May 06, 1996
- New Japan's "Battle Formation '96" show last week at the Tokyo Dome drew the second largest crowd and gate in Japanese wrestling history, at 65,000 fans and nearly $6 million. The show ended with Shinya Hashimoto winning the IWGP title from Nobuhiko Takada. Despite Takada being one of the biggest draws in recent Japanese history, he's not an NJPW regular (formerly a UWFI star) and has been talking about retiring. So even though it doesn't make business sense to take the title off a guy who has been drawing as well as Takada is, NJPW is concerned that he might choose to retire at any moment, so they wanted to make sure to get the title off him and onto a NJPW guy.
- Other notes from the show: The Road Warriors made their return to NJPW and defeated the Steiners clean. Road Warrior Animal got a huge reaction after being gone for so long. Great Sasuke won the IWGP Junior heavyweight title from Jushin Liger. Antonio Inoki brought out Dan Severn and announced that he was joining NJPW. Lex Luger and Randy Savage also worked the show and their 2 matches were the 2 worst of the show. Pretty much every other match on the show was good-to-great.
- WWF's latest In Your House PPV is in the books and was highlighted by Shawn Michaels and Diesel having the best WWF PPV match so far this year (4.5 stars) which saw them do a powerbomb through the announce table and they even ripped off Mad Dog Vachon's artificial leg at ringside and used it as a weapon. It was the last PPV appearances for both Diesel and Razor Ramon and even though they lost, Vince McMahon went out of his way to avoid burying them, letting both men have great matches and praising both for their performances. The big negative was Ultimate Warrior vs. Goldust because Goldust was clearly in no condition to compete after his knee injury and they pretty much had a non-match. Dave is disgusted, saying WWF knew well in advance that Goldust simply could not wrestle and they shouldn't have continued to falsely advertise the match when they knew it wasn't going to be able to happen. Dave says it wasn't just a worst match of the year candidate but calls it a candidate for worst match of the decade.
- Other notes from the show: 1-2-3 Kid looked to be in physically bad shape in the pre-show match, skinnier than usual and worked sloppy. Davey Boy Smith's match was changed to a tag match because he's also working on a hurt knee and wasn't ready to work a singles match. Jake Roberts is still in terrible shape and looks awful in the ring. Vader has also put on weight.
- Some of this week's ECW TV show didn't air on the MSG Network due to censoring (that would be the Beulah/Kimona kissing. 1996 was a different time).
- Missy Hyatt is putting out an ECW calendar featuring herself, Kimona, Francine, and Beulah (didn't end up happening, but Missy wrote about it in her autobiography. She says Francine and Kimona were all for it and they even shot several of the photos, but Beulah complained and didn't want to do it. Then she trashes Beulah for doing porn but refusing to wear lingerie for a calendar).
- Paul Heyman suspended the Bruise Brothers for 3 weeks after the incident (mentioned last week) when one of them threw a chair into the crowd and hit a fan.
- Antonio Inoki is trying to arrange a way to tape and air the upcoming inter-promotional show to either air on TV or sell on video tape later. But WCW refuses to allow any of their performers to appear on anything taped or aired on TV. Also, Inoki wanted Mike Tenay to do commentary for it because he's by far the most qualified announcer to cover all these different worldwide promotions. But he works for WCW so they won't let him do it either.
- Brian Pillman had plastic surgery and 4 steel plates put in his face and was released after spending more than a week in the hospital and undergoing several operations from the recent car wreck. He still has one more surgery to go, as they'll eventually need to remove the steel rod that was put into his ankle after the first ankle surgery.
- Hulk Hogan apparently said recently that he won't do any more jobs. That sounds about right.
- WCW is in a bit of a losing battle when it comes to how far they can push the envelope. On their network, they have to keep it somewhat PG, while WWF is continuing to push things in the opposite direction. For instance, when WWF wrestlers use the word "ass", it's uncensored but in WCW, it's bleeped because of Turner Broadcasting's standards and practices. Dave says WCW is forced to act like Brady Bunch while Raw is basically a prelude to Silk Stalkings.
- Shark (John Tenta) isn't gone from WCW after all, as reported last week, but he is working without a contract now, on a nightly deal.
- I would be remiss if I didn't point out Dave's weekly shots at WCW's production mishaps. I haven't been covering them in these posts because they're not really newsworthy, but they're funny. For instance, this week, they reported that Benoit had been eliminated from the cruiserweight title tournament in Japan. Then, a week later on WCW Saturday Night, they aired the match where Benoit qualified to go to Japan, where he would eventually lose and be eliminated. Just shit like that. WCW focuses entirely on Nitro, so shows like Saturday Night and Main Event, which were taped months ago, air things that totally contradict what's happening on Nitro. Last week, Randy Savage came out on Saturday Night with the WCW title that he actually lost weeks ago. And they never bother to explain it to the fans and that sort of stuff is just never acknowledged or edited out. Every single week.
- Dave predicts WCW will quickly do Hogan vs. Scott Hall and Giant vs. Kevin Nash feuds when the two of them debut. Not quite.
- WWF is doing a Shawn Michaels/Davey Boy Smith angle where they claim Shawn was trying to steal Bulldog's wife Diana and Shawn denies it. Dave doesn't know if the match will draw but he thinks the storyline is great.
- For the 5/13 Raw taping, they did a bit where Undertaker was laid out in the ring and Goldust started kissing down Taker's chest, as if he was actually going to give Undertaker a blowjob, before Taker sat up and scared him away. Dave is told it was far beyond anywhere they've gone before with the Goldust character and that fans were literally stunned by it.
- Also at the tapings, they had Shawn Michaels beat Vader and many at ringside said Vader was visibly upset and made some comment about it being bullshit that he "had to lay down for this guy."
- The payoff to the Davey Boy Smith/Magic Johnson "what do they have in common" tease from the hotline last week is that apparently they both had altercations with referees recently. And now you know.
- During the most recent European tour, the Kliq ended up with more heat than ever. Since they're leaving, Diesel and Ramon were flagrantly breaking every company rule they could in front of everybody and there was a ton of heat on Michaels and Helmsley as well, with several wrestlers wanting to beat up Michaels in particular. But they were talked out of it because they knew they'd be fired if they did.
- Sunny left the tour in Germany because she was being ribbed to death by the wrestlers, including someone taking a shit in her food (pretty sure that ended up being Waltman). Chris Candido was also being ribbed and bullied by everyone acting like school children. Dave says there's "some sort of romantic triangle" going on here involving Sunny and it's not really anyone's business until it affects work (that would, of course, be Sunny/Candido/Shawn) and now it is, so it's a problem.