July 24, 1995
- Ken Shamrock defeated Dan Severn in 2:15 by submission at UFC 6, but everyone is talking about Tank Abbott, who, despite losing, came out of the show as the biggest topic of conversation. Abbott was basically a loose cannon all weekend, starting trouble with other fighters and generally being a nuisance. He's also an undisciplined fighter, pretty much just a wild street fighter and people expected him to get schooled by skilled martial artists. But it didn't happen. Instead, Abbott dominated his way through the tournament in quick fashion, but before the finals, it was believed he was totally blown up and exhausted and wouldn't stand a chance of hanging with his opponent, Oleg Taktarov. In the end, Abbott lost, but he lasted 18 minutes with Oleg and in the end, Oleg still had to be hospitalized from the beating Abbott gave him, while Tank still looked like he could keep going.
- WCW's Bash at the Beach PPV took place and Dave was there. Since it was outdoors on the beach and there were no bleacher seats, most fans beyond the first few rows couldn't see much and Dave says it was one of the worst live experiences he's ever had at a wrestling show. On PPV, the announcers repeatedly referred to "hundreds of thousands" of people being in attendance, which is just too ridiculous to debate. The real number that was actually there watching the show were probably in the 9,000 range but maybe WCW was just counting all the people currently on any beach in the United States. They also hyped the next PPV, Collision From Korea, "in front of 300,000 fans." Dave says yeah, if you add both shows together. It was also advertised as a joint WCW/NJPW show, which is silly because there was only 1 WCW wrestler (Flair) there. ECW had 4, so really, by that logic, it's more of an ECW/NJPW show but WCW's lies are out of control at this point anyway. Dave seems just exasperated over it all.
- Other notes from the show: a woman took her top off at ringside during the DDP/Dave Sullivan match, which made the crowd pop and then they booed when she was taken away. Hogan beat Vader in a cage match by climbing out, which means Vader managed to get through an entire months-long feud with Hogan without ever eating a pinfall. Afterwards, Vader seemingly turned face against Flair. Everything else mostly sucked.
- Speaking of Tank Abbott, fresh off the UFC 6 PPV, he was backstage at the WCW PPV, meeting with Eric Bischoff. Word is that it was to negotiate a deal for Abbott to work in K-1 in Japan (which Bischoff has been trying to co-promote shows with).
- Ultimate Warrior was also backstage at the PPV, discussing ideas for a 1996 feud with Hogan. But given that WWF owns the Warrior name and likeness, Dave thinks it's unlikely to happen (unless he legally changes his name to Warrior or something, but c'mon, that's just too silly to ever happen right?).
- Wild Pegasus (Chris Benoit) won the Top of the Super Juniors tournament in New Japan. In one of the matches, he defeated Black Tiger (Eddie Guerrero) with a tombstone off the top rope, which seems to have blown Dave's mind and led Guerrero to sell it like crazy and do a stretcher job.
- IWA in Japan announced the lineup for the largest show in its history (later named the King of the Death Match tournament) and, among other names, features Cactus Jack and Terry Funk. The show will take place next month (that becomes pretty famous. We'll get there...).
- In USWA, Brian Christopher broke his shoulder in a match with Billy Jack Haynes and is expected to miss about 6 weeks.
- Al Snow worked a tryout match at the latest WCW tapings and was said to look great. He also has a tryout with WWF in a few days. Disco Inferno also got a WCW tryout and reportedly has already been offered a spot.
- WCW's Monday night show will be called "Wrestling Nitro" or something like that. The first episode on 9/4 is scheduled to be taped in Miami (nope). Word is the budget for the show was apparently only about 1/3 or what Eric Bischoff was expecting and hoping for.
- WCW has been claiming Renegade was trained by Killer Kowalski, however, Kowalski has been denying any knowledge of Renegade. Dave doesn't blame him, given how horrible Renegade is.
- Ed Leslie is attempting to try and legally get the rights to use the Brutus Beefcake name, arguing that even though WWF owns the name, since they don't have a character using the gimmick, he should be allowed to use it. Greg Valentine is currently fighting the WWF on the same issue regarding his "The Hammer" nickname.
- Hulk Hogan is reportedly pushing WCW to bring back El Gigante, "as if things aren't bad enough" Dave says.
- WWF will be filming another Jeff Jarrett music video soon, which will introduce a line dance called the Double J Strut.
- King of the Ring did a 0.65 buyrate, making it by far the lowest buyrate in WWF history. Dave says if you had told him a year ago that UFC would be doing double WWF's buyrates, he'd have thought you were out of your mind, yet here we are.
- Lawrence Taylor is telling people that he will never wrestle again, calling it the biggest mistake of his career, likely due to all the negative publicity he received in the sports world.