Wrestling Observer Rewinder

September 23, 1996

Losing a parent sucks. I don't have a crazy Meltzer Driver to offer but I do want to send condolences Dave's way. Keep your head up, Big Money.
Another note, I'm taking tomorrow off to get drunk and blow shit up in honor of 'Merica, so next post will be Wednesday if I still have all my fingers.
We begin with the fallout from the Fall Brawl PPV and Dave starts the issue by saying, "Great undercard wrestling. Bad main events. And booking with more holes than Swiss Cheese. Welcome to WCW." Yup, that pretty much summed up WCW all the way to the bitter end. Anyway, he goes off on all the flawed booking from the War Games match in hilarious fashion, with Dave just asking question after question while pointing out huge gaping plotholes in the whole WCW vs. NWO mess. But in the end, he basically says the NWO angle is so hot that it can't be destroyed even by bad booking (not yet anyway) and with Hogan changing everything at the last minute each week, nothing makes sense anymore.
Other notes from the show: it took place in the Greensboro, NC area which is prime Flair country and they came out in huge numbers to see the Horsemen get revenge on the NWO. Horsemen merch also outsold NWO merch by a 4-to-1 margin which wouldn't happen in any other market. Benoit vs. Jericho and Misterio Jr. vs. Super Calo were the show-stealers. Jericho was the babyface but got booed because Benoit is a Horseman and the crowd loved him for it even if he was the heel. During a backstage interview, Ric Flair kept referring to Mike Tenay as "Gene" which was hilarious. And the main event booking was, of course, ridiculous but the crowd was molten hot for it, so whatever.
Dave takes a moment to criticize both WWF and WCW for catering to the hardcore fans so much, by always making a bunch of insider references or doing angles based on things the casual fans won't get. Dave says the hardcore newsletter/internet fans are already watching religiously. They need to be trying to hook casual fans. Both companies are too busy trying to do big surprises and hot shot angles and Dave doesn't believe the casual fans have enough interest or insider knowledge to follow along with a lot of it (for instance, WWF's fake Razor/Diesel storyline). Dave ends this rant on a pretty interesting note, basically saying that the growing popularity of the internet is a good thing for insider-type fans (aka, us smarks) because they'll have some control over the business, since WWF and WCW seems to be primarily targeting "smart" fans these days and will likely listen to what the internet crowd wants.
The latest news on the WWF's fake Razor Ramon and Diesel angle is that both Rick Bogner and Glenn Jacobs will indeed be playing the roles of the characters on the live Raw next week. Bogner cancelled his wrestling commitments in Japan so he could return to the U.S. for the role. They've essentially turned Jim Ross heel for this storyline, with Gorilla Monsoon acknowledging on TV that Kevin Nash and Scott Hall were under contract to a different company and putting all the heat on Ross. This whole angle is being dismissed by pretty much everyone as a fraud and ratings for it are pathetically bad. But they keep pushing it so hard that Dave thinks they must have something bigger planned than what you see on the surface. (Nope. That was it.)
Dave takes a long hard look at the fledgling UWFI promotion in Japan. He basically just gives the history of it, from when they formed 5 years ago to now. Back in 93 and 94, the promotion regularly drew 15,000+ fans to every show and even sold out a couple of huge stadium shows. But mismanagement and money problems nearly put them out of business in 1995, until NJPW stepped in and saved them with the promotion vs. promotion angle (that Bischoff pretty much copied for the NWO vs. WCW angle a year later). But that whole angle pretty much just led to NJPW burying UWFI and even though it gave the promotion some much-needed financial help, it destroyed their credibility and left them unable to draw on their own anymore. So now they've paired up with All Japan and they just had a stadium show with UWFI star Takada facing WAR's Genichiro Tenryu, which is one of the only dream matches left for Takada. The show drew an estimated 30,000 fans and was a big success, but it might be too little too late for them (Yup. They'll end up folding before the end of the year).
Gene Okerlund's WCW contract expired last week and he's reportedly gone from the company. A memo was sent out to WCW employees saying he was gone and Okerlund said his goodbyes to everyone during the week. Between his contract and his cut of the 900-line profits, Okerlund was making around $420,000 per year and wanted a raise. Okerlund has reportedly spoken with Vince McMahon about returning to WWF but Vince isn't interested. Word is he was trying to use WWF as negotiating leverage and with that not working out for him, it's believed he'll probably resume negotiations with WCW and likely end up returning and taking whatever low-ball deal they offer him. There's also been speculation that Okerlund leaving WCW is a work (Bischoff is pretty much working everyone now, even within the company) and that Okerlund may return as the NWO's announcer.
J.J. Dillon resigned from WWF last week and is reportedly heading to WCW. The news of his resignation apparently caught Vince McMahon by surprise. Dillon was one of the main bookers and the main talent liaison to the front office. There's no confirmation that he's headed to WCW, but it's widely assumed he is. Dillon would be valuable to WCW because he has a ton of backstage knowledge about the WWF. As Dave puts it, "he knows where all the bodies are buried" so WCW stealing him away is a pretty big deal.
Jake Roberts has been added to the WWF booking committee, which is something he has been pushing for for months. Roberts will join Jim Cornette, Bruce Prichard, Jim Ross, and Jerry Brisco in writing and booking the shows, although at the end of the day, the final decisions always come down to Vince McMahon.
