October 02, 1995
- Turner Broadcasting, which owns WCW, is officially planning a merger with Time Warner. It will result in the largest media conglomerate in the world and will include TBS, CNN, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, the Atlanta Hawks, the Atlanta Braves, HBO, People Magazine, Time Warner Cable, and more. To give you an idea of how huge this will be, WCW represents only 1/20th of 1% of the total organization. Anyway, what this will mean for WCW remains to be seen.
- WWF's In Your House 3 took place last week and was...meh. Savio Vega beat Waylon Mercy, which is the end of Mercy's push because his knees and back are so bad that he moves like Andre The Giant did near the end (indeed, Mercy retired a month later due to injuries). Shane "Dean" Douglas beat Razor Ramon but didn't look great. Bret Hart and Jean Pierre stole the show with a great match. Yokozuna has to be legitimately pushing 700 pounds and it's scary. And the main event ended in a screwjob that got reversed the next night on TV.
- The first live head-to-head battle between Raw and Nitro was a clear victory for WWF, with Raw getting a 2.7 rating to WCW's 1.9. WWF ratings going up slightly after a PPV is normal, but WCW dropping so much from last week is probably a little worrying.
- Since the All Japan Women's match on the Collision in Korea PPV got such a good response, WCW attempted to book those same women for an upcoming PPV and Nitro. Well, WWF has also contacted AJW and wants to bring in 6 of their women to work a match at Survivor Series along with Alundra Blayze and Bertha Faye. WWF specifically wants Bull Nakano, but AJW has already promised her to WCW so that likely won't happen. But WWF still wants her and since their PPV is a week before WCWs, it's possible that these women will end up working for both WWF and WCW within a week of each other. For what it's worth, there's talk that WWF will be phasing out the women's division and allowing Blayze to return to AJW full-time in the near future. The division has pretty much been a failure since they revived it less than 2 years ago.
- The economic crisis in Mexico is hitting the wrestling business hard. The major shows still draw well, but the weekly arena shows for both promotions are taking a massive attendance hit, as well as merchandise sales.
- A week after being fired by WCW, Steve Austin appeared at an ECW house show and will be on ECW TV this coming week. He's still 6 weeks away from being recovered enough from his injury to wrestle. As soon as he's healthy, he will almost certainly be made ECW world champion as quickly as they can get the belt on him. Austin may be looking into working in All Japan, which would allow him to make a good living while still working in ECW. In his first promo, Austin mocked Hulk Hogan by calling himself "The Stevester" and said "Steve-O-Mania" was running wild, among other things. Dave found it amusing.
- Steve Williams is reportedly planning to move from his home in Baton Rouge to Maui, which pretty much says that he sees Japan as the long-term future of his career.
- Razor Ramon is negotiating to get WWF to let him work some All Japan dates (I think I've heard Scott Hall talk about this, saying that he wanted to stay in WWF but he wasn't making enough money and he asked Vince to let him work part-time in Japan so he could stay with WWF and make some extra money on the side but Vince wouldn't allow it, so he simply had to take the WCW money).
- Before starting the UWFI/NJPW angle, UWFI tried to make a deal with All Japan to do the angle first. They called Giant Baba to arrange it, but Baba didn't even return the phone call. AJPW is a totally isolationist promotion and flat out doesn't work with other companies.
- This bit of news requires some backstory: back in the old days, the NWA champion traveled around to each territory to defend the one and only NWA title. But there were were multiple versions of the NWA U.S. title, with pretty much each region having its own U.S. title. In the Detroit territory, The Sheik was the most well-known U.S. champion. Anyway....Sabu is pushing WCW to do an angle where he comes in with The Sheik and brings in the old Detroit U.S. title belt to challenge for Sting's U.S. title in a feud over who the real U.S. champion is. Dave says Sabu is desperately trying to break out of the "junior heavyweight/cruiserweight" category that WCW wants to pigeonhole him in (along with guys like Guerrero, Benoit, etc.)
- One of FMW's top stars, Mr. Pogo, has left the promotion. He was making $120,000 a year which was a lot of money, but FMW had no problem paying it during the heyday of Onita when they were drawing tens of thousands of people. But since Onita's retirement, business is way down and they fell behind on money they owed him, so he's gone.
- An SMW show that was supposed to be held outdoors on a high school football field was cancelled due to cold and rainy weather. But nobody told the wrestlers, so they all made the trip to the show, only to find out after they arrived that it had been cancelled, so they were pissed.
- In ECW, Cactus Jack has started a new gimmick where he's turning on the hardcore fans by wrestling boring, scientific matches. He'd tease using weapons and then tell the fans they don't deserve it and go back to doing headlocks.
