Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 09, 1995

At a talent meeting before the In Your House PPV, Vince McMahon announced to the wrestlers that Bill Watts will be taking on a larger share of creative responsibility. McMahon will be spending more time in his role as corporate executive and Watts is taking over many of his duties when it comes to creative aspects of TV and PPVs. Vince will still work with Watts but said he won't overrule him (can you imagine? Pffft). It's expected Watts is going to focus on trying to bring up ratings for all the other TV shows, since most fans only watch Raw now. So expect more major angles taking place on the Superstars TV show to try to revive those falling ratings. There's also been talk of doing a major push for a black babyface, which will likely be Tony Norris (Ahmed Johnson).
The meeting was described as "anti-WCW" and also focused on the Monday night head-to-head situation, with Vince saying WWF isn't interested in running live shows every week. Vince blasted WCW in the meeting for putting their show on Monday, saying it shows they're more interested in hurting WWF than they are about doing good business for themselves, which he said is stupid. Bill Watts also spoke on WCW, blaming his failed tenure there on a corporate structure that didn't understand wrestling. Watts said that with the Time Warner merger, he wouldn't be surprised if they dropped wrestling altogether, but Vince said he hoped it didn't happen because it would be bad for the business as a whole. This led to a big discussion of "what would happen if WCW went out of business" and Vince gave the impression that he didn't care for most of the talent in WCW. He was particularly negative about Hogan, saying he would never work in WWF again. As for Lex Luger, Vince's comment was, "We'll see him in court." Vince's most positive comments were about Sting, Brian Pillman, and Harlem Heat. Vince said the cost of doing Nitro live every week was $150,000 and WWF couldn't afford to spend that much each week. So they will continue doing the taped shows, but will "tease" next week's episode each week by showing highlights of what will happen. Vince said WCW has been trying to put WWF out of business for 7 years and have always failed and that Ted Turner tried to buy WWF (over 10 years ago) and said Turner has held a grudge over Vince refusing. Vince said WWF has better talent, better production, and a better product and that's why WCW will fail. He said he could retaliate against WCW and said, "Everyone knows I can be a very evil person but in this case, I don't have to be."
In a huge shake up in the Mexican wrestling scene, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera, promoter Raul Reyes and Ricardo Reyes were all fired by AAA this week. The 4 were among the most important people in the company and all were involved in booking and promoting shows as well as Panther and Guerrera being two of the top stars. Word is the 4 were all working secretly together to form their own promotion and were quietly trying to poach AAA stars to join their new company. When AAA found out, naturally, they were immediately fired. They still plan to start their own promotion. Perro Aguayo, Cien Caras, and Konnan all turned them down.
Dave talks about the recent downfall of AAA. It's believed they are having some money troubles and many of the wrestlers are owed money. Dave blames a lot of AAA's problems on the economic crisis in Mexico that has caused the peso to lose so much value, which caused their parent company Televisa to completely cut off their backing of AAA, leaving AAA president Anthony Pena to completely run the business on his own. Many also point to the death of Art Barr as the moment when AAA started to go downhill and Dave says that even if he had lived, AAA wouldn't be able to afford him anymore.
A second Super J Cup tournament has been announced in New Japan, which will feature junior heavyweights from around the world and will take place in December. Dave says that last year's Super J Cup tournament was "without a doubt one of the greatest pro wrestling shows in history."
In ECW, they're planning to do a Public Enemy vs. Gangstas street fight that will actually take place in the street on a trestle about a block from the arena. They may even be setting up a ring there but Dave's not sure (this didn't end up happening).
Don't expect Sabu to come back to ECW any time soon, if ever. Sabu is working an NWA show for Dennis Coraluzzo in NJ in a few weeks and it's the same night as an ECW show nearby. Paul Heyman is adamant that if Sabu works against them, he won't ever bring him back to ECW. As a side note, Sabu hasn't actually signed with WCW and is working there without a contract at the moment.
NFL football star John Ayres passed away this week and Dave notes that Ayres was friends with a lot of wrestlers who played football with him in college (Tully Blanchard, Ted Dibiase, Tito Santano, Manny Fernandez) and through them, was also close friends with Terry Funk, Dusty Rhodes, Ric Flair, and Terry Taylor. He dabbled in refereeing after his football career ended.
Terry Funk plans to take the rest of the year off from wrestling to heal up some injuries. At age 51, he's talked about it possibly being time to finally hang up the boots and retire. ECW and AAA are both interested in using him, and he has a movie role lined up for early 1996 so it may be awhile before he's back in the ring (I can't find any movies he did in 1996).
Ultimate Warrior is telling people he won't come back to WWF because Vince McMahon is a control freak and that he won't be going to WCW either.