Michinoko Pro is having a show at Sumo Hall in Tokyo that will be their biggest show ever. One of the matches will feature Dynamite Kid, wrestling his first match in over 2 years. It'll be a 6-man match and on the other team will be the original Tiger Mask. Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask revolutionized the lightweight wrestling world in the early 80s and it will be the first time they've faced each other since their classic match in 1983 (it also ended up being Dynamite Kid's last match ever).
Ken Shamrock is training for UFC's Ultimate Ultimate 2 PPV in December, with the idea that it will be his last shoot fighting competition. He wants to go out with a bang and hopes to win the tournament and retire from shoot fighting (didn't quite work out that way).
Sabu has been working for a promotion called Tokyo Pro in Japan but he's quitting. He was making $6,000 per week with them, but he was upset with how they have been treating his uncle The Sheik (Dave doesn't clarify) and he also wasn't happy because they wanted to book him against Abdullah The Butcher. But Sabu didn't want to do that match since he wouldn't be able to work his style (Abby ain't gettin' put through a table, brother).
Several injuries coming out of the latest ECW show: a rookie named Kareem Horton, who trains at the ECW training school, slipped off the top rope and broke his leg. Johnny Smith tore his AC joint in his shoulder. Shane Douglas collapsed backstage after injuring his back and neck somehow. People freaked out but he eventually went to the hospital and was okay later. Doug Furnas broke his nose. Tommy Dreamer has injured ribs. Even ring announcer Bob Artese got cut in the face when a piece of a chair broke off and hit him.
ECW introduced yet another new Dudley, this one named Spike Dudley, who is 150-pound indie wrestler Matt Hyson from California. The gimmick seems to be that Bubba Dudley picks him up and throws him on people.
The reason Kimona Wanalaya left ECW was because she was unhappy in her role with Tommy Dreamer and Beulah, since Beulah is clearly treated as the top female star of the company. Kimona also said she makes more money "dancing" (ahem) than she was being paid in ECW and contrary to rumors, Missy Hyatt had nothing to do with her leaving. Kimona is now currently working in AWF.
The TV show American Journal did a segment on ECW that will air this week (This is pretty interesting, lots of backstage footage. Dreamer talking about having 16 concussions. Missy Hyatt doing Missy Hyatt things. New Jack and Taz talking shit, etc.)
Sean Waltman debuted on the latest WCW Nitro as the newest member of the NWO, going by the name Syxx. Tony Schiovane made sure to mention that Waltman used to wrestle as 1-2-3 Kid in another organization but that he no longer works for them.
A woman called the WCW offices last week complaining because her 5-year-old had spray painted "NWO" on her 1-year-old. Ha!
Last week on WCW Saturday Night, they did an angle where The Giant destroyed a Cadillac that was supposedly Lex Luger's. In reality, they rented the Cadillac and had an agreement with the rental place about how much damage would be done to the car. The Giant ended up doing way more damage than they agreed upon and the rental place refused to take the car back and wanted it paid for. WCW made Giant the scapegoat and he ended up having to buy the car himself (holy shit. Is Big Show on Twitter? Someone tweet him and find out if this is true. That's amazing).
WCW plans to have the world title vacated in November, with the winner of the World War 3 PPV 60-man battle royal being declared the new champion. Dave says the plan is the for the title to end up vacant every November and for the battle royal to determine a new champion to become an annual event. The main reason they're doing it this time is to get the title off Hogan without him having to do a job for someone. Because of course.
The current plan is for the NWO to take over the WCW Saturday Night show one hour each week. Ted Dibiase will be one of the commentators. Dave thinks the NWO having their own show is a cute idea but he's not sure how it would work. Would they wrestle WCW guys? Then it's clearly not a separate promotion. Will they be wrestling each other, when they're all heels? They also had plans to create NWO tag team titles but that plan has been dropped for now.
Dave says WCW producer Neil Pruitt deserves all the credit for the great production of all the NWO segments. Here's DDP interviewing Pruitt about those NWO bits years later:
Sapphire, formerly Dusty Rhodes' manager in WWF, passed away of a heart attack last week at 61.
Bret Hart has been talking trash about Shawn Michaels in newspaper and radio interviews recently. Dave thinks it's building up for a planned rematch at Wrestlemania, although it's true that Bret doesn't really like Shawn all that much in real life.
The IC title tournament finals between Faarooq and Marc Mero will take place on Raw and Pat Patterson (the first IC champ) will be the special referee. Dave's prediction: Sunny will try to help Faarooq by flashing some skin at Patterson to try to distract him, but it won't work for obvious reasons.
A magazine in Japan published an article saying Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle has signed with WWF, but latest Dave has heard is that there is an offer but Angle hasn't accepted yet (he eventually turns them down).
Chris Candido will be back in WWF in December as a heel (nope).
Shane McMahon got married on Sept. 14th.
WWF's live, interactive Saturday morning show starting next week will be called Livewire.
On the 10 year anniversary episode of WWF Superstars, they aired highlights from the last 10 years of the show, including Hogan and Savage clips. WWF made sure to get their digs in though, with Gorilla Monsoon talking about how Savage's prime was ten years ago and all the clips of Hogan were of him getting beat up by guys like Earthquake and Andre the Giant.