July 03, 1995
- WWF's King of the Ring took place and many are calling it the worst PPV they'd ever seen. Dave doesn't personally go that far, but it was definitely bad. Dave compares Vince McMahon (and co-booker Jim Ross) to Bill Watts, saying that when times get desperate, they always fall back on what they know. In this case, that means pushing big men, which is why we saw Shawn Michaels eliminated in his first match and the winner ended up being Mabel.
- Other notes from the show: Razor Ramon didn't wrestle due to a rib injury but was ringside for Savio Vega's matches. Pretty much all the matches were terrible except Bret Hart vs. Jerry Lawler, which was decent. They aired a video of WWF stars working with the Special Olympics and Dave says it's pathetic how the company uses the Special Olympics to put themselves over and says, "don't confuse public relations with charity work." During the show (which took place in Philadelphia), there were tons of "ECW!" chants, especially during the Mabel/Vega match and they lowered the crowd audio (sounds familiar) when they figured out what the crowd was saying.
- The WWF Hall of Fame banquet took place the night before King of the Ring. Pedro Morales was inducted but no-showed the event. Morales does Spanish-language commentary for WCW and worried that appearing at the banquet would jeopardize his position in WCW. Otherwise, the ceremony was a classy affair and was considered a major success. Aside from Morales, the other inductees were The Grand Wizard, Ivan Putski, The Fabulous Moolah, George Steele, Ernie Ladd, and Antonino Rocca.
- Dave tries to explain some clusterfuck regarding the WCW tag team titles between the Nasty Boys, Harlem Heat, and Dick Slater/Bunkhouse Buck. I've read this three times and can't make sense of it, but WCW seemingly had Slater & Buck win the tag titles at a TV taping last month from Harlem Heat, and then a week or two later, aired a match on TV that had been taped back when the Nasty Boys were champions that showed Harlem Heat winning the titles, and then a week later, it wasn't acknowledged on TV. Or something like that. Anyway, point being, for now, the Nasty Boys are still recognized as the tag champions and all this "pre-taped 2 months in advance" nonsense and airing matches out of order that don't fit with current storylines has completely confused even Dave.
- Ultimate Warrior will be making his first U.S. wrestling appearance in over 2 years for an indie promoter in Las Vegas later this month. Word is Warrior is doing the show as a favor to his trainer from back in the 80s because otherwise, no indie promoters are willing to pay Warrior's absurdly high price to work shows.
- More on the Team Hogan vs. Team Flair divide in the WCW locker room. At this point, Hogan has full control over his storylines and angles, so the Hogan vs. Dungeon of Doom angle is all him. Flair is booking the rest of the company but has no power over any of Hogan's decisions.
- Paul Wight is expected to officially debut in a pre-taped segment at the Clash of the Champions in some sort of angle. WCW doesn't want a repeat of the Shockmaster fiasco and since Wight is so inexperienced (he's only had 1 match ever), it's better for him not to do any angles on live TV.
- The first episode of WCW's new Monday night show (still unnamed) has been pushed back to Sept. 4th. WWF Raw won't be airing that night because of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, so WCW won't be facing any wrestling competition for their first show, but they will be facing NFL Monday Night Football competition, which could be even tougher. WCW is negotiating with New Japan and other promotions and hoping to get Al Snow, Sabu, Eddie Guerrero, and others to appear on the first episode.
- IWA in Japan now has working relationship with EMLL in Mexico. IWA previously had a relationship with AAA but that recently fell apart, with IWA's president saying that he decided to end the relationship because he had Rey Mistero Jr. and Psicosis booked for shows, but AAA pulled both guys out 3 days before they were booked to wrestle. He says AAA is a disorganized company and that's why he's working with EMLL now. Dave says the reason AAA pulled Misterio and Psicosis from the IWA shows is because they finalized a new agreement with the much bigger New Japan promotion and NJPW didn't want those guys working for IWA.
- Road Warrior Hawk has reformed his tag team with Power Warrior in New Japan. Originally, it was believed Hawk would reunite with Animal and reform their team, but with Animal still tied up in a bunch of insurance red tape, his return to the ring has been delayed indefinitely, and Hawk isn't much use in Japan as a singles star.
- Antonio Inoki returned to North Korea and announced that New Japan and All Japan Women had been invited to do another major show there, no date given (never happened).
- Gordon Solie has been doing the English commentary for New Japan TV shows that air in Europe. There have been rumors that they want to syndicate New Japan shows in the U.S. later this year, with Gordon Solie doing commentary. Dave says you'd be hard-pressed to find a worse person to do commentary for Japanese wrestling.
