Wrestling Observer Rewinder

November 25, 1996

Syco Sid defeated Shawn Michaels to win the WWF title (in a match much better than anyone expected) and the plan is to set up a title match with Sid and Bret Hart at the December PPV. Dave believes the plan is for Bret to win the title from Sid and Shawn to win the Rumble, to once again set up a Bret vs. Shawn rematch at WM13. Dave thinks rushing the title onto Bret so fast is a mistake but plans are changing constantly these days and the plan is always subject to change (and of course, this all changes a lot before WM13).
Curt Hennig no-showed his scheduled WWF appearances on the Livewire and Superstars shows after meeting with Eric Bischoff last week. Hennig has reportedly agreed to a deal with WCW but he's still under contract to WWF. Vince McMahon's lawyer Jerry McDevitt fired off a legal threat to WCW regarding contract tampering and saying Hennig can't appear in WCW until his contract expires in February. WCW insists they never planned to bring him in before that. After Hennig no-showed the tapings, he and McMahon eventually had a phone conversation and McMahon reportedly thought he had come to an agreement with Hennig for him to back out of the WCW deal and stay with WWF and even return as a wrestler. But later in the week, Hennig no-showed another personal appearance and no-showed the Survivor Series PPV as well. Reportedly there's a lot of heat between Hennig and Vince over Hennig's Lloyds of London disability policy. Hennig was due to receive a lump-sum payment from the policy of $300,000 but something happened (which Hennig blamed McMahon for) and now Lloyd's is refusing to pay the money (which was pretty much going to be Hennig's permanent retirement). With that out the window, Hennig decided he wanted to (had to?) return to wrestling, and he was so bitter at McMahon that he contacted WCW. For what it's worth, Lloyd's of London has now stopped offering disability insurance to pro wrestlers because they have had to give out so many huge payouts on it. Rick Rude, Ted Dibiase, Nikita Koloff and others all collected huge payments and never wrestled again, while Hennig and Road Warrior Animal also attempted to do the same.
Eric Bischoff turned heel and joined the NWO this week. The idea had been rumored for awhile. The plan is to make the first hour of Nitro the NWO show while the 2nd hour will be the WCW show. As Dave puts it, "So they wanted to put NWO head-to-head with Raw. And Eric Bischoff wants to be on the air at the same time as Vince McMahon. It's that simple and there's nothing more to it than that." During the angle, fans threw trash in the ring and the police rushed out to try to stop it, but they did nothing to stop the NWO beating up Roddy Piper, so it looked silly. Piper looked bad and old and also called Bischoff "a piece of shit" on live TV at one point. Bischoff's heel turn obviously doesn't make any sense, considering the Outsiders power bombed him off the stage a few months ago when this whole angle started but that's WCW for ya.
The night before Survivor Series, WWF held another Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Baron Mikel Scicluna, Capt. Lou Albano, Superfly Jimmy Snuka, Johnny Rodz, Killer Kowalski, Pat Patterson, and Vincent J. McMahon were inducted. The highlight was Shane McMahon giving a great induction speech for his grandfather.
Survivor Series is in the books and it was a pretty great show. The heavily-hyped Steve Austin/Bret Hart match stole the show and Dave says that in the past 2 months, Austin has grown into a wrestler who should be on top for years to come. Shawn Michaels also carried Sid to the best match of his career. The company made a noticeable effort to create new stars with Furnas & LaFon becoming tag title contenders and the debuting Rocky Maivia winning the elimination match. Speaking of, despite lacking experience, Maivia showed good charisma (you think?). Right now, he's being protected and didn't work too many spots in the match, but he showed great athletic potential and Dave thinks he could end up being a huge star (as I type this recap, Fate of the Furious just broke the all-time record for largest movie opening ever, so...yeah he did alright) but WWF has to be careful not to push him too fast because he's not quite ready yet (exactly what they ended up doing, because Samoans with forced pushes is kinda Vince's thing).
Other Survivor Series notes: AAA president Antonio Pena was there. Barry Windham is beginning to look and wrestle like his father, Blackjack Mulligan, which isn't a good thing. Bret vs. Austin was a match of the year caliber performance from both. Jimmy Snuka, fresh from being inducted into the HOF the night before, was the mystery partner for Flash Funk, Yokozuna, and Savio Vega and got no pop at all during the introduction but later got one during the match. PG-13 came out with Faarooq as rapper sidekicks for his stable called the Nation of Domination. Yokozuna looks to weigh a legit 700+ pounds and could barely walk without getting winded and he injured Vader's shoulder during the match. And in the main event, the crowd rabidly turned on Shawn Michaels, booing everything he did, leading to Shawn getting upset and swearing and spitting at the crowd, even though he continued to have a great match. The match ended with a fake heart attack angle with Jose Lothario, which Dave thinks was tacky and sleazy. A gun angle and a heart attack angle within the span of a few weeks, Dave worries about desensitizing fans with all these extreme and hot-shot angles, only for them to later just be dropped.
