May 22, 1995
- WWF's first In Your House PPV took place this weekend. It was the first of the new era of monthly PPVs, with these IYH shows scheduled to be shorter and less expensive than regular PPVs. Bret Hart vs. Hakushi stole the show, the rest of it was decent but forgettable. Savio Vega debuted, doing a run-in during the Razor Ramon match pretending to be a fan. They also legitimately gave away a house to a fan who was watching the show and won the contest. Dave says that in most cases where people win houses, they usually end up selling them because of the taxes. The house is in Orlando and the winner was someone in Nevada.
- WWF gives away a house at the first In Your House PPV
- UFC 6 won't feature a shoot fight between two wrestling world champions anymore. Dan Severn is still NWA champion, but Ken Shamrock lost his Pancrase championship in Tokyo last week to Minoru Suzuki. Dave explains how Pancrase seems to be a mixture of shoot and work, with the upper-card and main event matches clearly works but the lower-card matches seeming to be legit shoot fights.
- WWF held their final show at Boston Garden, bringing in several former old-time headliners like George Steel, Arnold Skaaland, Killer Kowalski, Chief Jay Strongbow, and others. Freddie Blassie was scheduled to appear but didn't due to his recent heart attack. Bruno Sammartino is the all-time biggest draw in the arena and there were several fans with signs for Bruno, but obviously that didn't happen. The legends all gave speeches between each match and they did an angle with Strongbow and Pat Patterson getting into a shoving match and having to be separated by the other legends.
- A famous Buffalo, NY-area wrestler from the 1950s named Ilio Di Paolo died this week after being run over by a car. Dave says he's actually more famous for an Italian restaurant in New York that he ran that still exists today (in 1996, WCW ends up doing a tribute show for this guy that sets WCW attendance records).
- Dave lists the new, updated Top 15 biggest reported wrestling crowds of all time. Obviously the top 2 are now the 2 North Korea shows. The first one at 170,000 (not 190,000 as North Korea is claiming) was headlined by Inoki vs. Flair. But the other one was the 150,000 show, headlined by Shinya Hashimoto vs. Scott Norton. That's right folks. Technically, Scott Norton drew the second largest crowd in pro wrestling history (in reality, Kim Jong il drew those crowds. Not much of a worker though).
- UWA is doing joint shows with EMLL right now, as that company is still limping along and trying to stay alive.
- Dave thinks AAA is rushing the debut of Perro Aguayo Jr., who is only 16 and still looks like a kid. Aguayo Jr. is scheduled to have his debut match at Triplemania against Juventud Guerrera and Dave thinks we'll see just how good a worker Juventud is, if he can carry an inexperienced 16-year-old to a watchable match on a major show. He also compares it to the Von Erichs kids all being pushed into the business at a young age.
- Rey Mistero Jr. seemingly debuts a new, incredible move every week that no one has ever seen before. Dave calls him the Human Highlight Film and tries to describe all the newest crazy moves of the last week or so. Once again, it should be said...in 2017, this stuff isn't that impressive anymore but in 1995, Misterio was just unreal and doing shit no one had ever seen before.
- Eddie Guerrero won't be working the New Japan tour in July because his wife is scheduled to be giving birth around that time (that would be his youngest daughter, not the one that wrestled in NXT for awhile).
- A Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Akira Taue match gets the 5-star rating from Dave.
- Dave says he still hasn't heard from any wrestlers who said the North Korea shows were a good experience. The media has reprinted a quote that was allegedly made by Ric Flair, stating, "Before leaving this beautiful and peaceful country, I would like to make a tribute to the great leader, Mr. Kim Il Sung, who had devoted all his life to the Korean peoples' happiness, prosperity and the Korean reunification. The great leader, his excellency Kim Il Sung, will always be with us." Obviously, Flair was pretty much forced to say that if he wanted to leave the country.
- Atsushi Onita's retirement seems to be the real deal, to the point that Onita has cut ties with the FMW promotion completely in a business-sense. FMW as a company that was run by Onita has officially shut down and a new company, using the same name, was started by Hayabusa, who is now the top star and main person running things, along with 2 other partners. Onita is reportedly a pretty good actor and is getting a lot of movie offers and many think he has a bright future as a movie star ahead of him.
- Dave says Al Snow is one of the most underrated wrestlers in the business, and is doing great promos in SMW and is good in the ring and thinks it's funny that a guy like that is slumming it on the indies while people with far less talent get pushes in WWF and WCW.
- Chris Benoit missed the recent ECW show because his wife was in a car accident and injured her ankle. Not the last time Benoit would miss a show due to issues with his wife's health. Also on the same show, Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko wrestled each other again and before the match, Guerrero was wearing the red white and blue Love Machine attire and cut a promo dedicating his career to Art Barr. Also of note, the crowd continued to chant "fuck Sabu" throughout the show.
- Organizational-wise, ECW still seems to be in transition. Paul Heyman is handling payoffs now instead of Tod Gordon and is trying to restructure the company and wants to run more house shows in other markets. There are said to be significant outstanding debts in the company right now.
- A recent story in the news talks about how some doctors have experimented and found that super glue is better than stitches when closing wounds in some cases. Dave says apparently Dr. Sabu is a visionary since he's been doing that in the middle of matches for years.
- There is a new PPV airing called Fight Zone that is a fake version of UFC, with fake crowds and fake blood and the "fights" are all worked. It's allegedly so cheesy and bad that it's hilarious. Tony Halme (better known as Ludvig Borga) is involved. And yeah, this is....something.
- Steve Austin had a meeting with Eric Bischoff this week and was pretty much forced to go out to the ring and put over Renegade at the next tapings. It is believed that, in exchange, Bischoff agreed to reform the Hollywood Blonds tag team with Austin and Pillman but it hasn't happened as of yet (never did).
- At the latest WCW tapings, Ric Flair defeated Alex Wright to advance in the U.S. title tournament, but the match won't air. Wright has been given a winning streak on TV and Flair reportedly felt so guilty about ending Wright's streak that he decided to scrap the match and re-tape it the next night with a different finish (Flair winning by DQ, which allows Wright to technically keep his never-pinned unbeaten streak but allows Flair to advance in the U.S. title tournament).
- WCW ring announcer Gary Michael Cappetta is no longer with the company due to budget cuts. He was making over $100,000 per year and they just couldn't justify that kind of money for a ring announcer, especially since they aren't running as many shows as they used to.
- Bob Backlund is doing a gimmick claiming he is running for President and cut a hilarious promo about it, full of big, confusing words and getting several historical dates wrong.
- The Grand Wizard, Antonio Rocca, Fabulous Moolah, Ivan Putski, George Steele, Pedro Morales, and Ernie Ladd will be inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame next month. Dave once again says that, until they induct Bruno Sammartino (whether he wants it or not), it will never be a legitimate Hall of Fame.