- WWF's Undertaker and WCW's Vader appeared on the same show in USWA this week but they didn't interact on TV or anything. Undertaker was brought in as Bill Dundee's tag team partner and Vader showed up to demolish a few jobbers, with the idea being that Vader is going into other promotions to wreak havoc while challenging Hulk Hogan. They're calling it the Vader Roadkill Tour. Word is Vader got a bigger pop than Undertaker did.
- SMW is having a show next month called The Super Bowl of Wrestling and is bringing in a lot of outside wrestlers and using his WWF connections. It will feature Chris Benoit vs. Al Snow, the WWF IC champ (presumably Shawn Michaels) will defend his title, Dan Severn will defend the NWA title, USWA tag champions PG-13 will defend their belts, and Undertaker will face Unabom.
- Apparently there was a lot of heat on the Gangstas for leaving SMW before they were planned to, because they were scheduled to stick around through July but left in June. The team had been complaining to others in the promotion about their pay lately.
- Almost everyone in ECW is convinced that Shane Douglas is headed to WWF and it's just a matter of when, not if.
- Jake Roberts was on TBN (Trinity Broadcast Network, Christian TV channel) talking about his history of drug use while he was a wrestler and becoming religious and whatnot (this obviously isn't the video of Jake on TBN, but this is the video I found when I googled "Jake Roberts TBN" so hey, close enough. It's from 1995 and it's homemade footage of Jake in a church, telling his story. It's over an hour long, but it's a pretty incredible watch because, as we all know, Jake Roberts is captivating to listen to).
- 89-year-old Sam Muchnick, the former NWA president, was the subject of a major story in his local St. Louis newspaper this week and for the first time ever, Muchnick publicly admitted that wrestling matches are pre-determined. Obviously, it's something everyone already knew, but many people thought Muchnick would go to his grave before ever saying it publicly.
- Jim Crockett is apparently finished with pro wrestling for now and has pulled out of all indie promotions he was working with, and is no longer running his shows in Dallas at the Sportatorium (yup, that was it for Crockett. To this day, I don't think he's ever done anything else in the business).
- In the Where Are They Now department, former indie wrestler Jack Victory is managing a place called Club Oasis, which is a strip club in Atlanta.
- John Tenta (formerly Earthquake in WWF and Avalanche in WCW) re-debuted at the WCW tapings as The Shark, managed by Taskmaster (Kevin Sullivan). He wears a lot of face paint and has fake shark-like teeth. Gimmick is said to be really bad (it was. And the worst part: he had a tiger tattoo on his arm that he actually got legit covered up/changed into a shark, just for this gimmick. Talk about dedication).
- Steve Austin suffered a bicep injury in Japan and will be out for several weeks (this, of course, didn't lead to anything important, no, not at all....)
- At the latest Raw, Jerry Lawler said he was bringing in his personal dentist, Dr. Isaac Yankum, to fight Bret Hart. He said Yankum used to be a wrestler under a different name, which makes Dave suspect that it might end up being Shane Douglas, but he's not sure yet.
- Dustin Rhodes reportedly signed with WWF this week and should be debuting on TV soon.
- WWF's contract with the USA Network expires in December and WWF is reportedly negotiating with the E! Network as leverage to get a better deal from USA. Monday Night Raw is a ratings phenomenon, regularly setting the highest cable ratings each week. However, the E! Network doesn't even reach half as many homes as USA, so there's really no leverage there at all and WWF couldn't afford to move to that network even if they wanted to, so it's a pretty stupid leverage attempt.
- There's reports that WWF's prime-time NBC special a few weeks ago was cancelled due to pressure from NBA commissioner David Stern, who didn't want to allow any advertising for a pro wrestling show during the NBA playoff game that was going to be airing before it. So basically, because NBC wasn't going to be able to plug the special during the game, they just cancelled it.
- A guy who attended an ECW show writes in to the letters section and says he came away with mixed feelings. On one hand, he just saw an incredible Dean Malenko/Eddie Guerrero match. On the other hand, he felt the violence was excessive and pushed the envelope too far, with almost everyone blading and barbed wire and glass and all that stuff. Crews with mops literally mopped up the blood between matches. He also was upset about one of the chants. He has good friends and a relative that are gay and has witnessed the pain they endure from homophobic morons, so he was disappointed that wrestlers at the ECW show were encouraging fans to chant "Faggot!" at people and there was a guy in the front row (that aired on TV) holding a sign that said "Kill the queer." He says ECW is good enough and creative enough with their angles and in-ring work that they shouldn't have to play to the lowest common denominator (just out of curiosity, I googled the guy who wrote this letter, because I google all the letter-writer's names, just to see if they're anyone who later became famous or noteworthy. Happens pretty often. Anyway, turns out this guy is now an artist and does some pretty awesome Lucha Libre paintings.