ECW held the biggest show in its history with last week's November to Remember. They packed in 1,500 people which is the largest legit crowd they've ever squeezed into the tiny ECW Arena and the show sold out hours in advance. Dave was there and gives his usual opinions on ECW. They're incredibly creative at hiding weaknesses, the wrestling is usually not great, but they mask it with lots of crazy shit and great angles and everybody works hard. No company in history has done a better job at marketing clever merchandise and videos. As for this show, it may have been a bad night because the arena was very cold for some reason and the crowd just wasn't as wild as they usually are, probably because everyone was freezing. Dave also mentions that Paul Heyman informed the wrestlers before the show that ECW would be doing their first PPV in March or April, which Taz then came out at the beginning of the show and announced to the live crowd.
As for the show itself: Stevie Richards, Super Nova, and Blue Meanie came out doing the NWO gimmick and calling themselves the Blue World Order in a hilarious bit. Bubba Ray Dudley defeated D-Von Dudley, but then Joel Gertner came out and announced D-Von had won because he was so far ahead on points before the pin. Ha! This all led to a big brawl with Big Dick Dudley giving Gertner a moonsault and nearly spiking himself when he didn't rotate enough. Chris Candido worked injured, telling the crowd he was wrestling with a broken back and broken neck because he'd spent the last 2 years carrying pieces of shit (referring to his time in WWF). Too Cold Scorpio wrestled his final ECW match and refused to leave until Taz came out and threatened him and then said, "See ya later, Flash" as he was walking out. This then led to one of the more famous moments in ECW history, with Taz refusing to leave the ring until Sabu came out. Finally, the lights went out and when they came back on, Sabu was in the ring, with the crowd going insane. But when they locked up, the lights went out again and when they came back, both men were gone. Dave thinks it was brilliant and people are gonna pay good money to finally see that match after Taz has spent so long calling out Sabu. Sandman vs. Raven was terrible (worse than Hogan/Savage at Halloween Havoc, Dave says) with so many terrible missed spots and mess-ups and gives it negative stars. Dave says WWF missed the boat big-time on Shane Douglas and says ring presence as a heel is among the best in the biz. Brian Lee worked the main event sick with food poisoning. And finally, Terry Funk returned to a hero's welcome. (Most of this show is shown on episodes 187 & 188 of Hardcore TV on the Network).
Bam Bam Bigelow fought in a shoot match in Japan this week and it...didn't go well. But on the plus side, he lasted 1 second longer than CM Punk. Bigelow faced Kimo Leopoldo, who mopped the floor with Bigelow and beat him with a rear-naked choke (exact same way Gall beat Punk) in 2:15
Antonio Inoki is expected to wrestle his first match in 7 months at the New Japan Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show and his opponent may be Dory Funk Jr. There's a historical reason for the match because Inoki and Dory had a 60-minute match back in 1969 that is still considered one of the most legendary matches in Japanese wrestling history. They never did a rematch because Dory Funk has been with All Japan for the last 24 years and AJPW and NJPW most certainly do not work together. But Funk has reportedly split from AJPW recently and there's talk about doing an Inoki/Dory rematch, which would be 27 years in the making (never happened. Dory did indeed leave AJPW in 1996 and semi-retired for awhile. He did 4 matches in NJPW in 2001 but none against Inoki. He eventually returned to AJPW in the 00's and continues to wrestle a handful of matches with them to this day. For all the shit Terry Funk gets about wrestling into his old age, he's only 72 and he hasn't wrestled in 2 years. Meanwhile, Dory Funk is 76 and he wrestled four matches last week as I'm typing this).
At a show in Mexico, a fan pulled out a gun and shot 2 local prelim wrestlers, Latin Boy and his brother Furia Latina. Latin Boy survived but Furia was killed. And...that's all Dave seems to have on that. I can't find anything on Google. Seems like it would be a bigger deal?
