May 20, 1996
- Hi. Sorry about yesterday. I spent the night before swaddled in blankets like the Baby Moses, sleeping on the bathroom floor in front of the toilet, my cries of mercy falling on the deaf ears of a vengeful god as everything that wasn't nailed down spewed from my mouth like so much Exorcist pea soup. I spent all day yesterday in a darkened bedroom, with Pink Floyd on loop, simultaneously sweating and freezing, drifting in and out of consciousness in a fever dream like that peyote scene from Beavis & Butt-Head Do America. It was a very bad 24 hours. But I'm alive and well today! Well, alive at least. Thanks for all the well wishes. So where were we?
- WCW has announced that Nitro will be expanding to 2 hours, starting next week. The expansion has been discussed for awhile but wasn't planned until later in the year. However, they changed their minds and decided to do it immediately due to last week's low Nitro rating (1.9) compared to Raw doing a near-record high 4.1 rating. Dave says the long-term implications of this could be huge. Nitro has been pretty awful lately and there's concern that doing 2 hours live each week will dilute the product even more. WCW also hasn't shown the ability to get over any new stars, relying on the same Hogan & Flair & Friends formula. To fill up 2 hours, they're going to need to create new stars and get them over. From a business standpoint, it's a win for TNT because the first hour of Nitro will surely do better ratings than the re-runs of Thunder In Paradise they were previously showing. TNT will also be giving WCW more money per week to run the show, totaling an additional $2 million per year. Add in the fact that WCW house shows have been surprisingly successful lately, and WCW has finally become a seriously profitable company for the first time ever. No one really knows if this will be a good decision for the industry long-term, because this is all uncharted waters.
- WCW's Great American Bash takes place next month and Dave has the tentative lineup of matches. Of note, Rey Misterio Jr. will be making his debut against Dean Malenko for the cruiserweight title and Dave thinks that's a terrible booking idea. Misterio is totally unknown to American fans and bringing him in and inevitably jobbing him in his first match is stupid. Misterio has the potential to be a huge star that kids will love and they should build him up slowly and create a star out of him rather than throwing him into a title match and having him lose in his debut. But that's WCW for ya. Dave says Misterio could be this generation's Tiger Mask and WCW should copy the booking that NJPW did when they created Tiger Mask.
- Carolina Panthers football player Kevin Greene is also working the PPV, against his team's wishes. He'd already agreed to work the show before signing a new contract with the Panthers. ESPN reported that WCW is paying Green $100,000 to work the show, but Dave is skeptical of that number. If it is true, WCW won't be getting their money's worth. WWF did the same thing last year with Lawrence Taylor (a much bigger name than Kevin Greene) and it still led to Wrestlemania doing a disappointing buyrate. WCW is pretty much depending on Greene and the mainstream sports coverage to sell this PPV.
- AAA's Triplemania IV-A show in the U.S. turned into a bit of a fiasco last week. The show was held in Chicago and drew just over 2,500 fans and amounted to a financial loss of around $30,000. The promotion just doesn't have the exposure to run major profitable shows in the United States. Adding to the mess of a show, there was pretty much no storyline buildup for the matches, half the roster no-showed due to disorganization with the promoters, and AAA president Antonio Pena spent the week before the show in the hospital for exhaustion. The show only ended up having 4 matches and only one match (the main event) actually took place as advertised. No bells and whistles, lights, fancy ring entrances, nothing. It came off as a boring house show. The no-shows were the biggest hurdle, as most of AAA's top stars didn't work the event, due to expired visas, double-bookings, and other various reasons (to this day, this show is still widely considered the worst show in Triplemania history).
- Ron Reis (The YETAAAY!) is moving to Japan to live and train at the New Japan dojo full time, because NJPW wants to create their own big star like WCW's Giant. Many people familiar with Reis' skill (or lack thereof) aren't hopeful that it will be a success and pretty much expect him to wash out in Japan (yup).
- Louie Spicolli was supposed to show up in ECW this week, using his WWF gimmick Rad Radford and have Sandman beat him, so they could say an ECW guy destroyed a WWF guy, but apparently WWF got wind of it and nixed it so it didn't happen.
- The Denver TV station that was airing ECW has said that they will never air ECW again after getting several viewer complaints.
- An ECW house show in Reading, PA featured a match with Tommy Dreamer vs. Brian Lee that went outside the building and into the busy street and cars actually had to swerve to avoid hitting them.
