April 22, 1996
- Brian Pillman was in a car accident and thrown 40 feet from his open-top Jeep and as of press time is hospitalized in Cincinnati with multiple fractures and cuts. Pillman ran off the road and struck a tree stump before the Jeep overturned. He's listed in critical condition but it's not expected to be life threatening. So far, no other details are available. This couldn't have come at a worse time for Pillman's career, as his WCW contract expired this week and he was basically in the midst of a bidding war between them and WWF and also had plans with ECW.
- Last week's Raw rating (unopposed by Nitro) did a 4.7 rating, which makes it the 2nd largest audience to ever see a pro wrestling show on cable TV (only trailing behind the 1988 Royal Rumble that aired on USA). The previous record rating for Raw was 3.9 so this rating is almost a full point higher than the previous record. There's no doubt that Ultimate Warrior's TV return is what primarily led to this monster rating. WWF knocked it out of the park as well, delivering one of the best episodes of Raw in the 3-year history of the show and smartly building towards the next PPV. As for this week's shows, Nitro was back on and sure enough, they started airing the show at 8:56pm in order to get a 1 minute jump on Raw, but WWF still beat them in the ratings this week as well.
- The lineup for Antonio Inoki's inter-promotional World Wrestling Peace Festival show has been released and WWF is not involved. Since it's taking place in Los Angeles (large Mexican population) and features top stars from both AAA and EMLL, Dave thinks it will probably draw pretty well locally, but without WWF's involvement, it probably won't get much attention from casual American fans. Several of the matches have potential to be good, and some of WCW's stars will be working against NJPW guys which will be interesting. There's still talk of adding a Terry Funk retirement match, possibly against Sabu. Inoki reportedly is still attempting to schedule a meeting with Vince McMahon to try and talk WWF into participating, but a WWF source has told Dave that Vince won't meet with Inoki and refuses to participate. Plus, WWF already has a house show scheduled that same day across the country in Florida and would have to pull stars from that show if they wanted to be involved.
- AAA's Triplemania IV-A will take place next month in Chicago. It's a risk, since AAA has only held 2 shows in Chicago before and neither of them did great and weren't profitable. Dave's really not sure why they're doing it since it will almost certainly lose money (yeah this show ends up being a disaster).
- Latest update on Pentagon (real name Jesus Salas), who was briefly clinically dead in the ring a few weeks ago, after mixing drugs and alcohol before a match. The only reason he survived is because the arena was so close to the hospital. He's still hospitalized and has suffered vision impairment and partial paralysis and his career is almost certainly over. The media is reporting that AAA has basically neglected him, while EMLL stars are working to collect money for his medical bills and are holding benefit shows. AAA has denied it and claims they have been paying for Pentagon's medical expenses and are furious that the media is using the tragic situation to try and hurt them.
- A new Dudley brother named D-Von Dudley debuted this week at ECW's show in New York.
- ECW is still doing the angle with Beulah claiming to be pregnant, but it's been going on for a few months now and she still looks to be around 90 pounds and is way too skinny to be this far along in a pregnancy so obviously, no one buys it. Dave's not sure how they're going to get out of the angle. They did a bit a couple of weeks ago where the Bruise Brothers held her while Raven was going to kick her in the stomach, but Kimona Wanalaya jumped in front of her to stop it from happening.
- Lou Thesz just turned 80 and Dave says he almost feels guilty for not giving Thesz's autobiography enough praise last week and says it's a must-read for anyone with an interest in wrestling history.
- Brian Adams (formerly Crush in WWF until he was fired after being arrested on weapons charges) is currently filming a role in a martial arts movie in Canada. (So this is amazing. It's a super cheesy Bollywood movie called Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi. Here's the full movie. The movie basically starts with a wrestling match with Crush, completely in his old Crush WWF gimmick, wrestling against a total Undertaker clone in a shitty little ring. It's hilarious).
- At an indie show in Compton, a fan threw a Coke at one of the wrestlers. That wrestler dragged the fan out of the crowd and began to beat his ass when the fan pulled a gun out to defend himself. Security escorted him away and he was later allowed to return to the building and watch the rest of the show as long as he left his gun in the car.
- Hulk Hogan was reportedly taking time off to do a movie so they planned to do an injury angle on the most recent Nitro. However, at the last minute, Hogan decided not to do the injury angle, and instead, he won a handicap match and no-sold The Giant's chokeslam during the show. So for now, Hogan is sticking around because the movie deal isn't finalized.
- There's talk of WCW Nitro expanding to 2 hours each night. It would generate more money for WCW which they could use to acquire even more stars and also give them an hour jump on WWF's Raw. Dave thinks 2 hours might be overexposure. Oh, the days...
- Lanny Poffo (Randy Savage's brother) is likely heading to WCW doing a Gorgeous George gimmick.
- WCW is again reportedly considering moving its base of operations from Atlanta to Orlando and having WCW become a permanent part of Disney's theme parks. The plan would be for regular daily wrestling exhibitions, which would give the younger wrestlers a chance to work in front of a crowd and give them experience.
- Tony Schiovane has signed a new 2-year contract.
- Chris Benoit is about to start a feud with Kevin Sullivan, filling the role that Brian Pillman had formerly been in. Surely nothing important ever comes out of that.
- Dave suggests the Giant needs to go work some tours in New Japan. For one, Giant should be more of a special attraction type of wrestler and would work better and be more over if he wasn't around every week to get beat up by Hogan. And secondly, he would develop much faster into a better worker if he's working nightly with New Japan's guys. Dave also thinks Giant would get over huge in Japan because of his size.