Porn star Tiffany Mellons was on Geraldo, talking about being a pro wrestler. Dave confirms that, yes she did indeed wrestle for GLOW in the mid-80s.
It's been rumored that Al Snow will be given a gimmick based on the movie The Crow when he shows up in WWF but it looks like that won't be happening anymore (iiiiinteresting. I wonder if that was Scott Hall's idea. He was still in WWF at this time. And when he went to WCW, he's the one who gave the Crow idea to Sting).
There's been talk of doing a wedding angle between Col. Robert Parker and Sherri Martel. Dave seems to think this is just the height of ridiculousness but, I mean, I've heard of way dumber stuff so I don't know why he seems to think it's dumb.
TV ratings for the week have been delayed because of the O.J. Simpson verdict, which is expected to set record high ratings and threw things into chaos.
Both WWF and WCW have been confiscating signs from fans at Raw and Nitro and in WCW's case, they actually handed out pre-made signs to fans. But many fans brought markers with them and were just writing whatever they wanted on the backs of the approved signs which led to those being confiscated as well.
Ric Flair wasn't supposed to be wrestling yet because he had been told to stay out of the ring for 4 weeks after his cataract eye surgery. But WCW felt they needed him immediately. Flair was warned that if something happened, he was risking losing sight in his eye but WCW pushed him on it, so he ended up working the show without medical clearance. Flair was trying to get WCW to pay him extra to do it, but no word if they actually did.
Fortune Magazine did a piece on the WWF vs. WCW wars and painted WCW in a much nicer light, talking about WCW winning in the ratings and talking about how Slim Jim moved their sponsorship from WWF to WCW.
There has been talk of having Starrcade take place at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Several NJPW stars are expected to be brought in and Dave thinks it could be one of the best shows of the year, in-ring wise, but how they hope to get all these matches over to the general public is the big question (that Starrcade ended up being the big WCW vs. evil NJPW show. The idea of holding that show at Pearl Harbor is....wow.)
Speaking of not getting matches over, WCW aired an Eddie Guerrero vs. Jushin Liger match on the Sunday Main Event show. The crowd had no real knowledge or reason to care for either guy so they were completely silent the whole time, and WCW later edited in shitty crowd noise to cover for it. And then Dusty Rhodes and Tony Schiovane were terrible on commentary, with Schiovane calling Guerrero's frog splash a "jackknife." The match was great otherwise.
The Sheik may not be appearing with Sabu at Halloween Havoc after all. Word is Sheik refuses to appear in public unless he can walk to the ring without a limp and right now, he can't, so he doesn't want to be seen hobbling to the ring in his hometown.
Vader is still suspended but hasn't technically been fired yet. He was recently shown on the sidelines of the recent Colorado/Oklahoma college football game.
Interesting quote from Dave: "There were people more upset than you'd think about the Steve Austin interview on the ECW show last week where he mocked Hulk Hogan." And that's all he says. Elaborate, dammit Dave!
Randy Savage will be appearing on the Comedy Central show Politically Incorrect later this month.
Barbarian and Warlord are heading to WCW as a tag team, according to the WCW Hotline.
A lot of people within WWF are against the idea of bringing back Jeff Jarrett due to the way he walked out and say that bringing him back sets a bad example of what is tolerated. Others in the company have defended him, saying that Jarrett was a model employee before he walked out and that he was correct in thinking they were going to kill his character with the angle they were planning.
Still no details on the Tatanka situation, but word is he won't be brought back until his legal situation is cleared up. Tatanka was reportedly involved in an incident with a woman in a hotel back in December, but that's all Dave knows.
On Raw, they ran a poll asking fans to vote on whether O.J. Simpson was guilty or innocent and promised to donate the proceeds to abused children's charities. It got a lot of backlash because the charities were never contacted about it and didn't like having their names tied to a double-murder case. WWF sent apology letters to all the charities they involved.
WWF claimed that Raw was the most watched episode of Raw ever, which is true if you add the Monday rating and the Thursday night replay rating together, but obviously that's misleading as hell. In fact, if you want to start including the replay ratings, that means WCW Nitro has beaten Raw every single week.
The letters section is basically a bunch of people with the same basic complaints we all have today. Why does WWE WCW have all these great workers like Cesaro, Sami Zayn, Luke Harper, etc. Guerrero, Benoit, Malenko, etc. but continue to push people like Roman Reigns, John Cena, etc. Beefcake, Kevin Sullivan, Kamala, etc. A story as old as time, it seems. There is one guy who writes in and completely scoffs at the idea that Shawn Michaels even belongs in the conversation for best wrestler of the year. "Get serious," he says to Dave.