December 16, 1996
- Sorry folks....there won't be a post tomorrow. I'm not going to be available during the normal hours to post it. So we'll pick back up on Monday and Tuesday with the last 2 issues of 1996. And then...break time until we return for 1997.
- This issue opens with a huge in-depth recap of the UFC Ultimate Ultimate 2 PPV. Dave covers the "class" the day before where all the fighters met up in a room the night before to have the newest rule changes explained, the details of Ken Shamrock going into the show with a broken hand, Tank Abbott's crew getting into a fight with Frank Shamrock at the hotel the night before, and finally the event itself, which Dave reviews match-by-match. Ken Shamrock aggravated the broken hand in his first fight and had to withdraw from the tournament. Kimo Leopoldo beat Paul Varelans in a war. Tank Abbott knocked out Steve Nelmark in the most brutal fashion ever. Don Frye beat Mark Hall in a short fight that led some to be suspicious that Hall had thrown the fight, but Dave doesn't think so (Hall later admitted that he did and referee John McCarthy also wrote in his autobiography that he realized the fight was fixed as he was refereeing it). Midway through the show, Ken Shamrock was interviewed backstage and cut a promo on Tank Abbott, which led to Abbott and his people getting into a confrontation with Shamrock backstage. And in the main event, Frye beat Tank Abbott to win the tournament in what was probably pure luck because Abbott was murdering him until he slipped on the mat and fell down, which let Frye get on top of him. Frye ended up suffering a broken hand which needed surgery and Ken Shamrock teased retirement (I usually don't dedicate this much space to UFC news but this was a newsworthy event and it's the major story of this issue and takes up a ton of space, so I figured I'd give it a paragraph).
- WWF is essentially turning the Royal Rumble into a joint WWF/AAA show. The undercard dark matches will all be AAA matches and won't air on PPV, but are there to help them try to fill up the 71,000 seat Alamodome. Four pure AAA matches are scheduled for the show and some of them will appear on the TV pre-show. One of them may appear on the actual card, and at least 4 of AAA's stars are scheduled to be in the Rumble match itself. Dave isn't hopeful that this will work. Despite being so close to the border, AAA has never been able to draw in San Antonio and mixing their matches into a WWF show probably won't help them draw the Latino fans they're hoping for. Even in hot cities in California, Latino fans didn't come out to see Mexican wrestlers on WCW's house shows there either. But there's hope that with WWF's huge marketing push in the city that this may work out better than it has in the past. So far, around 9,000 tickets have been sold and there's still 6 weeks to go, which is a good sign. But on TV, WWF is heavily hyping the 71,000-seat capacity of the arena, so even if they manage to sell 30,000 tickets (which would be a great number for a wrestling show these days), it will be considered a disappointment considering how hard they're openly pushing for 71,000.
- At an All Japan Women's show, Kyoko Inoue beat Manami Toyota to win the title and did it by inventing a new move which Dave describes as similar to a Death Valley Driver but dropping her like a powerbomb (this would be what we now call the Burning Hammer and yup, Inoue invented the move).
- Three months ago, AWF announced plans for national TV syndication. Now, they appear to be on their last legs. All the stations they had syndication deals with have now been told that AWF is basically out of money and will no longer be paying for syndication, which led to almost all of the stations cancelling the show immediately. All future shows have been cancelled so the writing is on the wall (yup, this was it for them).
- The latest on the Vampiro/Konnan situation: Vampiro feels it's better for his image to not work with Konnan because he's trying to build a career as an actor and musician outside of wrestling. Perro Aguayo is seen as a god by some in Mexico and working with Konnan would put Vampiro at odds with Aguayo and thus might hurt his image in Mexico. As far as Vampiro being upset over a tattoo Konnan got, apparently that's just a minor issue and not a big part of the heat between them.
- Antonio Pena debuted a new character in AAA this week named La Calaca who is basically a heel version of La Parka. He even wears the same outfit, but with the colors reversed (white with black skeleton). Speaking of, one of the reasons La Parka left AAA was because Pena wanted him to turn heel and Parka didn't want to.
- AAA is negotiating with Sabu to bring him in for some shows. Meanwhile, AJPW has offered Sabu a 26-week deal to work there in 1997 but he hasn't accepted yet.
- A guy named Larry Burton, who is a friend of Jerry Lawler's, has been running some of the day-to-day business of USWA. Word is he's been getting a lot of heat from others involved in the company (Lawler and Burton end up buying USWA from Jerry Jarrett here soon and then selling it to some other business guy in Ohio. It eventually goes out of business and there's a bunch of legal shit and this Burton guy ends up getting convicted on a bunch of racketeering and fraud charges in relation to it, but we're still a long way away from that).
- Paul Heyman is saying that the date for ECW's first PPV will either be 3/30 or 4/13. He has reserved both dates for now but a final decision won't be made for a few more weeks. ECW has been trying to get guys to sign short-term contracts to make sure nobody important ups and jumps ship before the PPV. "Obviously Sabu vs. Taz will headline," Dave says. (Nope.)
- Former SMW star Boo Bradley debuted for ECW using the name Balls Mahoney. He got over pretty well and apparently, "did something of a comical gay type of act although apparently Paul Heyman told him not to do a specific gay act." When he does moves, the crowds chant "Balls!" and when his opponents do moves on him, they chant "Nuts!"
- Rob Feinstein is back in an on-camera role (won't be his last on-camera role, ahem) with ECW as a new member of the Blue World Order. He's going by the name 3 1/2 which is apparently a play on Syxx? Feinstein is also still handling the video distribution for ECW, which brings me to...