- Eric Bischoff made a bunch of interesting statements in a couple of newspaper interviews this past week. Bischoff denied reports that Kevin Nash is getting a $700,000 three-year deal and that Nash doesn't have a deal with WCW. Dave thinks Bischoff is working some sort of angle here by denying that Nash is coming to WCW (boy, I'll say). Bischoff also praised Brian Pillman and said he's very talented but said the reason Pillman has become such a hot commodity is because of himself and Kevin Sullivan's booking. He said that Hogan and Savage weren't bothered by the Billionaire Ted skits, which Dave completely scoffs at because he knows they were, especially since they were talking about suing Vince McMahon over them at one point.
- When asked about giving away Raw results on Nitro, Bischoff said, "Because I enjoy it. Yeah, that's another break the rules kind of thing. I'm out to kind of re-invent what wrestling is. If people want me to produce a wrestling show under the same rules, same guidelines, using the same formulas that have been done for years and years, then they're going to be really upset with me because I'm not going to do that. For wrestling to grow, for us to get the attention of the masses of bodies, I'm not talking about the hardcore obsessed fan out there, but I'm talking about the people that make up that 3.0 and 3.5 rating. for me to make this fun to watch, I've got to do things that are a little outside the box, so to speak. And one of the things I like to do is break rules. And if one of the rules is, 'Don't ever acknowledge your competition, don't ever give away the results of a show that you're heads-up against,' then I'm going to break every rule."
- When asked about the possibility of sitting down with Vince McMahon to settle the feud, Bischoff said, "Vince McMahon is an egomaniacal punk. And Vince McMahon's ego would not allow him to sit down. First of all, Vince McMahon's ego won't ever allow him to admit that I'm the one who is kicking his ass every week. He's out there trying to paint this picture that Ted Turner is beating him up. Ted Turner has so many things he has to tend to. I don't think Vince McMahon's name flashes through Ted Turner's mind more than once a year or twice a year. Ted Turner doesn't make the day-to-day decisions about WCW. He hasn't hired anybody, hasn't negotiated any deals that I've negotiated over the last year-and-a-half, hasn't made any decisions that have really catapulted WCW to the position we're in right now. But Vince McMahon wants the world to believe that it's a battle between him and Ted turner. I guess he figures he can draw more sympathy by saying he gets beat up by Ted Turner than by realizing he gets beat up by Eric Bischoff. So, as long as his ego and his sense of reality is as contorted as it is, I don't ever see the opportunity to sit down and discuss." (Dave interjects to say that Turner not thinking about Vince might have been true at one time, but the Billionaire Ted skits certainly got his attention).
- In regards WWF's accusations about WCW's steroid policy, Bischoff said, "That's very interesting coming out of a guy who uses his drug-testing procedure, apparently based on what we're hearing, with selective enforcement." There were reportedly other comments Bischoff made about how it was a convenient "coincidence" that Razor Ramon was suspended on the same day he gave WWF notice that he was leaving but those comments were cut from the article so Dave doesn't have them.
- Vince McMahon's response to all this has been to act shocked that Bischoff said those things and said he doesn't even know Bischoff and only met him once (when Bischoff was at WWF's offices auditioning for an announcing job one time, which he didn't get).
- Randy Savage will be doing a voice on Cartoon Network's show "Dial M For Monkey." (This show actually aired as part of Dexter's Labratory).
- WWF aired an interview on Raw with Bret Hart, mostly to quell rumors of Hart going to WCW. Bret acknowledged it in the interview, saying another company is throwing lots of money around and basically called the guys who are leaving greedy.
- Most people feel it's a matter of when Hart returns to WWF rather than if. No one really expects him to retire yet. But this storyline is based on a lot of reality. Bret Hart was legitimately mad about dropping the title to Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania and hasn't been shy with his feelings about Shawn not being mature enough for the position. His taking time off apparently has more to do with being upset with the company rather than about pursuing acting opportunities.
- Both Razor Ramon and Diesel's last day with WWF will be at the 5/19 show at Madison Square Garden. Doubt anything interesting happens there. Also, there's no truth to the rumors that Razor wanted to stay with WWF and was turned down (if I recall, I think Dave was wrong on that one. I believe Scott Hall himself has told the story of going to Vince and saying he wanted to stay and if Vince could come close to matching WCW's offer, he would have stayed, but Vince said he couldn't).
- Yokozuna is currently at a dietary clinic at Duke University to try and lose weight.
- Goldust blew out his knee at a show in Germany and missed the next show. No word how bad the injury is (bad enough. He ended up sorta working the In Your House PPV with Warrior but did nothing in the match and was out for another month after).
- Mr. Perfect is expected to return to the ring later this year, probably to feud with Shawn Michaels (nay).
- Pat Patterson is still retired and was only a guest at Wrestlemania 12. He's moving back to Connecticut in May but sources say he won't be going back to work for WWF (mmmhmm...)
- Expect Davey Boy Smith to get a big push soon and for his wife Diana Smith to be involved somehow.
- The original plan for Ultimate Warrior vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley at Wrestlemania was for the match to be more competitive but Warrior reportedly "vehemently refused" to do anything that would help Helmsley, so that's the match we got.
- A guy who was at Wrestlemania writes in and confirms Dave's impressions of the Bret/Shawn Ironman match, saying that there was pretty much total silence from the crowd during the match and that kids in the crowd spent the whole time bored out of their minds because WWF caters to kids and kids naturally have short attention spans. WWF has spent years educating fans to expect quick 5 minute TV matches, so asking them to be excited for a 62 minute match was a bad idea.