Wrestling Observer Rewinder

April 29, 1996

Brian Pillman was released from the hospital last week, 4 days after suffering numerous serious injuries in a car accident. When police and medics arrived on the scene of the accident, Pillman had lost so much blood that they initially believed he wouldn't survive. His face was so swollen that his own sister couldn't identify him at the hospital and he spent the first day in the hospital in the burn unit. The worst injury was a completely crushed ankle, and they had to remove a bone from his hip to use in the surgery to reconstruct it. He also suffered a broken nose, fractured cheekbone, and dislocated jaw and had facial surgery to fix all that and currently has his jaw wired shut. Pillman wasn't wearing his seat belt, which probably saved his life in this case, as he would have been crushed inside the vehicle otherwise. Pillman will obviously be out of action for awhile, but it's believed that he will make a full recovery and the injuries shouldn't be too much of a hindrance to his career, as he's been in negotiations with both WWF and WCW recently and will still probably end up signing with one or the other.
The Giant won the WCW title on a Nitro taping that will air next week (won't air live because Bischoff and several other WCW stars will be in Japan). Dave is critical of the decision to take the belt off Flair, who's still among the best in the company and thinks this might expose The Giant. He also doesn't think The Giant needs the title, since he's already an attraction without it. Fun fact, The Giant is only 24 and this makes him one of the youngest people to ever win the title (Lou Thesz is the youngest, winning it when he was 21 back in 1937). But The Giant is the first wrestler to ever win it in his rookie year (he debuted at Halloween Havoc just 6 months ago and prior to that had only ever worked 1 match on an indie show).
Goldust's knee injury is a torn MCL. He's expected to still work his match against Ultimate Warrior at In Your House but probably won't do much and will have to take some time off after that. He's been told that he can rehab the knee and he probably won't need surgery, but will have to be out of action for a little while
Pancrase had a PPV and it did a decent buyrate for a promotion that has next to no coverage in the U.S. Dave says this might be good news for ECW because even though they have limited TV exposure, they still have a much larger American audience than Pancrase had, which means it's possible that ECW might be able to do a decent (by their standards) buyrate when/if they hold their first PPV.
ECW had what is believed to be pro wrestling's "first lesbian moment." Beulah revealed that she was never pregnant and that she had been cheating on Tommy Dreamer with Kimona Wanalaya. The 2 women started making out, which got a huge pop and then Tommy Dreamer started kissing both of them and left the ring with them, to go have "a new kind of three-way dance."
The 56-year-old Buffalo War Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, NY is being torn down this summer and the final event in the arena will be a WCW event. The show will pay tribute to local celebrity and former wrestler Ilio DiPaolo, who passed away last year. Many wrestling legends and friends of DiPaolo are expected to make appearances, including Bruno Sammartino (the arena did indeed close in 1996 but wasn't actually demolished until 2009).
Of the 24 AAA wrestlers who were suspended a few weeks ago in Tijuana by the athletic commission, all have been reinstated except for Konnan. The suspension was due to a lumberjack match where all the wrestlers outside the ring were brawling with chairs and other weapons, which the commission believed endangered the fans. At the later hearing, pretty much all the wrestlers pointed the finger at Konnan and said he was the one who told them to use chairs and brawl with each other (he was booking the show). So he's still suspended.
Jeff Jarrett recently returned from injury and has been working some USWA shows, but hasn't returned to WWF yet. It's believed his WWF contract expires some time in the fall and there's word that he may jump to WCW when it does (indeed, that's what happens. He spent most of 96 working in USWA before going to WCW).
If you recall, ECW banned blading after the Tommy Morrison HIV story. But this week, Raven and one of the Bruise Brothers were both accidentally busted open during matches. Paul Heyman said that for insurance reasons, he's not even considering bringing blading back right now. But Heyman did say that he overestimated how big the Tommy Morrison story would end up being and admitted that blading will probably return to ECW eventually.