- Paul Heyman and Tod Gordon have instructed Rob Feinstein not to sell any tapes of the show from Revere, MA where the Mass Transit incident happened (this makes me wonder if there's any high quality video of it somewhere that someone is sitting on. To this day, the only video you can find is shitty fan-cam footage that was posted yesterday).
- Shane Douglas got into a fight at ringside with a fan at an ECW show. Reportedly, the fan threw the first punch and Douglas began to beat him down. This led to Tommy Dreamer pulling Douglas away. Dave notes that Tommy Dreamer is kinda the unsung hero of the company because he always seems to be the one calming down situations like this. Anyway, he pulled Douglas back into the match but Douglas was still furious and went back out into the crowd but he apparently grabbed the wrong fan and threw him down and started punching him, only for Dreamer to pull Douglas away again. Anyway, during the same match, both Douglas and Francine both were injured. Douglas got hit in the ankle with an errant chairshot. And Francine may have torn her hamstring somehow.
- Sabu and Perry Saturn had what most called the worst match ever in ECW. Sabu was severely jet-lagged from flying back from Japan and they pretty much just missed all their spots. Plus the tables kept breaking before they were supposed to and it just fell apart, with the fans booing it heavily. Also, a fan grabbed Sabu's hair, which led to Sabu slapping the fan. Man, those ECW crowds just won't stop being dicks.
- Other ECW comings and goings: the company is still talking to Lance Storm about joining the promotion soon. FMW wrestler Gladiator (Mike Awesome) told the Japanese media that he is going to ECW in February. WWF's Sunny was backstage at the last ECW Arena show.
- At an indie show in Woodbridge, VA the promoter no-showed the event, meaning no one would get paid. It was a fairly stacked card, with a lot of ECW guys booked to appear. Sabu vs. Rob Van Dam was supposed to headline but since they wouldn't get paid, they decided not to work. Stevie Richards, Blue Meanie, Axl Rotten and The Headbangers basically took over the show and went out in front of the crowd and worked a bunch of comedy spots. "At one point several of the wrestlers were in the ring while an explicit Adam Sandler song was playing and they were all pretending to jack off. At another point the wrestlers were doing a pass-the-hat for money with the fans and were answering questions for $1."
- Tiger Jeet Singh was recently involved in a fraud trial in Canada. Singh and 2 other guys bought a condo complex for $7 million and tried to defraud other potential buyers somehow. Singh eventually turned on the other 2 men and testified against them on behalf of the prosecution in exchange for the charges against him being dropped. The other 2 men were convicted.
- The Nitro episode in Charlotte, NC this week went off the air with Roddy Piper and Kevin Greene fending off the NWO. But after the show went off the air, Four Horsemen members Arn Anderson and Steve McMichael came out to a monsterous reaction to run off the NWO. Dave says it was one of the biggest pops in Charlotte in the last 20 years (this is actually on the Network, they tacked it on to the end of the episode so you can see it. And yeah, the crowd goes bonkers).
- Also on Nitro, they aired a video hinting that Nancy Sullivan was having an affair with Chris Benoit and has left Kevin for Benoit (perish the thought!). Benoit said he was playing human chess and said, "My bishop takes your queen, checkmate."
- Rey Mysterio Jr., Psicosis, and Juventud Guerrera have all signed contracts with WCW while several of the other luchadors have signed letters of intent to sign. Once WWF and AAA started working together, Eric Bischoff panicked and rushed to try to get all the luchadors he could signed to deals so they couldn't show up at the Royal Rumble.
- Hulk Hogan is now selling something called "Thunder Mixers" which are basically just really cheap blenders.
- David Sammartino (son of Bruno) got a tryout at the latest WCW tapings and looked rusty but not terrible.
- They're planning to add more members to the NWO in order to have enough wrestlers to fill a one hour NWO show each week. Otherwise they'd have to put Hall and Nash in the ring for half an hour every week and nobody wants that. This week, they added Mr. Wallstreet and in recent Saturday night tapings, Scott Norton came out in an NWO shirt with the NWO music, so he's going to be joining soon also. Dave says it makes the NWO less cool and exclusive when they start adding lower-card guys like that in.
- WWF are keeping their plans for Shotgun Saturday Night pretty well guarded. All Dave knows is that it won't be a traditional wrestling show. They've got syndication deals for the show in about 20 different major markets but they're even keeping that secret for now so Dave doesn't know what cities the show will be airing in. They also aren't revealing where the show will be filmed from yet, other than some night club locations in New York City. Allegedly, AAA wrestlers will appear on the debut show.
- WWF is claiming the buyrate for Survivor Series was 0.8. It most certainly was not. Even the best independent estimates put it at 0.65 at the highest and probably lower than that (the real number ended up being 0.58).
- Someone writes in and says WWF should just buy USWA and turn it into a developmental company and training place, sorta like the WCW Power Plant. Yeah right, like WWF having a developmental group would ever work.
- Another guy writes in and basically rips Hall and Nash for the way they left WWF after Vince made them stars and praises Bret Hart for staying loyal. He says Bret leaving for WCW may have been the final nail in WWF but he did the honorable thing and stuck by the company who made him and he thinks it's terrible the way people keep fucking over Vince to go to WCW. Dave responds and basically says Vince is just reaping what he sowed. In the 80s, Vince poached guys like Hogan, Orndorff, Heenan, Piper, Junk Yard Dog, etc. from other promotions, often putting them out of business in the process. He says Hall and Nash stuck around and fulfilled all their contractually obligated bookings to Vince and he doesn't think they or anyone else has done anything wrong by leaving to go to WCW. The truth is, WCW is simply doing to Vince the exact same thing he did to every other territory 15 years ago.