August 05, 1996
- Things change fast in pro-wrestling. 6 months ago, it looked like 1996 was going to be just as much of a down-year as 1995 was. PPV buyrates are still down but otherwise, things have changed significantly on all other fronts. Last year, WWF house shows were losing money and WCW didn't even do them. But now, 6 months later, both WWF and WCW are doing big, profitable house show business. TV ratings are up for WCW. And WWF, once the obvious leader in the industry, is consistently losing the ratings battle to WCW but they're still doing higher ratings than they were before. It's the first time since the 80s that two national promotions seem to both be profitable and flourishing.
- Kevin Nash and Scott Hall jumping to WCW with huge salary increases was actually the best thing to happen to the industry as a whole. Their big salaries led to lower level stars also being able to negotiate bigger contracts and upped the pay scale for everyone. It made the wrestling war competitive. It forced Vince McMahon to break with tradition and start offering guaranteed contracts to guys like Marc Mero and Brian Pillman who otherwise never would have made that much money. He understands why some wrestlers might be resentful when new guys come in with big money contracts, but they need to understand that, as a whole, these changes benefit everyone in the long run.
- WWF has made the decision to drop compensation deals for syndication. Basically, in the past, the WWF has paid TV stations to run their syndicated shows. That was how WWF put a lot of territories out of business. They'd go into some major city and buy the time slot away from the other territory, which killed their TV presence and their ability to draw crowds. But with the success of Raw on cable, they don't believe they really need the syndicated shows anymore to draw crowds. Nothing important ever happens on syndicated shows anyway. All the major angles happen on Raw on USA and that's the show most people are watching so WWF's hope is that they can stop paying for syndication and save more money than they'll lose. Dave goes into great detail about how syndication works, and it's all interesting and worth reading in full if you're curious. Meanwhile, WCW has no plans to stop doing syndicated shows, so expect them to swoop in and buy up many of the best syndicated time slots in major markets that WWF is leaving behind. In the short-run, this is going to hurt and it will make WCW the undisputed #1 promotion in the country in terms of TV viewership and ad revenue. But WWF is hopeful that this is the smarter decision in the long run. TL;DR - WWF is putting all their eggs in the Raw basket.
- Kenta Kobashi is arguably the best in-ring performer in the world but had never won a singles title in AJPW until this week, when he defeated Akira Taue in a stunning upset to win the AJPW Triple Crown title. It was expected that Taue would hold the title for awhile before losing to Misawa or Steve Williams, so Kobashi winning is a huge surprise. Kobashi isn't expected to have a long reign (he ended up keeping it for 6 months. Also, just an aside here, I'm calling bullshit on this title win. Watch the finish. The referee is basically pushing Kobashi to hurry up and pin his Taue. Crooked ref! #JusticeForTaue).
- Indie wrestling promoter Herb Abrams died last week from an apparent drug overdose. Abrams had been arrested at his office, located at 7 Penn Plaza in Manhattan, after he went through the building smashing furniture with a baseball bat and pulling fire alarms on several floors at 6am. Police were called about an "emotionally disturbed person" and when they arrived, they found Abrams naked and covered with baby oil with 2 women in his office. After he was handcuffed, Abrams stopped breathing and was rushed to the hospital and declared dead soon after. Cocaine and Valium were found in his system. Dave gives a brief history of Abrams, who was known as being the lowest of the low when it comes to shady wrestling promoters. He had prior arrests in at least 5 states, mostly for skipping town without paying bills after running shows. Most recently, back in April, Abrams had been arrested for robbery, drug possession, unlawful imprisonment, assault, and attempted rape after locking a woman in his office and, well, doing all those things. Those charges were still pending at the time of his death. TL;DR - no big loss.
- The In Your House PPV after Summerslam will happen in September and the planned main event right now is a tag team match with Shawn Michaels & Jose Lothario vs. Davey Boy Smith & Jim Cornette. Dave is less than enthused (didn't end up happening. They did have a Lothario vs. Cornette match on the show but the main event was Shawn vs. Mankind in an all-time classic).
- Dave attended a WWF house show and has some notes from it. There were a lot of crowd signs, and some of them were pro-WCW. Shawn Michaels got mostly cheered, but got enough boos that he seemed legit annoyed by it. Steve Austin got a big babyface reaction and the crowd reacted to him like he was a huge star, which surprised Dave since he's a low-level heel wrestling Savio Vega at house shows. Yokozuna hasn't lost any weight at the Duke University weight loss clinic he's been at and, instead, Dave says, "He looked like he ate most of Duke University" and says he can no longer move at all.
- Since the Olympics are still going on, Dave talks about Henri Deglane, who is the only person to ever win a gold medal in the Olympics (in 1924) and to win a major pro wrestling world title (in 1931). I suspect there will be a new name added to that list in a few years...