Devon Storm (later known as Crowbar) worked an ECW show this week and is apparently done with WCW. Storm was on a nightly deal with WCW and said he wasn't getting enough bookings to pay his bills. Storm is currently attending medical school.
Other notes from recent ECW shows: one of the Bruise Brothers threw a chair in the crowd and hit a fan and Paul Heyman was furious backstage about it. J.T. Smith was injured "because D-Von Dudley didn't know how to give a chairshot without killing anyone" and a week later, Smith's ears are still ringing from D-Von stiffing him with the chair. At the next show, D-Von overcompensated by giving really weak chairshots that looked terrible.
Superstar Billy Graham was advertised to appear at an indie show, but is saying he won't be there and the advertising is a misunderstanding. Graham is big into religious work these days and says he doesn't think appearing at a pro wrestling show is right for him.
Hulk Hogan will be taking time off from WCW to go film a movie. The tentative plan is for Hogan to return in August to face either Scott Hall or Kevin Nash, although that plan will probably change 50 times between now and then (I'll say). The timing is pretty smart, because ratings always fall during the summer. So Hogan has spent the last few months beating guys like The Giant and then he takes off while The Giant carries the company as champion and the ratings drop. And then when Hogan returns, the ratings start to go back up again in the fall and Hogan can claim responsibility for rising ratings when negotiating his new contract (which expires later this year). Well, no one ever said the guy was stupid.
Ric Flair missed his flight to a recent WCW house show because his son Reid was in an amateur wrestling tournament and he kept winning and advancing in the tournament, so Flair didn't leave until it was over (Reid ended up placing 3rd in his age group).
The Shark (John Tenta) has been released by WCW. He was making $250,000 per year and was cut to make room for the salaries of Hall and Nash.
On Nitro, Eric Bischoff once again gave away the pre-taped results of Raw. He also sent get-well wishes to Brian Pillman.
Eric Bischoff gave an interview and told his side of the story of Johnny B. Badd (Marc Mero) leaving WCW: "People want to jump all over this thing and paint me as Satan because that's kind of in vogue right now, but Johnny came to me and expressed his concern. And what did we do? We changed it. If you look at the television, it's quite obvious. We didn't have a problem with it. I was concerned he was taking his professional on-camera life way too seriously. He had a problem with Kimberly as his valet because he doesn't know how to answer his daughter. I understand that. We made the change. But what happens if we need him to take on a different character? Where is the line? How do we know what we can do with the talent when we don't know how the talent's personal life is going to be affected by it? That's the issue that I brought up. And we resolved the issue. That was not an issue between Johnny and I. He's bringing it up because he wants to make it appear he was justified in making the decision he made. But the reality is that we overcame that problem and we had moved on in an entirely different direction." Dave says Mero being uncomfortable with the Kimberly angle actually didn't have much to do with Mero leaving and it was more about trusting WWF to make him more of a star and because they were willing to hire his wife (Sable) and other minor issues with WCW.
Diesel is facing Shawn Michaels at In Your House for the WWF title and without directly saying so, WWF is trying to hint in promos that Diesel may be leaving with the WWF title when he goes to WCW. It's subtle and would likely fly over the heads of anyone who doesn't know Diesel is leaving.
WWF's 900 hotline did one of the sleaziest things ever last week. They did a tease telling fans to call the hotline to see what Davey Boy Smith and Magic Johnson have in common. Naturally, this started rumors that Smith has HIV, which of course isn't true. Dave doesn't know what the pay-off to the tease was. But he says that the company spent months calling Gene Okerlund sleazy for his hotline teases and this is worse than almost everything Okerlund has ever done. (I know what the answer is! But I'm going to pull an Okerlund and make you wait until tomorrow.)
Bam Bam Bigelow is upset and claims WWF promised him an unconditional release in exchange for him putting over Goldust on PPV awhile back. After Bigelow did it, WWF gave him his release but it had the condition that he couldn't work for WCW, which is what he had planned to do. So for now, Bigelow can work anywhere except WCW until October.