- Ray Stevens funeral was held last week and a gathering took place afterwards where everyone sat around and traded stories about him. Dave apparently went to the funeral. He talks about how Stevens was such a legendary drunk that the police would come drag him off his bar stool at 3am and take him home (they knew where he lived because they had to do this so often) and drop him off on his front lawn. And then he'd wake up the next day and go work a match and steal the show before going back to the bar. Lots of local wrestlers were in attendance and Dave also adds, "I thought I'd seen it all but seeing someone try to hard-sell lifetime subscriptions to their wrestling newsletter for $10 at a funeral was something new." Wonder who that was...
- WCW have been "violently confiscating" anti-Hogan signs from fans at Nitro the last couple of weeks.
- The Blood Runs Cold vignettes that WCW has been airing don't have anything to do with Scott Hall or Kevin Nash after all. Instead, they will be for a team of three ninja characters that are being brought in. One of them is expected to be Bryan Clark (formerly Adam Bomb). Getting warmer...
- The Giant, being billed as Paul "The Giant" Wight, has been in Portland filming a movie called Reggie's Prayer, starring NFL player Reggie White. The Giant plays a villain who takes a football player hostage. (Here's the movie. I didn't watch the whole thing but I believe he first appears around 55:50 but there's a fight scene with him at 1:03:00 and another one later).
- Speaking of movies, Dave says Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper are shooting a movie together called The Overlords that also stars Gary Busey. I can't find anything on this. I do see that Piper and Busey were in a movie together in 2006 called Shut Up And Shoot but that's about it. So maybe this ended up getting cancelled or something, who knows.
- Gene Okerlund said on the WCW Hotline that Hall and Nash coming to WCW was a done deal but WCW pulled the message. Apparently, Bischoff wants to make it seem like they aren't signed to WCW. I wonder why...
- Here's another quote from a recent interview with Eric Bischoff in which he is asked if he would take Marc Mero back: "I don't know that I would or I wouldn't (rehire him). There's three mistakes that were made the day we parted company at the airport. One is that Johnny confronted me five minutes before we were supposed to board a flight to do TV. Bad timing. The second mistake is that he gave me an ultimatum. When someone looks me in the eye and says do this for me--which in his case was put something in writing saying you're going to pay me no matter what happens if I get hurt or I can't wrestle--when someone says this to me, they give me no option. I don't deal well with a gun to my head. The third mistake was on my part because I overreacted to that. I overreacted because Johnny was a guy that everybody who has worked here during the time I've worked here has wanted to fire. They wanted to get rid of him because they didn't believe in him. I gave Johnny opportunities. I protected Johnny. We all think Johnny's a great wrestler now, but a year ago you guys were filleting him like he was a fish. He wouldn't have had that opportunity to become a great wrestler if I hadn't given it to him. He had a contract, he shook hands, he agreed on a deal, and then because he didn't like the tone of my voice when we had an issue over the NASCAR problem, he decided to call Vince McMahon and take a better offer. That to me is not integrity. He may have his reasons for doing it, and he may believe he's right, but if I shake hands with somebody, and say this is our deal, I'll cut off my arm before I go back on my word. Johnny said he'd like to leave on good terms, and I don't think agreeing on a deal, giving me an ultimatum and telling me five minutes before we get on an airplane is necessarily the greatest way to part company. And I looked him in the eye and said, no, you're not leaving on good terms and I sincerely hope you know what you're doing, because you're not coming back. I meant it when I said it. But in reality, as much as I'm still a little disturbed by what happened, I've had time to get over it personally."
- 1-2-3 Kid isn't expected back until June (Dave doesn't say it, but he was in drug rehab at the time. And he ends up going to WCW soon instead of coming back).
- Tom Brandi, Tracy Smothers, Stacy Porteau, Tony Anthony, and Bill Irwin were all signed to WWF contracts on 5/10 and will eventually be given new gimmicks. (Salvatore Sincere, Freddie Joe Floyd, Alex Porteau, T.L. Hopper, and The Goon respectively. Who knew that so many awful characters were signed on the same day? That's like WWF's 9/11 in terms of dark days and hitting creative rock bottom).
- While doing a tour in Kuwait, they filmed an angle where Davey Boy Smith attacked Shawn Michaels on the beach and threw him into the gulf.