Antonio Pena is using his WWF connections to try and keep his wrestlers from jumping ship to Konnan's new Promo Azteca promotion, telling his guys he can get them work in WWF. In Mexico, there is very little knowledge of what goes on in the United States scene but everyone knows about WWF so the perception is that working in WWF is a bigger deal than WCW. Which, right now anyway, is definitely not the case because WCW is spanking WWF and the Mexican wrestlers Konnan is providing them are getting weekly TV time on Nitro. Pena has had meetings with Vince McMahon to work out the deal and several AAA guys are expected to work the Royal Rumble, but Dave isn't optimistic of this ever turning into much of anything (he was right).
If you recall, early in 1996, Pentagon collapsed in the ring and was briefly clinically dead before being revived. Dave yet again says it was "a cocaine-induced respiratory failure" although I haven't been able to find any other references anywhere online about it being drug-related but I'll just assume he's right. Anyway, Pentagon was interviewed on TV and talked about wanting to return to the ring some day (he never did). At one point after the incident, he had gotten down to 90 pounds but has regained much of his weight and looks much better.
The WAR promotion in Japan has booked a match between John Tenta and Koji Kitao next month. It's interesting because they had a famous incident back in 1991 where Kitao was upset at being booked to lose to Tenta and the match fell apart into a shoot when he refused to cooperate. After the match, Kitao got on the mic and said wrestling was fake and the whole thing led to Kitao getting fired from SWS. This will be the first time they've faced each other since.
Jerry Lawler won the USWA title this week, which makes no sense because he never really works house shows in Memphis anymore. But the company is getting desperate at this point.
Raven was reportedly upset about having to apologize for the crucifixion angle in ECW a few weeks back and thought the fuss over it was silly. But Paul Heyman forced him to, saying Kurt Angle was offended and that was part of the reason they apologized but not the only reason. Some fans were offended also.
Danny Hodge, at age 62, made an appearance at a University of Oklahoma event this week and showed off his superhuman strength by crushing an apple with one hand (at age 84, he can still do it).
Channel 7 News in New York did a story on breast implants this past week and interviewed Missy Hyatt.
On Nitro, La Parka debuted against Juventud Guerrera and the match was great, but it was only booked to go 4 and a half minutes and so both guys had carefully planned all their spots for the allotted time. But for some reason, they never got the cue to end the match, so by the time they had finished all their planned spots, they weren't told to end the match yet, so they kept trying to improvise things and call spots on the fly and it fell apart.
Back in October, Ultimo Dragon defeated Great Sasuke to win the J-Crown championship, which is actually 8 different junior heavyweight/lightweight belts (because they were all unified in the J-Cup tournament when Sasuke won it). So Dragon walks around with all 8 belts, defending them all at once. One of the belts is actually the WWF Light Heavyweight championship (the history of that belt is convoluted. Wikipedia it.) Anyway, Dragon is now working WCW events and has been showing up on Nitro as the J-Crown champion, but he only comes out with 7 of the belts because WWF won't allow their belt to appear on Nitro.
The heavily hyped NWO appearance at the Cable Ace awards show ended up being a handful of unfunny skits that amounted to pretty much nothing (I can't find the video).
Roddy Piper's contract calls for him to work about 4-5 matches per year and make around 15 other TV appearances. The main focus of the contract is that Turner will be developing a TV show starring Piper as some sort of cop or bounty hunter (doesn't appear to have ever happened). Piper reportedly called Vince McMahon recently to somewhat apologize for going to WCW without telling Vince (because they have a good relationship) but said he swore to keep the signing a secret and didn't want it to leak out and he knew if he told Vince he was going to WCW, it definitely would have gotten out.
There's a good chance that Charles Wright (Kama/Papa Shango) will return soon (he did indeed. Original plans were to bring back the Papa Shango gimmick but instead they kept him as Kama and put him in the Nation of Domination).
WWF has had talks with Randy Savage recently but the two sides were far apart on terms and the talks died off. WWF reportedly is trying to sign guys to long-term 3-5 year contracts because they want to keep people from jumping ship to WCW. While Randy Savage would definitely be a big shot in the arm for WWF in the short term, the belief is that they wouldn't want to use him as a top star for very long because he's in the late stages of his career. And they don't want to be locked in to paying Savage huge money for the next 5 years if they aren't going to use him as a top star. On the same hand, they could sign him to a short term deal, but then when they were done, he'd probably go right back to WCW and they don't want that either. So they just decided to not sign him at all.
On Raw after Survivor Series, Vince really tried to push the idea of Shawn Michaels being a "man's man" because of how heavily he was booed during the PPV. And speaking of, someone writes in to the letters section and basically trashes Shawn saying, "No adult male is going to support an obnoxious, blond ponytail wearing self-professed sexy boy no matter how well he does in the ring."