- Speaking of, here's a quote from Dave: "Cactus Jack did one of the greatest interviews in the history of wrestling on the 9/19 television show. I write that every week, but he tops himself every week." This would, of course, be the legendary "Cane Dewey" promo, with Cactus Jack telling Tommy Dreamer that being hardcore isn't worth it. And yeah...it really is one of the most incredible promos in history. If you only know Mick Foley as the goofy Christmas-loving guy who's reading cheap pop city names off the palm of his hand and getting emasculated by Stephanie every week, watch this and see how amazing he could be.
- Bruce Hart is trying to put together a show in Calgary for the 50th anniversary of Stu Hart's wrestling debut. He's wanting to put together an all-star lineup of former Stampede wrestlers and is hoping to get Bret and Owen Hart, Davey Boy Smith, Jim Neidhart, Brian Pillman, Chris Benoit, and more. Needless to say, breaking down all the political barriers that would allow both WWF and WCW stars to work this indie show will be unlikely (it actually happened).
- Ric Flair had surgery to remove a cataract from his eye and should be back in the ring soon.
- Fall Brawl did a .48 buyrate, which is the lowest WCW buyrate this year and by far the lowest of any PPV Hulk Hogan has appeared on.
- Ric Flair has been trying to get Sting to team up with him, which of course, will lead to Flair turning on him. Flair is the most over babyface in the company right now (no thanks to WCW management) and Dave thinks it would be a lot more interesting if Sting turned heel, because it would open up a ton of fresh scenarios. But Flair desperately wants to return to being heel.
- SMW wrestler D-Lo Brown got a tryout at the latest Raw tapings. Also, Tony Norris worked another dark match, using the name Ahmed Johnson. He had used the name Ahmed Williams the night before.
- WWF flew both Jeff Jarrett and Adam Bomb in to the tapings to meet with them about returning. Adam Bomb turned them down. No word on how the meeting with Jarrett went.
- The Diesel/Jean Pierre story got more heated the night after Pierre refused to put him over in Montreal. They had a rematch the next night in Quebec City and at some point, Pierre landed badly on Diesel during a move, which led to Diesel immediately getting up and punching the shit out of Pierre legit before jackknifing him to end the match.
- Owen Hart's wife Martha just gave birth to a baby girl named Amanda last week.
- WWF contacted Tom Brandi (known as Johnny Gunn in ECW) about coming in, doing a motorcycle cop gimmick, designed like Erik Estrada on CHiPs. You know. The show that ended in 1983. Because Vince is nothing if not timely when it comes to pop culture. Dave says, "Next thing you know they'll want to bring in Chris Cruise as an announcer and give him an astronaut gimmick based on Larry Hagman in I Dream of Jeannie."
- Jim Cornette writes in to the letters section with a classic Cornette letter that I'm just going to copy and paste in full:
- Over the past several weeks, it has become obvious that Smoky Mountain Wrestling is woefully behind the times and has made many mistakes in its company structure. Following successful promotions' example seems to be the only avenue to our survival. Unfortunately, there are no successful promotions, so I have arbitrarily decided to follow the example of Paul E. Dangerheyman's ECW, using as a gauge to their success the number of lines they receive in the Readers' Pages per issue, divided by the number of lawsuits they are currently involved in for non-payment of bills, multiplied by the number of times Joey Styles' voice cracks per show, times the number of wrestling matches in 1995 not involving barbed wire (2) to get a successful rating on the Finster scale of 17.
- From this point forward, in SMW, if merchandise orders were screwed up, I could yell at Brian Hildebrand. If the arena contracts were screwed up, it was Sandy Scott's fault. If the tape dubs were lousy, Tommy Noe was at fault. If the TV commentary was lousy, Chip Kessler and Les Thatcher were to blame. If the ring didn't get set up right, Harold Varner and his helpers were responsible. If anything else wasn't right, it was my fault.
- From this point onward, this pattern of responsibility, culpability and accountability will cease, as it would be with any REAL business. Sandy Scott will now become Grumpy Promotions, Inc. a division of Global Ornery. Tommy Noe is TN Distributions, a subsidiary of the PTL Club. Harold Varner is Howard, Fine and Howard Associates. Chip Kessler and Les Thatcher become Two Guys Calling Rasslin and Plumbing Inc. Brian Hildebrand will form Worldwide Gerbil/A Division of Muffinworks. Jim Cornette is being replaced by Universal Hothead Productions, Asshole, Ltd.
- Also, if anyone can find a professional wrestler that I have owed money to for more than ten days, I will agree to a payment plan of $14.72 on the first Tuesday of every month that the moon is blue. I heard that WCW was soon to be incorporated for the wrestling business, but I misunderstood. They're soon to be incarcerated for what they've done to the wrestling business.
- Jim Cornette, President
- Smoky Mountain Wrestling
- Morristown, Tennessee