- In AAA, Lizmark Jr. made his return to wrestling a year and a half after suffering a badly broken leg in a car accident. Word is he looked good in the ring but not as good as he did before the injury.
- Some ECW wrestlers are going to Japan to work some shows and while there, they're filming a few matches in Korakuen Hall that will air on ECW TV.
- Vampiro is expected to debut in ECW later this month. He was supposed to have debuted already, but before he and Heyman could get the details worked out, Vampiro had already gotten himself booked on some other shows in Mexico (never ended up happening and Vampiro never worked in ECW).
- Chris Jericho is finishing up in ECW this week and is headed to WCW shortly.
- Raven and Pitbull #2 both were unable to work a recent ECW show. Raven missed because of pneumonia. He was at the show, but he was so sick that he couldn't work a match so he just cut a promo. Pitbull #2 missed the show because he was arrested the previous night for a bar fight, but was later released without being charged.
- Todd Pettengill has a radio show in New York and was on the show this week making fun of the death of Herb Abrams.
- WCW has cancelled 2 house shows for this month (Baltimore and Norfolk) because so many of the wrestlers complained about the schedule.
- Rick and Scott Steiner (who have been working without a contract) reportedly finally signed a long-term deal with WCW.
- Ahmed Johnson reportedly suffered some sort of kidney injury during the angle with Faarooq (Ron Simmons). Dave has heard ruptured kidney or just a severely bruised kidney, but regardless, Johnson had blood in his urine and they don't exactly know what happened. He also suffered a broken nose during the match before the attack, from an errant Owen Hart kick. Rough night for Ahmed. He's expected to be out for a few weeks (ended up being a few months and the kidney issues were serious).
- Jake Roberts is expected to be back soon. Dave says there's lots of stories floating around about why Roberts no-showed the recent PPV but he can't confirm anything.
- Jim Cornette and Shawn Michaels got into a backstage argument after a recent house show. There was a spot planned where Michaels was supposed to superkick Cornette. But something went wrong (word is Cornette tripped and fell early) and the superkick missed by a mile and looked bad. Michaels felt like Cornette made it look bad on purpose. As soon as they got backstage, Michaels got in his face and started yelling at him and Cornette started yelling back and it turned into a big thing and now Cornette reportedly has lots of heat on him for pissing off the golden boy.
- Make A Difference Fatu has been told to lose a lot of weight and shave his head and he is being given a new gimmick as a Middle Eastern character, likely with Iron Sheik as his manager. Word is they are expected to be given a major heel push in order to get heat because there have been so many Middle Eastern terrorist activities in the news lately and WWF wants to capitalize. Of course.
- Barry Windham will be brought in as The Stalker.
- WWF is bringing back the Bruise Brothers but don't really have plans for them. They just wanted a tag team that can get a few minor wins and then be used to put over all the rest of the tag teams. They won't be used on the road and WWF has told them to feel free to continue working in ECW if they want. But Paul Heyman doesn't want to use anyone who WWF uses, especially if they're going to be jobbers on WWF TV, so he's done with them.
- Pat Patterson is returning to WWF in a part-time role. He won't be doing office work anymore but will help with television and go on the road once a month or so.
- Mark Henry, the weightlifter who is expected to start with WWF in September, is getting a lot of mainstream publicity because he'll be competing in the Olympics this week. WWF plans to bill him as the "World's Strongest Man." Dave says a guy named Anthony Clark is widely regarded as the current strongest man in the world because he benches over 700 pounds, but Mark Henry is good at both Olympic lifting and powerlifting (which I guess is different. I don't know or care) and since he's so good at both, you could make an argument that he really is one of the strongest men in the world.
- WWF has officially severed ties with Warrior University and Ultimate Warrior's comic book, so it doesn't look like he's coming back any time soon.
- Vader has reportedly lost around 50 pounds in the last few months.
- WWF is reportedly interested in signing Too Cold Scorpio, but nothing has been confirmed on that yet.
- Ron Simmons had been working as a warehouse manager at a Coca-Cola plant in Atlanta before signing with WWF a few weeks ago. Before signing, he had also been negotiating with WCW but they couldn't agree on money.
- All the letters this week are about ECW. Someone writes in and criticizes ECW and accuses Dave of being biased because he's allegedly friends with Paul Heyman and says he would crucify WWF or WCW if they did half of what ECW does. Someone else who works with one of the Japanese magazines writes in, talking about ECW's relationship with the Japanese media. Among other things, he says Paul Heyman is always trying to handle too much business himself without relying on help from his staff and ends up dropping the ball on things because he's completely overworked.