of Fame at Slamboree. There was also talk of inducting Ricky Steamboat but with all the bad blood and talk of lawsuits, that was questionable, but it's still being discussed.
- WWF allowed photographers to be at ringside for Wrestlemania, but then they ended up getting in Shawn Michaels' way during his match with Diesel, so the policy of allowing photographers at ringside is probably already over.
- WWF aired a tribute video to Big John Studd on TV this week after his death.
- In a big surprise, WWF acknowledged Crush's arrest on TV and quoted the AP story about it and then informed fans that Crush had been fired.
- Bam Bam Bigelow and Lawrence Taylor both appeared on Howard Stern's show prior to Wrestlemania in a long 45 minute interview. Stern usually makes fun of wrestling but by the end, he said he planned to watch the PPV.
- The new Four Horsemen idea is dead. Hogan and Flair had a meeting this week to discuss future plans. Flair wanted to reunite the group with himself, Curt Hennig and the Road Warriors. Hogan wanted to create a new, different 4-man group with himself, Flair, Savage and Sting. Neither side could agree so it's just been dropped entirely. Future plans look to be a new Flair vs. Savage feud, with Miss Elizabeth likely being brought in.
- Paul Levesque was at the WWF Fan Fest this weekend at Wrestlemania. He's still waiting for his WCW non-compete clause to expire before starting. Chris Candido and Tammy Sytch were there as well and probably won't start on the road until May.
- On Raw after Wrestlemania, Alundra Blayze regained the WWF women's title from Bull Nakano and then was attacked by a large female wrestler named Rhonda Singh, though Dave doesn't know what name she'll be using in WWF (Bertha Faye). She was a former women's champion in Japan back in 1979 but Dave says she's long been washed up and that Blayze is going to have a hard time carrying that feud.
- Even though he just returned as Owen Hart's mystery partner at Wrestlemania and won the tag titles, word is Yokozuna has given his notice to the company and is leaving, as have the Headshrinkers. WCW would no doubt be interested in bringing in Yokozuna so that Hogan can get his win back, but with all the pressure on Bischoff to cut the budget, they probably can't afford to bring in any big money players at the moment. Dave also notes that Yokozuna had been taken off TV months ago and told to lose weight, but when he returned at Wrestlemania, he actually looked bigger than when he left.
- Jim Cornette and The Gangstas are taping a segment for the Jerry Springer Show this week (didn't end up happening).
- There's a potentially interesting situation brewing with Sabu as he is booked for both a New Japan show and an ECW show on the same night. Latest word is Sabu will likely have to miss the ECW show (surely this won't become a big deal...)
- Ricky Steamboat's 7-year-old son Richie won the North Carolina state amateur wrestling championship for his age group and will participate in a national tournament later this month.
- Dave has gotten word that the real all-time attendance record for wrestling was set back in 1945 in Lahore, Pakistan for a match between a wrestler named King Kong vs. Hamida Pahalwan. The match allegedly drew 200,000 people but of course, that's impossible to confirm so take it with a grain of salt (King Kong's Wikipedia page makes the same claim and also says that he "frequently" wrestled for over 100,000 fans.)
- WCW's new policy is that no more foreign objects can be shown on TV or PPV except for gimmicked movie stunt chairs that are designed to shatter. At the Uncensored PPV, when Hogan was hitting Vader with a chair, that was shown, but when Vader hit Hogan, they cut away. The reason is because Vader was using a real chair and Hogan used the gimmicked one. So that's the policy going forward. "Hey, I don't make this up, I just report it," Dave says.
- WCW is expected to bring in more cartoon-like characters for Hogan to feud with while some of the more realistic and better in-ring workers will likely be released as part of budget cuts (in case you ever wondered why Bischoff was so quick to fire Austin when he got hurt). So expect more Renegades and Yetis and less Arn Andersons and Steve Austins.
- There's a lot of bitterness in the WWF locker room over how much Lawrence Taylor was paid. People were also upset about all the other NFL players who showed up to stand in LT's corner and still got paid big bucks, despite not doing anything but standing there.
- The letters section is huge this week and much of it is fans bashing WCW (or as one guy called it, Hogan Championship Wrestling) and calling for boycotts and claiming the company will be out of business in a year due to how bad the Uncensored PPV was and especially with how Flair has been treated since Hogan arrived. There are also a lot of letters from people who are just seeing ECW for the first time and are blown away by how unique and great it is, though there are criticisms too.
- In a pretty hilarious bit, somebody writes a letter asking about a referee he recently saw on TV. He said the guy looks a lot like a younger Pat Patterson and suggests that the referee might be Patterson's son. Dave actually takes the time to respond to this letter by saying, "Somehow I don't think that's very likely."